120 Chinese troops into Venezuela

4-2-19  
https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/chinese-army-arrives-in-venezuela-just-days-after-the-russian-miltary/
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4-2-19  According to a recent report in the LA Times, “Over the decade ending in 2016, China loaned Venezuela approximately $62 billion, much of which Caracas could repay with oil. Moscow in the last several years gave Venezuela $17 billion in loans and investment....
  At a substantive level, China has conveyed its readiness and capability to salvage the besieged Maduro government.  Beijing has not only underscored that it is a stakeholder but also asserted its expanding global influence.  Of course, China firmly repudiates the Monroe Doctrine. Thus, in many ways, this becomes a watershed moment in world politics.
https://indianpunchline.com/chinas-pla-troops-in-venezuela-is-game-changer/
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(For many years there have been ~15,000 Cuban security personnel operating in Venezuela.)

2-2-19  Havana (CNN) Less than a month after seizing power in 1959, Fidel Castro embarked on his first trip as leader to seek support for his revolution. The young rebel leader's destination wasn't Moscow or Washington, it was Caracas.

Venezuela's government had secretly supported Castro and his rebels with funds and weapons during their fight to oust US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista . Now a victorious Castro had a new request:  loan Cuba $300 million dollars worth of oil....

Soon Venezuela was sending the island roughly 100,000 barrels of oil a day to the island.  In exchange, Cuban doctors set up clinics for the poor — Chavez's political base — in Venezuela's most downtrodden neighborhoods, and thousands of Venezuelans traveled free of charge to Havana for medical treatment of everything from cataracts to gunshot wounds.

With oil flowing in from Venezuela, Cuba was able to pay off longstanding debts and revamp the island's faded tourism industry.  The workers-for-oil deal generated more income than rum, cigars or anything else Cuba produced.  The island's citizens became its main export.   https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/02/americas/venezuela-cuba-history-oil/index.html

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winter 2012    Students from Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay have gone to China’s Defense Studies Institute, the Army Command College, the Navy Command School, and the Naval Research Institute.  Though this might seem impressive, the numbers do not come close to the thousands of Latin American students, military and civilian, who go to the U.S., Europe and other countries for advanced studies....

  In the past decade, China sold $58 million worth of Karakorum jets to Bolivia, upward of $150 million in air surveillance systems to Venezuela, and donated military materiel to Bolivia, Guyana, Colombia, and Peru, such as uniforms, trucks, jeeps, field kitchens, engineering supplies, tents, gloves, and hats.  Peru received a mobile field hospital and other equipment in 2010 worth $300 million.   https://www.americasquarterly.org/Marcella