Commentary - USAID’s program was disrespectful to Cubans

[flamingdem]

http://cubantriangle.blogspot.com/

I agree that these programs just hinder any attempts at normalization. The US policy towards Cuba has been one of disrespect for more than 100 years.


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USAID isn’t very competent at acting like a junior CIA and running covert operations in Cuba. Its operations tend to be found out. Indeed, the Cuban intelligence service tends to see them coming, as shown in this 2011 video. (video at link)

But more important than that is USAID’s political malfeasance.

Just as Alan Gross has cast suspicion on Americans who assist religious institutions in Cuba on their own, unpaid by U.S. government contracts, this program casts suspicion on people who have no U.S. government connection and try to help Cubans gain access to information. Cuban citizens, not to mention the Cuban intelligence service, will reasonably suspect that there’s a hidden U.S. government hand in an offer of information or access to technology – or that the offer is really bait for a future attempt to bring them into a political program.

USAID’s program was disrespectful to Cubans. It is patronizing of USAID to refer to Cuban citizens as “partners” when they don’t know that they are dealing with the U.S. government. Our government should not be operating under false pretenses with Cubans, as it did through Alan Gross and now through ZunZuneo. And the U.S. government has no business luring Cuban citizens into a social media operation to gather information on their political views without their consent. It’s hard for the U.S. government to say that Cubans need to find their own way and “determine their own future” when it is trying not to assist, but actually to generate political activity.

USAID discredits genuine political opposition in Cuba, of which there is plenty, of all shades, in many places, including inside the system itself where many of Cuba’s most interesting and certainly most consequential debates are raging today. Some of this debate is, believe it or not, encouraged by the government. But when the government wants to set a limit, it invokes national security and warns that the United States is trying to “fabricate a political opposition.” If the DGSE hasn’t thanked USAID, it should do so now.