With HIV regime-change ruse in Cuba, another black eye for USAID
It's been a rough few years for the United States Agency for International Development in Latin America.听
From a USAID contractor jailed in 2009听in Cuba for alleged spying, to Bolivian President Evo Morales kicking the agency out of his country in 2013, the climate in parts of the region for US aid and influence is growing frostier.
Today, the Associated Press broke a story that USAID backed a program in Cuba that brought Latin American youth to the island in an alleged The youngsters from Costa Rica, Venezuela, and Peru traveled to Cuba posing as tourists or health workers leading HIV prevention workshops, but with the real goal of grooming opposition activists.听
This comes just months after the AP uncovered a 鈥淐uba Twitter鈥� program also designed to undermine the Cuban government.听The Twitter-like social media platform, which didn't disclose its backers,听had about 40,000 users in Cuba.听USAID director Rajiv Shah later called it "dumb, dumb, dumb" in a Senate hearing.听
All this from an agency that for decades has struggled to quash suspicions that it, like other US government arms, was a front for espionage and covert meddling.听
"I think they are shooting themselves in the foot," says Geoff Thale, a program director at the Washington Office on Latin America, referring to USAID. The agency runs solid programs focused on听health, democracy, and education, he says.听鈥淏ut all of this in Cuba really undercuts that good work.鈥澨�
The US and Cuba have a particularly rocky relationship, to put it mildly. In the 1960s, the CIA was fixated on deposing former President Fidel Castro;听a 1960 written by a US diplomat favored turning Cubans against him by creating 鈥渆conomic dissatisfaction and hardship.鈥� Others suggested deploying hit men from the mafia or supplying Mr. Castro with an exploding cigar. And, five decades on, the US embargo is still in place 鈥� as is Mr. Castro's hand-picked successor, brother Raul Castro.听
In a statement today, USAID said its work in Cuba, "is not secret, it is not covert, nor is it undercover."
Cuba isn't the only blackspot for the agency.听USAID announced earlier this year it听planned to leave Ecuador, citing increasingly challenging relations with President Rafael Correa. When听Bolivia kicked the agency听out of its territory six months prior, botched programming in Cuba was cited, Mr. Thale says.
More broadly, the US's reputation in Latin America has taken a hit from revelations that the National Security Agency spied on leaders in Brazil and Mexico, and the embarrassing grounding of President Morales鈥檚 flight in Vienna last year amid suspicions that the leader had former NSA contractor Edward Snowden on board.
While听USAID may be pursuing worthwhile goals in Cuba, such as increasing access to information and fostering student exchanges, its work is tainted by its shadowy practices,听Thale says.
鈥淚f they are doing HIV prevention with young adults, that鈥檚 good. Leadership training is good,鈥� he says. 鈥淏ut if we鈥檙e really interested in leadership development and youth training, we would get more from it by not doing it in this quasi-covert way.鈥�
