Vol. 78/No. 33      September 22, 2014

The Associated Press reported Aug. 4 that the U.S. Agency for International Development hired Creative Associates International, a company based in Washington, D.C., to send nearly a dozen young people from Costa Rica, Peru and Venezuela to engage in social activities and to “identify potential social-change actors.”

Creative Associates recruited Fernando Murillo, the 29-year-old head of a “human rights” group in Costa Rica, and sent him to Santa Clara, Cuba, in 2010 to infiltrate a group of artists and musicians called Revolution. Murillo suggested the group organize a series of seminars to attract volunteers, including one on HIV prevention. In this way, Murillo and other operatives aimed to meet Cubans they could encourage to organize against the Cuban government.

When Manuel Barbosa, 25, a disc jockey and a leader of Revolution, found out Murillo was a provocateur, he was angry. “We didn’t belong to the youth group [Union of Young Communists] or the [Communist] party, but we were revolutionaries,” he said.

Barbosa said the idea of a workshop on HIV struck him as “stupid” in Cuba, which has one of the lowest incidents of HIV infection in the world, one-sixth the rate of the U.S. “We’re practically born with a condom in our hand. We’re taught all the ways to protect ourselves on television and in the schools, and HIV/AIDS isn’t a health problem in Santa Clara.” But, he added, Murillo promised money for their project, and the theme was “noble,” so they went ahead with it.

Creative Associates also hired Zaimar Castillo, a young Venezuelan lawyer, and two others, to go to Cuba under the guise of visiting friends. The trio hung out in university dormitories in Santa Clara and cultivated friendships with students, looking to stir up dissatisfaction with the Cuban government, which for more than five decades has represented the political power of workers and farmers.

USAID, which operates under the veil of “humanitarian” missions around the world, is an arm of the State Department with a history of organizing activities aimed at destabilizing the Cuban Revolution. Alan Gross, a former USAID contractor, was arrested in Cuba in 2009, convicted as a U.S. spy and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Creative Associates International, under USAID direction, was instrumental in the creation of a “Cuban Twitter” project, which was exposed by AP in April. The company’s operatives started a social network called ZunZuneo, designed to attract tens of thousands of Cuban youth with free text messaging with “non-controversial content,” later introducing encouragement to organize anti-government activities. The program, discontinued in 2012, was an embarrassing flop that only fueled widespread distrust of Washington.

“The U.S. government should once and for all end its subversive, illegal and undercover actions against Cuba, which violate our sovereignty and the will expressed by the Cuban people to perfect our economic and social model and to consolidate our democracy,” said Josefina Vidal, Cuban Foreign Ministry Director for North America, in an Aug. 5 statement.  
 
 
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