MOSCOW, August 4 (RIA Novosti) – The United States has reportedly deployed young Latin Americans to Cuba to work undercover and foment anti-government sentiment among the population at a time when its president advocated a fresh start in bilateral relations that have been mired in decades of mistrust, the Associated Press reported Monday.
According to an investigation, the project launched as early as October 2009 was overseen by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the very same agency that is responsible for the “economic, development and humanitarian assistance around the world in support of the foreign policy goals of the United States.”
Venezuelan, Costa Rican and Peruvian young people sent by the United States to Cuba usually posed as tourists and visited colleges, while some even conducted a HIV-prevention workshop in bid to search for people they could turn into political activists.
In a statement late Sunday, USAID, however, insisted that the purposes of the workshop were of a slightly different nature.
It "enabled support for Cuban civil society while providing a secondary benefit of addressing the desire Cubans expressed for information and training about HIV prevention," the agency stressed.
It remains unknown how much USAID spent on the clandestine operations but the young Latin Americans taking part in them were paid as low as $5.41 an hour despite the risks they faced.
The investigation said that Cuban authorities questioned the young workers’ sources of finance.
The operatives also “came dangerously close to blowing their mission to identify potential social change actors.”
The project continued even after a USAID contractor, US citizen Alan Gross, was hauled away to a Cuban jail, where he remains for smuggling in sensitive technology. Following his arrest USAID gave a cue to its contractors to consider suspending travel to Cuba.
Some four months later, however, another Latin American was sent to Havana.
