Washington: Destabilization’s Ally

According to an investigation carried out by the Associated Press, the United States designed and has been operating a project supervised by the U.S. Agency for International Development since at least October 2009. The project involved secretly sending young American latinos to Cuba with instructions to incite a rebellion, and in the end, provoke a change in the country’s political regime. The plan used the creation of civic and health programs as a cover, which allowed Washington’s operatives to travel around the island in search of people they could recruit and convert into political activists against Raul Castro’s regime.

Yesterday, in a desperate attempt to minimize the program’s illegal nature and its violation of Cuban sovereignty, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said, “there are programs around the world that are oriented toward developing a more vibrant and capable civil society consistent with democracy promotion programs worldwide. And obviously, this contract was in line with that.”

Essentially, the plan is a reiteration of the United States’ well-established obsession with destabilizing sovereign nations in the hemisphere. In Cuba’s case, this has led Washington to carry on an unprecedented embargo that has lasted more than six decades, and that has been condemned by the international community. Apart from that, Washington has, with similar programs, organized the coup against Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, promoted destabilizing activities against Fidel Castro in Cuba, sponsored the bloody military uprising of Sept. 11, 1973 in Chile, formed death squadrons in Central America in the 1980s, and sent invading troops into Grenada and Panama in the late 1980s.

If anything has varied among these examples and the most recent project in Cuba, it’s that the accompanying discourse to these destabilization plans is no longer limited to “U.S. national security.” Now they spring from concepts like “democratic development,” strengthening civil society, and even defending human rights. Something similar occurred in the recent post-election conflict in Venezuela, in which the resulting protests were backed by the United States government. For this reason, we should not ignore the ominous defense given by the Department of State that attempts to legitimize its support of subversive activities in Cuba.

Additionally, it should not be overlooked that this attempt at destabilization occurs at a moment in which the nations of the region are equipped with intraregional communication mechanisms that evade the authority that Washington has over the antiquated Organization of American States. To the extent that this view becomes established, the implementation of programs like this will end up deepening the superpower’s isolation in the region.

In the short term, the situation described here exhibits once again that Washington, far from being a guarantor of international legality, democracy and human rights, has become a habitual and systematic violator of these principles.