Over the course of four years, the U.S. government spent millions of dollars actively trying to create "organic" catalysts for social unrest in Cuba. Starting in 2009, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) contracted Creative Associates International, a firm that, according to its website, offers "on-the-ground development services" to "deliver sustainable solutions to global challenges."
From there, Creative began its mission: to infiltrate the budding Cuban hip-hop scene, build relationships with the scene's most socially explosive artists, and promote the hell out of them in the hopes of sparking an organic youth movement against Cuba's communist government.
What is USAID and why does it want to overthrow the Castro regime? A brief dip (read: Wikipedia will suffice) into the history of this arm of the U.S. federal government makes the directive clear. Many federal agencies devoted to delivering foreign assistance have existed throughout American history, but USAID is a bit different.
Created by the State Department in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy, USAID helped provide anti-communist assistance to various Latin American and Southeast Asian groups. That ended under President Nixon, and USAID has since operated via the State Department to engender civilian-led change in foreign countries. It was actually sort of shut down in 2006 after a federal realignment, but in 2009, the Obama Administration re-booted it.
Now, five years later, the Associated Press has reported that thousands of pages of federal documents has revealed details as to what exactly USAID's been up to. As it turns out, USAID is still out here trying to topple communism. In addition to creating a "Cuban Twitter" to help Cuban social activists discreetly share messages, USAID also assisted by giving direction and millions of dollars in funding to Creative, which began recruiting Cuban rappers to help spark a movement against Castro. Both Cuban Twitter and this directive have since ended, and the story is something out of a spy movie.
Creative sent Serbian contractor Rajko Bozic to Cuba as its point man. Influenced by how a series of student-led concerts helped take down Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, Bozic homed in on the burgeoning Cuban hip-hop scene as his tool. He had observed that many Cuban rappers used lyrics that directly attacked the Castro regime, and felt that, with the right training and maneuvering, these rappers could do what concert-going Serbian students did a decade prior: inspire a revolution.
His first relationship within Cuban rap was with the group Los Aldeanos and its leader, Aldo Rodriguez. Telling Aldo that he worked in "alternative media," Bozic pitched a sincere-sounding idea for a video series showcasing the controversial work of Cuban's young artists. They'd distribute the videos and music in the streets through DVDs and flash drives to keep it all on the down-low.
Over the next three years, Bozic worked with Aldo and other rappers to write inflammatory anti-government lyrics, set up concerts to film, and generally keep the streets on notice about their work. Bars such as, "I'm tired of following their plan/Socialism or Death is not a slogan/They're the only options you get," were rapped in Spanish to thousands of concert-goers.
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With Bozic's help, Los Aldeanos started blowing up. After some posturing from Creative, Colombian artist Juanes shouted-out Los Aldeanos at the end of one of his Havana concerts, and met with them after the show. A picture was snapped of Juanes posing with Aldo and the rest of Los Aldeanos. The photo gave Los Aldeanos "unprecedented prominence," according to Melisa Riviere, a Cuban lecturer at the University of Minnesota and well-known audio-visual producer.
After that, though, USAID's mission began to unravel internally. In November 2009, Bozic was detained in Cuba for bringing in a computer and video equipment for his videographers. Cuban police took his equipment and a few flash drives that had sensitive information about their mission. Weeks after Bozic's trip, U.S. citizen Alan Gross, another USAID contractor working on a secret mission, was arrested and later sentenced to 15 years in prison. Bozic left the country for good, leaving Cuban videographer Adrian Monzon as Creative's new leader on the ground.
Monzon followed up by doubling Creative's efforts. He identified 200 "socially conscious youth," and in an effort to empower these young people further, connected them on a networking site he called TalentoCubano.org. He flew out a group to Amsterdam and Madrid to learn about polling, guerrilla marketing, and graffiti campaigns. $15,000 was paid out to underwrite a festival to showcase the talents from TalentoCubano. Monzon was taking Bozic's work to extravagant levels.
Los Aldeanos continued to pick up steam as well. In July 2010, Los Aldeanos flew out to Serbia to perform at the EXIT Festival. And no, flying a bunch of Cuban rappers out to Serbia wasn't a coincidence—Aldo and his guys received social mobilization training there as well. In August, the group performed in front of 15,000 people (police and concert-goers alike) at Rotilla, Cuba's biggest independent music festival. Lines like, "The police, instead of making me hate them, inspire pity, because they are such shit-eaters they don't even realize they are victims of the system. Viva Cuba libre," drove the crowd into a frenzy, and within Creative, the festival performance was viewed as a triumph.
After Rotilla, however, the Cuban government swooped in to dismantle Creative's plans. Although the police had raided Aldo's house once before in 2009 and had pressured various members of Creative throughout, 2011 was the project's breaking point. Complicated financial schemes were hatched to wire money to the program, but they kept getting botched. Monzon's videographers were being arrested more and more, and Monzon was detained in April 2011 after Cuban intelligence got him meeting with Xavier Utset, the leader of the Cuban Twitter project, in Miami. In Monzon's belongings was a contract linking Monzon and Creative to a Panamanian front company. Whoops. Soon thereafter, the Cuban government took over Rotilla.
All of these events, plus the end of USAID's grants for Cuban projects like "Cuban Twitter," culminated in the program's stoppage. Since the AP's report, Aldo, the Cuban government, and the U.S. Senate have spoken out against USAID's Cuban hip-hop scheme. Aldo, who now lives in Tampa, denied any knowledge of U.S. help to The Miami Herald, saying that, "We only performed our music and they helped us to have an arena to perform."
Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, said last week, "USAID never informed Congress about this and should never have been associated with anything so incompetent and reckless. It's just plain stupid." Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Florida echoed the bi-partisan message: "These actions have gone from boneheaded to a downright irresponsible use of U.S. taxpayer money."
Not only have we seen hip-hop co-opted and reappropriated cross-culturally, now the U.S. government is involved. Frankly, where the genre can possibly go from here is anyone's guess. Perhaps North Korean rap is due to pop off in 2015?
[via USA Today]
