Millions for Democracy Made in USA

U.S. financing of efforts to undermine the Revolution have exceeded 249.5 million dollars over the last two decades

Author: Ronald Suárez Rivas, | internet@granma.cu

February 11, 2021 09:02:48

Photo: usaid.gov

Although the effort has never produced the results expected by its organizers, subversion against Cuba continues to be a profitable business involving millions of dollars.

Disguised in multiple trappings, through agencies, companies and organizations, which rarely offer public information on the management of their funds, the financing of actions intended to undermine the Revolution have exceeded 249.5 million dollars, over the last two decades.

This has been investigated and published by the Cuba Money Project, a website devoted to covering stories on U.S. government programs and projects related to the island.

In 2020 alone, a report based on public information found on the digital portals of agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), estimates the total allocated to finance subversive initiatives at 2.5 million.

This is only a partial figure since, "Some programs are so secret that the recipients of funds are never disclosed," explains journalist Tracey Eaton, in an article for the Cuba Money Project, entitled “The democracy business in Cuba is bustling.”

Eaton reports that at least 54 groups have operated programs on the island with money from USAID and NED since 2017, when Donald Trump assumed the Presidency.

"A sprawling network of U.S. government-financed groups sends cash to thousands of Cuban democracy activists, journalists and dissidents each year," he wrote.

Recently, after the provocation at the Ministry of Culture, a reporter for the ADN-Cuba website - one of the foreign-run outlets that regularly distorts the country’s reality - acknowledged in a video circulating on social networks having received between 150 and 200 dollars to cover the event.

Other publications with an anti-Cuban agenda, describing themselves as practitioners of "independent" journalism, have also admitted having ties to U.S. agencies.

This, however, is only the visible face of an extremely lucrative business, since the State Department, USAID and NED report having "undisclosed" contractors, who receive an unknown portion of the funds directed toward changing our country’s political system.

It is impossible to know exactly how much of U.S. money ends up in Cuba and how many individuals are paid, Eaton concludes. What is very clear is that the millions invested have not been enough for the empire to subjugate a people determined to defend our sovereignty at any cost.