The U.S. Agency for International Development is looking to make grants to promote grass-roots economic development in
The idea is contained in a request for grant applications for USAID’s “non-presence assistance program for
In the second component, the “marginalized” Cubans would pool their savings in a lending pool and the USAID grantee would be permitted to match those savings.
This is part of USAID’s larger effort, the document explains, to provide “material support to targeted beneficiaries throughout the island to support the [
Also: USAID “will be in frequent communication with the U.S. Interests Section, in
And USAID issues a warning: “Given the nature of the Cuban regime and the political sensitivity of the USAID Program, USAID cannot be held responsible for any injury or inconvenience suffered by individuals traveling to the island under USAID grant funding.”
Here we go again.
Starting with the positive, I like the idea that the Administration is interested in promoting economic development through credits to Cubans to support entrepreneurial activity.
But the warning to grantees would seem to indicate that the plan is to carry out the project covertly. Regardless of what one thinks about the Cuban government, the U.S. program, or its intentions, such a scheme has severe practical problems (discussed here and here regarding the Alan Gross case) and poses risks both to USAID’s operatives and those they contact in Cuba.
3 comments:
Are they serious? A program to funnel cash into the bank accounts of "targeted beneficiaries" in order to further US policy goals?? Could they have picked a program designed to susbtantiate Cuban's fears about US actions even more?
I actually thought USAID was going to learn something from the Alan Gross debacle. Apparently all they learned was a need to add a disclaimer.
please explain where it gives USAID or any other foreign entity the right to conduct such activities (add that to stated US goals) and how any government in the world would react to this? there is nothing positive here, no intention other than to meddle. It is a scheme in the most pejorative sense
The US government wouldn't allow Cuban doctors to come and help Katrina victims, but the Cuban govt is suppose to accept this sort of intrusive nonsense? Totally incomprehensible.
Beyond giving cash to anti-Government people and groups, the program's other big goal is to develop capitalists and entreprenuers. It is akin to Cuba and Venezuela combining to award secret grants to revolutionaries in the US trying to build socialist collectives.
Beyond that, there are thousands of actual, legitamate civil society groups in Cuba working on topics from baseball to the rights of Afro-Cubans. The groups are not "controlled" by the Cuban Government. They govern themselves. Why are these groups specifically denied participation in USAID programs?
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