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<h1 id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_925" class="headline">US
co-opted Cuba's hip-hop scene to spark change</h1>
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<cite id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_847" class="byline
vcard top-line"> <span>By </span><span
id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_846" class="fn">DESMOND
BUTLER, MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN, LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ and
ANDREA RODRIGUEZ</span> <abbr><br>
<b><small><small><small><small>http://news.yahoo.com/us-co-opted-cubas-hip-hop-scene-spark-050254883.html?soc_src=mediacontentstory&soc_trk=fb</small></small></small></small></b><br>
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<p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_927">HAVANA (AP) — For more than
two years, a U.S. agency secretly infiltrated Cuba's underground
hip-hop movement, recruiting unwitting rappers to spark a youth
movement against the government, according to documents obtained
by The Associated Press.</p>
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<p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_935">The idea was to use Cuban
musicians "to break the information blockade" and build a network
of young people seeking "social change," documents show. But the
operation was amateurish and profoundly unsuccessful.</p>
<p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_936">On at least six occasions,
Cuban authorities detained or interrogated people involved in the
program; they also confiscated computer hardware, and in some
cases it contained information that jeopardized Cubans who likely
had no idea they were caught up in a clandestine U.S. operation.
Still, contractors working for the U.S. Agency for International
Development kept putting themselves and their targets at risk, the
AP investigation found.</p>
<p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_937">They also ended up
compromising Cuba's vibrant hip-hop culture — which has produced
some of the hardest-hitting grassroots criticism since Fidel
Castro came to power in 1959. Artists that USAID contractors tried
to promote left the country or stopped performing after pressure
from the Cuban government, and one of the island's most popular
independent music festivals was taken over after officials linked
it to USAID.</p>
<p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_938">The program is laid out in
documents involving Creative Associates International, a
Washington, D.C., contractor paid millions of dollars to undermine
Cuba's communist government. The thousands of pages include
contracts, emails, preserved chats, budgets, expense reports,
power points, photographs and passports.</p>
<p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_943">The work included the
creation of a "Cuban Twitter" social network and the dispatch of
inexperienced Latin American youth to recruit activists,
operations that were the focus of previous AP stories.</p>
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<p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_944">"Any assertions that our work
is secret or covert are simply false," USAID said in a statement
Wednesday. Its programs were aimed at strengthening civil society
"often in places where civic engagement is suppressed and where
people are harassed, arrested, subjected to physical harm or
worse."</p>
<p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_961">Creative Associates did not
immediately respond to a request for comment.</p>
<p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_960">At first, the hip-hop
operation was run in Cuba by Serbian contractor Rajko Bozic. His
project was inspired by the protest concerts of the student
movement that helped undermine former Serbian President Slobodan
Milosevic in 2000. Nine years later, Bozic headed public relations
for Serbia's EXIT Festival, an annual music event that had grown
out of the student movement.</p>
<p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_962">Contractors would recruit
scores of Cuban musicians for projects disguised as cultural
initiatives but really aimed at boosting their visibility and
stoking a movement of fans to challenge the government.</p>
<p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_963">Bozic spoke to the AP earlier
this year but declined to talk about the Cuba program.</p>
<p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_964">The slender Serb homed in
swiftly on Los Aldeanos, a hip-hop group frustrated by official
pressure and widely respected by Cuban youth for its hard-hitting
lyrics.</p>
<p>"People marching blind, you have no credibility," the group
rapped in "Long Live Free Cuba!" ''Go and tell the captain — this
ship's sinking rapidly."</p>
<p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_965">Creative used a Panama front
company and a bank in Lichtenstein to hide the money trail from
Cuba, where thousands of dollars went to fund a TV program
starring Los Aldeanos. It would be distributed on DVDs to
circumvent Cuba's censors.</p>
<p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_966">Then the Colombian rock star
Juanes announced a September 2009 concert in the heart of Havana.
Creative managers held a two-day strategy session on how to
persuade Juanes to let Los Aldeanos perform with him.</p>
<p>It didn't happen, but Juanes publicly thanked the rappers after
the concert and was photographed with them. The contractors were
pleased; they believed this kind of public support by a major
celebrity would protect Los Aldeanos from state pressure.</p>
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<p>In a statement Wednesday, a Juanes spokesman, John Reilly, said
that the concert had no political agenda and that "Juanes and the
other organizing artists did not have any knowledge" of what
others did.</p>
<p>Later the month of the concert, Los Aldeanos' charismatic front
man, Aldo Rodriguez, was detained for illegal possession of a
computer.</p>
<p>Xavier Utset, who ran the program for Creative, saw the arrest as
a "perfect test" of whether raising Aldo's profile would keep out
of jail.</p>
<p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_971">In the end, a relative of
Aldo's phoned Silvio Rodriguez, himself a legendary singer.
Rodriguez, in an AP interview in Havana, said he called a friend
in Cuba's Culture Ministry and asked for the computer to be
returned. If there was a problem, he told the friend, "tell them I
gave them the computer as a present."</p>
<p>"Evidently he did what I said," Rodriguez said. "I never imagined
that a program like this could exist ... When you find out you
could be surrounded by a conspiracy, it's shocking."</p>
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<p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_976">At one point, the contractors
approached a government sex education institute run by President
Raul Castro's daughter, Mariela, to be part of the EXIT Festival
in Serbia, even as its organizers were running the anti-Castro
hip-hop operation. One contractor said it would be "mind blowing"
to be working with the president's family.</p>
<p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_977">Mariela Castro told the AP
that her institute sent two representatives to the festival but
didn't build deeper ties because the festival "didn't have
anything to do with the work we were doing."</p>
<p>Contractors paid $15,000 to underwrite an arts and music festival
put on by the family of Pablo Milanes, the famed singer of "nueva
trova" music and a man with close government ties. Their secret
aim was to seed "the minds of festival organizers with new ideas"
and persuade them to send "high-impact messages" to the audience,
read one report.</p>
<p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_979">Milanes' daughter, Suylen
Milanes, said government officials showed up the day before the
festival and warned her that she was associating with unsavory
characters. They even showed her copies of Bozic's emails, which
they called suspicious, she recalled. Her father declined to
comment.</p>
<p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_978">Clearly, Cuban officials had
figured out what was going on.</p>
<p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_980">Bozic was detained coming
into Havana with equipment, including a potentially incriminating
memory stick, generating anxiety among the contractors. He cut his
trip short and other contractors were told he wouldn't be
returning soon.</p>
<p>Then, Cuban authorities detained a photographer working with
Adrian Monzon, the only Cuban who documents show knowingly worked
for Creative Associates on the hip-hop program. State security
then interrogated Monzon, a video jockey. He told Creative that
the Cuban authorities were worried about Bozic and suspected links
to the CIA.</p>
<p>Four months later, Los Aldeanos left Cuba for their first trip
off the island to perform at the EXIT festival in Serbia. On the
side, they were the unwitting recipients of leadership training
meant "to focus them a little more on their role as agents of
social mobilization," wrote Utset, a veteran of Cuban
pro-democracy efforts.</p>
<p>Monzon was detained again returning to Havana in April 2011, his
computer and a memory stick seized. When they were returned, he
realized they contained a document with the names of two Creative
Associates managers.</p>
<p>It was a devastating blow.</p>
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<p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_981">Monzon and Utset did not
respond to repeated requests for comment. Aldo would only say that
his "conscience is clear." While Bozic spoke with AP about his
work with the EXIT festival, he did not respond to requests for
comment on his Cuba work.</p>
<p>In August 2010, Los Aldeanos took the stage at Rotilla, one of
Cuba's largest independent music festivals. Before a crowd of
about 15,000 people, they lacerated government officials by name
and taunted the police.</p>
<p>"The police instead of making me hate them, inspire pity, because
they are such sh--- eaters they don't even realize they are
victims of the system. Viva Cuba libre," Aldo's partner rapped.</p>
<p>Within months, a USAID contractor told his handlers that the
Cubans said USAID had infiltrated the festival, and soon enough,
the Cubans took it over. .</p>
<p>In the end, Los Aldeanos moved to South Florida after complaining
that the Cuban government made it impossible for them to work in
their own country. Their most recently published lyrics are
softer-edged.</p>
<p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_989">Online:</p>
<p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_982">Documents on USAID program:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://apne.ws/1B2vAys">http://apne.ws/1B2vAys</a></p>
<p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_984">___</p>
<p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418322783203_983">Associated Press writer
Desmond Butler reported this story from Washington and Belgrade,
Michael Weissenstein and Andrea Rodriguez reported in Havana and
Laura Wides-Munoz reported from Miami.</p>
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