Jean-Guy Allard, Marina Menéndez and Deisy Francis Mexidor

FRANK Carlos Vázquez Díaz stood out for his public relations skills. He had that spark in contact with others and moreover, his ability took him to the "latest" in everything. Thus, in 1998, in the midst of the Special Period, he proposed to a group of young artists an alternative cultural project which would promote their work and attract attention, in particular, from international circuits. He met with an immediate and enthusiastic response.

Arte Cubano, as they called the new web page, became one of the first sites of its kind in the country and constituted the promotional support for what began to emerge from that "little place in Old Havana on Obispo Street," Frank Carlos recalls.

For that reason it wasn’t long before the group was contacted by cultural institutions in a number of countries. "We established correspondence and working relationships with several important galleries in the United States, Canada and Europe."

The project was so attractive that those people whose sole artwork is that of monitoring and identifying persons who can be utilized within and outside of Cuba to fulfill U.S. government directives soon appeared on the scene. Working out of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana (USIS), those specialists tracked down independent websites with the supposedly appropriate profile for their subversion plots.

Thus, with the seeming candor of those who just want to help, USIS diplomats turned up at the workshop of Frank Carlos and his friends, who explained to them that it was not a project directed by any of the cultural institutions.

For that reason, "from that point a process of meetings and contacts began, practically on a daily basis, which increased as the different activities that we were involved in developed," recounts Frank Carlos Vázquez, an English language graduate who was immediately perceived as a valuable spokesman.

At the same time, they began to send them "dozens of boxes of books, magazines and publications from the USIS," Frank Carlos recalls. "Moreover, Douglas Barnes, a former Section official, expressed his desire to convert our center into an internet access space, something very important at the time," because cyberspace was virtually unknown to Cuban artists.

Barnes had already stated that his principal task was to attempt to establish the so-called Track II of the Torricelli Act in Cuba, to which objective he brought his experience of having worked in former socialist bloc countries. And, and during his term, to establish relations with Cuban nationals in the cultural sector, among the intelligentsia and counterrevolutionary leaders.

Thus, for the USIS (or CIA?) diplomats, everything they were able to observe about Frank Carlos, seemed to fully meet their expectations.

During the Clinton administration (1993-2001), Richard Nuccio, his advisor on Cuban affairs, preached the so-called people to people theory, which really meant something like "kill with kindness," a method that had been implemented in Poland.

Within those propositions, during Clinton’s second term, USIS extended visas as never before, facilitating cultural exchange, while their specialists assessed which sectors of intellectuals could promote "parallel" artistic movements; in essence rebellious and "independent of the state."

They believed that, by doing this, the revolutionary sentiment within the Cuban cultural movement would disappear, as experienced in the former Czechoslovakia.

That was the gold mine envisaged by Larry Corwin, an art specialist, and former USIS press and culture attaché who, from his arrival in the country developed an intense sphere of influence within Cuba’s cultural sector and its so-called independent press.

That same diplomat removed his mask shortly after his tour of duty in Cuba, upon reappearing in Kosovo in 2004, as a State Department Public Relations official in the Balkan territory occupied by the NATO forces.

Corwin’s practices were not new. Since World War II, and the subsequent start of the Cold War, U.S. special services have established a subversion apparatus directed at intellectual audiences, on the basis of institutional links – a front for various ends of a wide-ranging nature. The inventors of that subversive machinery were academics and experts in psychological warfare, whose activities in the field date back a long way.

Those institutions – among which it is worth mentioning the close to century-old Brookings Institute, the Rand Corporation and the Heritage Foundation – are currently working with methods of influence fine- tuned for decades, via which they approach persons selected on the basis of personality studies and the role that they could possibly play in society.

Here in Havana, the specialist Corwin worked in conjunction with James Patrick Doran, second in command of the local CIA station, camouflaged as vice consul. For them, putting Frank Carlos within their circle of influence, was to control the young artists in his group.

The assessment of the CIA and the USIS was that, if that objective were achieved, they could create future destroyers of socialism, authentic conspirators, like those who were going to "bring down the Berlin Wall in Cuba."

That is why Corwin diligently attended to Frank Carlos. He facilitated everything that he needed, always attentive to his wishes in the name of friendship. He proposed to him projects and contacts, insisting on the seductive idea of selling the work he was promoting.

But, once again, the enemy had erred. As a young Cuban who grew up within the Revolution, they were far from being able to imagine what they were visualizing, and that he would remain faithful to his country. More than 10 years have passed and, to date, when his identity has been made public, Frank Carlos Vázquez has completed missions as Agent Robin of Cuban State Security, which has as its greatest asset precisely the tight-knit group of men and women who comprise it, together with the people, in defense of the homeland.

With a seemingly unlimited budget and privileged access to various spheres of the U.S. cultural world, Larry Corwin told Frank Carlos that he was going to facilitate invitations from prestigious institutions so that he could travel to the U.S.

"He approached me in 1998 and gave me an invitation from the Chicago Cultural Center," considered one of the most outstanding of its type on U.S. soil.

Frank Carlos and his group had been selected to set up a cultural exchange project which would link the center into broad cooperation, through which he made two visits to the United States with all expenses paid, courtesy of federal agencies and government institutions in Washington.

More than ever, his advanced command of English was a key factor:

"They practically opened all doors to me. Being there, I had access to many figures with whom, given my knowledge of their language, I was able to establish dialogue and very close contact," he recalls.

I knew people ranging from the mayor of Chicago and directors of the most important cultural institutions, passing through galleries renowned in the art world. We had meetings with various Congress members, politicians…"

These encounters included others with highly defined political agendas, which went far beyond cultural exchange and promotion. That is how Frank Carlos was directed toward those "who they were interested in having me meet." It appeared that the Corwin-Doran plan was becoming concrete little by little.

The USIS diplomats considered the broad experience Frank Carlos had acquired and began to express other needs to him, specifically in relation to bringing together young people. The objective of the operation thus clearly emerged: to inculcate in him the interests that the U.S. cultural institutions were pursuing," he explained.

By that stage a kind of rule had been established: waiting for what happened in Eastern Europe to take place in Cuba. The Western market, in particular the U.S. one, was anxious for rebellious and hypocritical Cuban art.

His American experience also left Frank Carlos Vázquez Díaz other memories. From Chicago, where U.S. intelligence placed him within its sphere of influence, he has not forgotten the visit he made to marginal neighborhoods, "where African-American citizens are totally segregated."

He was similarly shocked by violence on the streets and incessant drug trafficking in many places, as well as experiencing "the reality of a country designed to make money, and if people aren’t capable of making it, they are considered second-class citizens."

The invitation that Frank Carlos Vázquez received is registered within the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Cuba program which, funded by million-dollar federal capital, serves as a cover for CIA activities against the island. One of the methods utilized is the fabrication of social leaders, supposedly trained as agents for political change and whom it tries to capture from the world of youth, artists, university students and intellectuals… using scholarships and visits as inducements.

As Captain Mariana, State Security analyst, explained, USAID makes use of various mechanisms in their actions, one of which is using organizations such as the International Republican Institute (IRI), established in 1983 under the Ronald Reagan administration and a right-wing weapon for campaigns of deception and manipulation. Its president is none other than John McCain, a friend of the Cuban-American mafia in Miami.

The IRI has an active role in the USAID Cuba program and has established two priority objectives: to increase the flow of information to and from the island, and secondly, to form non-governmental organizations to facilitate its ends. The IRI does not act directly on Cuban territory but via organizations such as Spanish Solidarity with Cuba and the Slovak Pontis Foundation.

It is extremely important for the IRI to install wireless communication networks in the country, with the capability for satellite transmission utilizing advanced technology like BGAN satellite terminals.

On the other hand, USAID can also use more direct mechanisms, as was the case with Frank Carlos, who was personally contacted by an USIS official.

The state security analyst argues that the grant awarded to Frank Carlos was just part of his training and a way of working on his leadership qualities, his potential.

"What this program definitely seeks is to give a counterrevolutionary orientation to phenomena existing in our society, or to build events and leaders in order to channel U.S. government interests in relation to Cuba," she notes.

One shouldn’t be deceived. In relation to our country, USAID is supporting actions which, in different sectors, seek to create conditions for change, before, during and immediately after the transition."

Starting in 1995, in the wake of the Torricelli Act, passed during the Clinton administration, this federal agency’s subversive activities became more apparent; for example, more than 10,000 shortwave radios have entered the country by various means, and close to two million books and multimedia propaganda products to incite change.

USAID’s extensive support in matters of interference and destabilization since its founding in 1961 under the President Kennedy administration is no secret to anyone.

In Latin America, it is closely associated with many yankee interventions. Worthy of special mention is the implementation in the 1970s of Plan Condor, a deadly secret transnational effort against the left in the continent’s Southern Cone.

More recently, in 2002, the International Aid Agency was closely linked to the coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Since then, it has continuously increased the intensity of its support operations for the opposition, through a series of programs subsidized to the tune of millions of dollars.

It has also been as active in Bolivia as in the Honduras of José M. Zelaya, while always attempting to sweeten the most repugnant chapters of its history.

Among the tasks Frank Carlos was being assigned, there is one in his career of more than 10 years as Agent Robin, which particularly stands out in his mind. It was in 2000, when James Patrick Doran and Larry Corwin were insistently asking him to approach the counterrevolutionary Dagoberto Valdés, editor of the Vitral magazine and the so-called Pinar del Río Religious Civic Center.

"That project was of much interest to the Americans. They asked me to organize a meeting between USIS officials and Dagoberto, to be prepared in a discreet part of the city."

On that visit with its touch of secrecy, the visitors talked in a murmur about the potential of Dagoberto’s now-disappeared publication for the expression of counterrevolutionary ideas, and how to utilize it against the Cuban government and the Revolution.

A significant fact: at the time Valdés expressed serious concerns about being directly contacted by U.S. diplomats, because, according to him, it gave him too much visibility. He spoke out for working through diplomats in the Czech and Polish embassies, which were not so much in the public eye, where he could work faster and more safely. Soon, the discreet Pinar meeting was followed by a poster exhibition organized, coincidentally, with the collaboration of Polish and Czech diplomats.

"There they expressed some ideas which came from Poland… and which were then divulged by Pinar’s intellectuals…"

"Dagoberto then attempted to convert himself into the champion of freedom, into the spokesman of the intellectuals, and to transform the magazine into a counterrevolutionary vehicle for destroying our Revolution," Frank Carlos affirmed.

In that same year of 2000, the USIS attempted to manipulate an event of the significance and prestige of the Havana Biennial, that year in its 7th edition.

It was not by chance that this subversive operation was attempted. The Biennial had already won a merited space for the exhibition of experimental art of high quality, appreciated by large sections of the Cuban population.

"One day, Larry Corwin came to the house wearing a baseball cap and beach shorts. He came by bicycle," Frank Carlos recalls, unusual attire at that time for a diplomat. Corwin was using the disguise as a cover for his illegal activities.

That surprise appearance was to ask Frank Carlos to support him on a very important mission, which was to act as a link between Biennial directors and Corwin in order to obtain certain information that the USIS diplomats needed, because they had no other means of access.

It is a fact that an extremely large U.S. delegation was present at that 7th Biennial, but included very few artists. However, there was a legion of lawyers, collectors, entrepreneurs and officials from American cultural institutions, as well as art specialists linked to the State Department.

The USIS directed the activities of the delegation members, who were received by its head, Vicky Huddleston, who gave them the largest reception in the history of the diplomatic representation.

It was a Biennial where, in parallel with the official activities, Interest Section officials developed their own plan: an aggressive operation of influence and recruitment.

"It was practically a door-to-door action; they knocked on the doors of artists, cultural promoters, gallery organizers…"

In Frank Carlos’ view, "the work of the USIS in that period could be considered as one of the most active. They tried to penetrate our cultural world and establish links that went far beyond their diplomatic functions."

"They were trying to buy favors from our artists and intellectuals by offering them exhibitions and promotions in various U.S. galleries, in exchange for reflecting a discordant or distorted reality… The final aim was to create a state of opinion, a fictitious cultural phenomenon, fabricated, with which they would state to the world that Cuban intellectuals were against the Revolution."

Frank Carlos Vázquez’ story does not belong to the past. The recruitment and manipulation of artists in the cultural sphere to induce them to paint a distorted island, in accordance with what U.S. Cuba policy wishes to promote, is an ongoing practice.

Currently, art contests promoted by the U.S. Interests Section are another attempt to approach artists and impose on their work the agenda drawn up by United States to divide Cuban society, thus transferring onto it – or magnifying – conflicts that are non-existent here, such as those related to racial issues.

Moreover, they have set up three Internet access centers within their premises in order to prepare for the counterrevolution.

Such illegalities are executed under the cover of a USIS document, which describes them as "constituting a public space for educational and investigative ends, as well as to facilitate communication and the publication of material on the Internet, for professional and/or work ends."

Approaches of this nature date back to practices enshrined in the Cuban Democracy Act, known as the Torricelli Act of 1992, which stipulates people-to-people contact as a means of undermining the Revolution from within (the so-called Track II).

It is a hypocritical policy which was followed to the letter by the Clinton administration and spurned by George Bush in favor of actions raising aggression and harassment toward the Cuban people to its highest level.

Now Barack Obama is returning to the stick and carrot policy, as demonstrated in January by his reestablishment of measures adopted by Clinton in the heat of the Torricelli Act and repealed by his Republican successor in 2001, and which, among other decisions, afford U.S. citizens an opportunity to travel to our country for academic, educational, cultural and religious purposes.

After his experiences of working as Agent Robin of State Security during more than 10 years, Frank Carlos Vázquez feels that his commitment to his country has been reinforced, and his love for his native Pinar del Río province has grown even stronger.