By Hernando Calvo Ospina on August 20, 2024 from Paris
image: rhc
Everything seems to indicate that Karla Josefina Velazquez Figuera is under investigation. This woman, of Venezuelan origin and resident in Mexico, is currently the director of the ‘Cuba Program’ at the National Democratic Institute, (NDI), although she has been allowed to act against the governments of Nicaragua and Venezuela.
Let us remember that the National Democratic Institute, linked to the Democratic Party, is a fundamental part of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an entity created by Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council in 1983. Although its statutes state that the National Endowment for Democracy is private and with the objective of “strengthening and advancing democratic institutions throughout the world”, the reality is that its budget is decided by the US Congress and its action plans by the State Department and the CIA (1).
For many years and until the day of her death in 2022, the president of the NDI Executive Council was Madeleine K. Albright. For her belligerent and despotic actions she was called “the queen of mean” while she was US ambassador to the UN and later Secretary of State: among many other things, she promoted the economic sanctions against the people of Iraq and the terrible military invasion of Kosovo. She always had the Cuban Revolution as a permanent target to destroy, which was reflected in the NDI and NED plans.
Well, Karla Velázquez has been part of that machinery oiled by Albright. In recent years she has become a “specialist” in project management of feminism, gender, race, sexual diversity, among others. Topics that Washington and the four organizations that are part of the NED, such as the NDI, promote and impose among the so-called civil society.
But why is it she is now being investigated by her bosses in Washington? There are very serious indications that thousands of dollars destined to finance Cuban counterrevolutionary organizations, better known as “oppositionists”, based abroad, have disappeared. These would serve as a bridge for these monies to reach the “opposition” or “dissidence” in Cuba. It has also been guarenteed that the “internal opposition” did not receive the “aid” that was requested on their behalf. Or only crumbs appeared.
It would be interesting to know why this investigation is being made to Velázquez when this has always been something common. Stealing from the U.S. taxpayers in this manner has been a constant. Let us remember that being a “dissident” or “opponent” of the Cuban revolutionary government has become a great profit-making enterprise since the end of the Soviet Union, at the beginning of the nineties of the last century. Washington and several European countries have allocated many millions of dollars for this purpose (2).
The revolution does not fall, the “internal dissidence” does not advance even millimeters, but many “opponents” abroad, mainly in Florida, have become rich. Let’s read what the “oppositionist” and blogger Boris Sancho said in Miami, on September 22, 2020: “Would you be surprised if I tell you that from 2001 to 2020, the U.S. Government Tax Office has declared that more than 160 organizations fighting against the dictatorship, used 407 million dollars? And my question is: what has this money been spent on?….”
While another “opponent”, Antonio Rodiles, said from the same city, on May 4, 2023 : “The industry of the struggle for freedom, or the industry of human rights, is mainly managed by North American institutions or other NGOs… ‘Rodiles is insistent with the word ’industry”: “In the end, they have built a kind of industry, where millions have been spent on trips, hotels, meals, receptions, salaries…”.
While Sancho specifies: “Opposition leaders with houses in Coral Gables [Florida] and in New York; who ‘spend’ 98 thousand dollars on travel, or 50 thousand dollars on conferences…. ‘Rodiles, who knows very well what he is talking about, tells what has been known for decades, but that nobody in Washington or Europe seems to want to find out: ’Those resources do not reach the people who are on the ground trying to confront the system.”
And on July 10, 2023, the “oppositionist” in vogue in Miami, Alexander Otaola, was concrete when he said that only crumbs of the millions destined for internal subversion in Cuba arrive: “The oppositionist who has results, who has an activism, who has people who follow him, those people are sent a little help, a little money, something…” And this blogger, Otaola, is one of those who got rich, in a few years, with the “Cuban cause”, sitting comfortably in front of a computer, calling for the destruction of the Revolution.
There are already many complaints and denunciations from the “internal opponents” about the lack of financing, or about the little that reaches them. Complaints and denunciations, I repeat, that nobody seems to listen to. But that’s the way business is for those who put their own skin in the game.
The so-called “Ladies in White”, unknown to the vast majority of Cubans on the island, as is the case with almost all “opponents”, were awarded the European Parliament’s Human Rights Prize in 2013. Shortly thereafter, its main leader, Bertha Soler, began to be reclaimed from the money given abroad. Several of the women who have participated in this “opposition” organization have denounced her. But neither she nor the counterrevolutionary organizations that received money from the NED or the European Union have given an account. And it seems that Washington up to this point has had neither eyes nor ears about what is going on.
Another “dissident” who has been denounced as a thief and swindler is Guillermo Fariñas, coincidentally also winner of the European Parliament’s Human Rights Prize, but in 2010. And as it has happened with the “Damas”, when the denunciations get tight, Fariñas remembered to give between twenty and fifty dollars to some of the accusers.
And although somewhat unknown in the Cuban “opposition” world, Hernán Alberro has also been denounced for not handing over what he has been given in Washington and Europe for “dissidence”. This Argentinean, coincidentally, has been working for several years with Karla Josefina Velázquez. Already in 2020 she had signed a contract with her to send funding to Cubans who had “independent programs” on “freedom of expression” and “civic participation”, with an emphasis on feminism and gender.
But it is not only Alberro who has contacts with Karla to fund the “Cuban cause”. Her other partner in foreign adventures is Elena Larrinaga, who from Spain opened doors and advised her to get more money from the NED. Elena already has an immense trajectory in these matters (3).
Alberro was program director of the Center for the Opening and Development of Latin America, CADAL. This Argentine organization claims to work for “Human Rights and International Democratic Solidarity”. Its website is clear: “Cuba is central to CADAL. The more than six decades of existence of a single-party regime in power and the criminalization of the exercise of fundamental freedoms make it a very important chapter within our organization…” (4)
Gabriel Silva has been president of CADAL. In his resume he does not hide the fact that he is a staunch opponent of the Cuban Revolution. Well, after 17 years of working together, Silva disputed and expelled Alberro from CADAL for appropriating per diems and funds allocated by the NED for Cuban “opponents”.
It was not only that: between March 15 and 17, 2023, the Regional Conference of Democratic Solidarity in Latin America was held in Sao Paulo. It was attended by several leaders of the Cuban counterrevolution based mainly in the United States. It was later denounced that Alberro kept part of the budgeted money. With support from NED and NDI (say Karla Josefina Velázquez Figuera) Alberro invented the project “Precise and Simple Electoral Observation”, to “monitor the elections of deputies in Cuba”. He received several thousand dollars, but those who supported him in Cuba complained because they never received the offered payment.
According to what was known in Miami, where almost everything that “opponents” do is known and told, Alberro made bank transfers for 1800 euros to Yoel Armenteros, a member of the non-existent “Christian Democratic Party” in Cuba, which were invested in the improvement of the “dissident’s” house in Villa Clara. At the end of the year 2023, the “opponents” Marthadela Tamayo and Osvaldo Navarro, from Manzanillo, denounced that Alberro had transferred 450 euros of economic aid to them, when they had been offered 800 euros. The Argentinean claimed that the European banks charged a lot of interest and that the exchange rates were very high. This argument is very common when it comes to stealing.
Alberro is currently working as an independent consultant, assisting in the implementation of international cooperation projects and fundraising.
This way of stealing taxes from the U.S. taxpayers is a big one and under the cloak of the “cause of freedom for Cuba”, which for the last 20 years has also applied to Venezuela and Nicaragua. The names of many of the intermediaries are known. Therefore, varying the question asked by the “oppositionist” and blogger Boris Sancho, but without losing its meaning: ¨who has kept the immense bulk of those 400 million dollars, delivered in just two decades?”
Let’s hope that the investigations on Karla Josefina Velázquez Figuera come to fruition and that they lead, at last, to uncover and stop such blatant theft.
Hernando Calvo Ospina is a Colombian French journalist, writer and filmmaker.
Notes:
1) Originally published in Le Monde diplomatique, can be read in full at: When a respectable Foundation takes over from the CIA – Rebelion.
2) Cuba : a job called “dissidence” | Le Club (mediapart.fr)
3) How they work to discredit Cuba’s FAR : Le Club (mediapart.fr)
4) CADAL : Human Rights and International Democratic Solidarity
Source: Cuba en Resumen