Sound/Systems #03: USAID vs Cuban Hip-Hop 02.03.2021

In 2009, USAID sent a Serbian music promoter to Cuba in an attempt to foment an
anti-Castro uprising. The PR-turned-agent recruited an unwitting rising star in
the Havana rap scene, Aldo Rodriguez (aka El Aldeano), to take part in the
slipshod operation. This episode of Sound/Systems tells the whole tale, which
also implicates Belgrade's famous music festival Exit and a half-cooked scheme
to launch a Cuban Twitter to provoke a "color revolution"-style overthrow.
Elissa contextualizes this odd story as the latest development in the long
history of US counterinsurgency against Fidel Castro's movement and regime, and
she analyzes the Cuban state's cultural policies in light of US subversion.