Soviet Era Techniques in Present Day Latin America

In 1961, the communist led government of Cuba created their intelligence agency known as the Dirección de Inteligencia (DI or Intelligence Directorate). With the help from the Soviet Union’s Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB) agents, Cuba followed their parent nation’s orders in organizing their intelligence service. The function of these intelligence apparatuses differs from that of western society. Like the United States and Britain, the Cuban intelligence community’s main goal is collect intelligence on foreign governments. However, the Cuban intelligence service’s other main function is to suppress political dissidents within their totalitarian borders.

Even with the decline, and eventual defeat, of the Soviet Union, Cuban intelligence has flourished since its inception. In 2001, following 16 years of employment at the Defense Intelligence Agency, Ana Belen Montes was arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit espionage for the Cuban government. This successful penetration of the United States’ intelligence community by the Cuban government shows a high caliber ability to collect intelligence on foreign nations. In relation to their second function, according to the International Federation for Human Rights, between January and May of 2014, the Dirección de Inteligencia (DI) arrested nearly five thousand political dissidents. Even following the Obama Administration’s recent restorations of diplomatic relations with the communist government, it has been reported that the Cuban Dirección de Inteligencia is still monitoring political dissidents whom have recently been released from prison.

Cuba’s Dirección de Inteligencia has shown their competence in following in the KGB’s footsteps. Over the past decade, Cuba has increased the exportation of their intelligence collecting know-how to other Latin American nations. The most obvious case of this influence is the growing relationship between Cuba and Venezuela. Following President Hugo Chavez rise to power in 1999, Cuban intelligence officers began building a working relationship between the two nations. Beginning in 2011, President Chavez routinely traveled to Cuba for cancer treatment, which he eventually succumbed to in 2013. Prior to his death, he appointed Vice President Nicolas Maduro as his successor.  Since his reelection last year, President Maduro has accelerated the Cuban-Venezuelan relationship. This is not shocking given the fact that following his high school graduation, President Maduro forewent attending college in order to receive training from Cuban officials in organizational skills needed for union mobilization.

In recent years, the Venezuelan Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia Nacional (SEBIN), has taken actions comparable to that of the Soviet KGB or Cuban Dirección de Inteligencia (DI). The most alarming issue revolves around the SEBIN’s acceptance and protection of urban guerrillas, known as colectivos, whom are recruited and trained by Cuban agents in order to “kill and repress” opposition in Venezuela. Most notoriously, these social destabilizers were used in an attempt to disperse crowds following the 2014 student protests in Caracas, which left 3 individuals dead. Furthermore, there have been numerous accounts of the torturing of prisoners by government officials in order to obtain confessions from political opposition.

The problem of Cuban influence in Venezuela has not gone unnoticed. Following questioning from reporters, Foreign Minister Elias Jaua stated that the total number of Cubans working in Venezuela tops twenty-six thousand individuals. What Minister Jaua did not report was the fact that all of Cubans have had constitutionally mandated military training, many of who may be covertly working for the Cuban government. In addition to the penetration of the intelligence apparatus in Venezuela, it has been reported that Cuban intelligence has began to influence Venezuelan politicians directly in order to push Havana’s agenda.

Even though the Soviet Union collapsed nearly 25 years ago, their backwards and repressive form of controlling a population has lived on through the Cuban Dirección de Inteligencia, which attempts to continue spreading the ideology throughout Latin America.