USAID logo and US flag. Photo: Kawsachun News/file photo.
USAID funding for Cuba-related media amounted to $2.3 million in 2024.
Foreign Minister of Cuba Bruno Rodriguez has once again denounced the use of USAID against Cuba. Between 1998 and 1999 alone, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) spent more than six million dollars (USD) to carry out hundreds of illegal operations in Cuba.
Between 2001 and 2006, it allocated $61 million for 142 illegal projects and activities against the Cuban people.
Cuba has repeatedly denounced the use of USAID and other organizations presented as humanitarian or in defense of democracy, as fronts to penetrate and undermine societies, impose colonial values and customs, as well as manipulate or outright control local elites and the press, with the aim of strengthening U.S. hegemony.
¿Qué tiene de independiente un periodista, un activista o un opositor que vive del dinero q paga el gob. de EEUU a través de la USAID y ahora se siente ahogado cuando le cierran el grifo? Siempre se supo que han sido cipayos contrarados, absolutamente dependientes del amo.
— Carlos F. de Cossio (@CarlosFdeCossio) February 8, 2025
Since his arrival to the White House last month for his second presidential term, Donald Trump has launched a crusade led by his presidential campaign donors, primarily Elon Musk, against USAID. They intend to reduce or dismantle parts of the US government, with the pretext of targeting inefficiencies and corruption.
Revelations of “USAID secrets” made by Trump, Musk and others, are intended to attack their Democratic rivals despite that Trump’s first administration utilized the same funds and deployed them for similar purposes around the world.
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USAID financing for Cuba-related media amounted to $2.3 million in 2024. Reuters reported this week that US-funded outlets reporting on Cuba are “seeking alternative sources of financing” and that their fate is “in limbo” given the plans to dismantle USAID. The move would affect outlets like Miami-based CubaNet, which received a dedicated $500,000 from USAID in 2024 to engage “on-island young Cubans through objective and uncensored multimedia journalism”.
Commenting on X, Foreign Vice Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio called US-funded media “hired lackeys, absolutely dependent on the master.”
The new U.S. administration intends to promote its interests with less subtle and more crude methods and has shifted control of USAID to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
