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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">When the Servants Cry: US-Funded Anti-Cuban Media are Pleading for Money</h1>
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<p>By Randy Alonso Falcón on March 19, 2025</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_29791" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><a href="https://i0.wp.com/resumen-english.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/3-21-randy.png?ssl=1"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-29791" src="https://i0.wp.com/resumen-english.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/3-21-randy.png?resize=300%2C300&ssl=1" alt="" width="300" height="300" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img"></a></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-29791" class="gmail-wp-caption-text">The financed journalism for the US; image AI</p></div>
<p>First it was the media funded by USAID, then those that received
money from the NED howled; now Radio and TV “Martí” itself have fallen
on the list of cuts; the counter-revolutionary media apparatus, at the
service of the United States, is in a state of despair in the face of
the Trump administration’s measures.<span id="gmail-more-29790"></span></p>
<p><strong>A breed of freeloaders</strong></p>
<p>The anti-Cuban industry, or “the industry of evil” as <a href="http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2013/03/11/murio-francisco-aruca/">Francisco Aruca</a> called it, has been a space where hundreds of characters and organizations in the US have thrived for almost 7 decades.</p>
<p>From the Batistianos and Masferreristas, to Mas Canosa and the
Cuban-American National Foundation, Gutiérrez Boronat and his so-called
Cuban Democratic Directorate, and other specimens of the worst kind,
right down to the horde of YouTubers who today pay for their hatred on
social media, US taxpayer money has been squandered in Miami and beyond –
even in Madrid, Prague and San José – under the banner of the “struggle
for Cuba’s freedom”.</p>
<p>In all these years, dozens of media projects have been attached to
this cash cow, born within the Miami organizations themselves (to have
another source of income paid for by the US budget) or created expressly
to make the anti-Cuban communication campaign more profuse. Some were
born during the first wave of the Bill Clinton presidency; others, in
the more abundant and digital network forged and financed by the Obama
administration, which identified the digital space as the stage for the
symbolic dispute par excellence between our political systems: “… the
web is part of a larger political battle.” (<a href="https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Una-cartograf%C3%ADa-de-la-blog%C3%B3sfera-cubana.-Entre-y-Henken/48e3bb84f25170377bffb807cf97c52200872967">Ted Henken</a>, 2011).</p>
<p>This new Washington Consensus for Cuba, which in the last decade
redirected a large part of the funding for subversion towards programs
implemented in the digital public space, continued later in the first
Trump administration and the Joe Biden period.</p>
<p><strong>Change in the rules of the game?</strong></p>
<p>Watching the empire drown in debt, declining in economic,
technological and military power, with serious internal fractures and
numerous external challenges, the plutocracy in power today has
seriously considered dismantling the state apparatus, with incalculable
consequences and undesirable effects for part of the American elite and
for sectors that have been suckling for years on the national budget.</p>
<p>With Elon Musk wielding the scythe, the White House has set out to
cut hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in spending
from the deficit-ridden public purse. USAID, NED and structures of the
US State Department, which have squandered US money on thousands of
failed programs in various countries, have been cut down to size.</p>
<p><strong>Perhaps the oldest, most failed and rotten of these programs
are those aimed at Cuba; a nation against which billions of dollars have
been spent without being able to overthrow the Revolution, although it
has filled the pockets of a few loudmouths in Miami.</strong></p>
<p>When presenting his administration’s actions to Congress after barely
a month and a half in office, Donald Trump listed among the ridiculous
projects to be eliminated the one and a half million dollars earmarked
for rebuilding the anti-Cuban media monstrosity.</p>
<p>The message was clear, but the amount listed by Trump was pure
deception. It is not known if the president’s advisers did not want to
put into perspective the ridiculousness of the situation with Cuba or if
they did not want the US press to remember the hundreds of millions
that were squandered in the previous four years of Trump.</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_29792" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><a href="https://i0.wp.com/resumen-english.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/3-21-ran1.jpg?ssl=1"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-29792" src="https://i0.wp.com/resumen-english.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/3-21-ran1.jpg?resize=300%2C232&ssl=1" alt="" width="300" height="232" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img"></a></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-29792" class="gmail-wp-caption-text">some of the financed media against Cuba</p></div>
<p><a href="http://www.cubadebate.cu/especiales/2020/10/21/el-multimillonario-financiamiento-a-la-industria-anticubana-en-tiempos-de-trump/">Between 1990 and 2018</a>,
US administrations allocated $45,030,183 for “Media and free flow of
information” projects against Cuba. That does not include the hundreds
of millions spent on the misnamed Radio and TV Martí. (3)</p>
<p>In the first Trump era, these funds were focused on financing a
cluster of digital publications, created during the time of his
predecessor, which reproduce like spores the matrices that are imparted
by media such as CiberCuba and the pathetic show of Otaola with his
website Cubanos por el mundo (Cubans around the world). Also, to sustain
an army of haters on social networks, who earn crumbs by sticking to
their computers all day long handing out prizes, punishments and
offenses, like a machine of digital mud.</p>
<p>As<a href="http://www.cubadebate.cu/especiales/2021/02/03/usaid-ned-adn-el-negocio-de-la-democracia-en-cuba-esta-en-auge/"> revealed by the American journalist and researcher Tracey Eaton</a>, in October 2020, USAID awarded $410,710 to the Asociación de Noticias Digitales (ADN Cuba) to promote human rights in Cuba.</p>
<p>In those four years (2016-2020), other cogs in the anti-Cuban media
machine received large sums directly from federal funds. Diario de Cuba
pocketed $1,320,000 and the infamous Cubanet got $1,350,796 to
distribute its “news” and support the troop of censors and virtual
harassers that accompany them.</p>
<p><strong>With both hands</strong></p>
<p>During the Biden administration, the abundant financial flow to anti-Cuban media continued unabated.</p>
<p>Before the freeze on funds, the Pan American Development Foundation
(PADF) had an active grant approved in 2023 and valid until September
2025, for $2 million, for “democracy programs in Cuba for independent
media and free flow of information.”</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_29793" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-29793" src="https://i0.wp.com/resumen-english.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/3-21-ra.png?resize=300%2C300&ssl=1" alt="" width="300" height="300" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-29793" class="gmail-wp-caption-text">the attack journalism of the US, image AI</p></div>
<p>According to USAID’s own statistical sources, in 2023 the agency
dedicated a budget of $9.5 million to programs on Cuba. While in 2024,
USAID graciously handed over a total of $2.9 million to these dependent
media outlets alone.</p>
<p>For example, on September 30, 2024, USAID approved a budget of $1,085,895 for <strong><em>ADN Cuba</em></strong>, the media front created to <a href="http://www.cubadebate.cu/especiales/2021/02/02/reportero-de-adn-cuba-reconoce-cuanto-le-pagaron-por-la-protesta-frente-al-ministerio-de-cultura/">promote manipulated and harmful information against Cuba</a>. This program renewed a previous fund of $1.5 million that USAID allocated to ADN Cuba during the 2022-2024 period.</p>
<p>Since 2020, ADN Cuba has received a total of $3,072,123 from USAID,
of which it has spent less than half, according to its reports. The
destination of the rest of the funds is unknown to date.</p>
<p>The thirty-something year old Cubanet received $500,000 from USAID in
2024 alone. They have stated that the disappearance of these funds “has
affected our ability to support the work of our collaborators on the
island. Without the support of organizations like Cubanet, these
journalists will not be able to continue doing their work…”</p>
<p>It is understandable why the editors and employees of these sites are
whining and making half-hearted complaints about the unforeseen cut in
funds.</p>
<p><strong>When the NED stops giving you a free ride</strong></p>
<p>Among the most whining on social media are the members of the
editorial team of El Toque, a publication that was born in Cuba in 2014,
with US payments outsourced through Radio Netherlands International and
which later moved to Miami to suck directly from the teat.</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_29795" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-29795" src="https://i0.wp.com/resumen-english.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/3-21-El-Toque-recibe-plata-USA-580x326-1.jpg?resize=300%2C169&ssl=1" alt="" width="300" height="169" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-29795" class="gmail-wp-caption-text">El Toque received an abundance of financial help from Washington; image Razones de Cuba</p></div>
<p>There, its main director, José Jasán Nieves, created the company
Media Plus Experience Inc, which was hired by the US Embassy in Havana
to monitor the media, for which it received $24,000 in payment for
services on January 31, 2023, according to a documented investigation by
Cubainformación.</p>
<p>That same year, in September, they would receive another payment of
$27,000 (to finance El Toque) for the alleged development of social
networks.</p>
<p>The Spanish media’s investigation also points out that on August 11,
2023, the State Department awarded that company $50,000 to promote
professional developers and artistic talents.</p>
<p>In November 2022, the El Toque boss boasted on social media about
starting to run the Martí Verifica program on the Radio y TV Martí
digital platform; an excellent example of the services this character
provides to the United States government, which is the direct owner of
these means of propaganda against Cuba.</p>
<p>One of El Toque’s most frequent financiers is the National Endowment
for Democracy (NED), a CIA front created during the Reagan era.</p>
<p>It is known that the State Department, through its Bureau of
Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL) awarded a grant to the NED for
$6,172,839, to be executed between September 27, 2022, and September 30,
2025, for “programs to promote democracy, political pluralism,
independent media and political activism in Cuba.</p>
<p>El Toque, while manipulating exchange rates in Cuba as its main
communicational objective, received several payments amounting to
$292,369 from September 2024, through the companies Mas Voces Foundation
and Media Plus Experience.</p>
<p>In turn, the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) – which has also just
been cut back – awarded a contract to the Poynter Institute for Media
Studies Inc, with a start date of November 8, 2024, until November 11,
2025, aimed at training and providing financial support to “artists,
activists, journalists and independent writers from Cuba.”</p>
<p>Poynter has worked with El Toque on the development of chatbots for
platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram and Messenger, designed
specifically for Cuban audiences.</p>
<p>The International Fact-checking Network fund, of the Poynter
Institute, on its website, lists the National Endowment for Democracy
(NED) and the Open Society Foundations among its financiers, and through
this channel El Toque receives more than $50,000, supposedly to support
its fact-checking program.</p>
<p>Following the freezing of funds by the US government, El Toque has
issued a desperate call to its readers for financial contributions to
sustain it, while announcing that it will lay off half of its staff (15
people) and cancel “dozens of temporary contracts” with freelancers. It
is not known whether the team that updates currency exchange rates at
will is among those laid off.</p>
<p>Eloy Viera, part of the “El Toque” team, has taken to social media to
complain about the chop that Trump and Musk have given him, with a
letter from Marco Rubio. According to him, the main audience for these
media is in Cuba, a country where the population faces extreme economic
difficulties. “The models of press sustainability that are applied
throughout the world are not applicable in Cuba. That includes
advertising and subscriptions,” said Viera, who also whispered the Miami
risk: ”The costs of living in exile are much higher.”</p>
<p><strong>Misnamed….</strong></p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_29796" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-29796" src="https://i0.wp.com/resumen-english.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/3-21-Estudios-de-TV-Marti-en-Doral-Florida-Foto-Archivo-580x326-1.jpg?resize=300%2C169&ssl=1" alt="" width="300" height="169" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-29796" class="gmail-wp-caption-text">the studios of TV Marti Doral Florida</p></div>
<p><strong>The new</strong><a href="https://www.diariolasamericas.com/videos/ordenan-paralizar-las-operaciones-radio-tv-marti-n5372836"><strong> news that is rocking the Miami media sewer</strong></a> is<strong>
that the most expensive, failed and corrupt communications project in
the history of the United States has reached an impasse. Since Monday,
March 17, the offices of Radio and TV Martí have been closed to their
employees.</strong></p>
<p>The misnamed Radio Martí was born in the middle of the Cold War, in
1985, as an imitation of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, attempting
to subvert the order in Cuba from the airwaves. The Reagan
administration doubled down by founding TV Martí five years later.</p>
<p>On Friday night, Trump instructed his administration to reduce the
functions of several agencies to the minimum required by the Federal
Mediation and Conciliation Service Act: including the United States
Agency for Global Media; the Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution; the Institute of Museum and
Library Services; the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness;
the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund; and the Minority
Business Development Agency.</p>
<p>The White House decision affects Radio and TV Martí, but also the
Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia,
among other entities, all under the supervision of the <strong>United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM).</strong></p>
<p>As a group, USAGM employs some 3,500 workers with a budget of $886 million in 2024, according to its latest report to Congress.</p>
<p>On Saturday morning, former presenter Kari Lake, whom Trump appointed
as the agency’s senior adviser, wrote on the social network X that
employees should check their emails because of Trump’s cutbacks.</p>
<p>In support of the order issued by the US president, USAGM issued a
statement saying that “this agency is beyond rescue” and is
“irretrievably broke”, which is effectively a death knell.</p>
<p>“From top to bottom, this agency is a gigantic rot and a burden on
the American taxpayer – a risk to this country’s national security; and
it is irretrievably broken. While there are bright spots within the
agency, with many talented and dedicated public servants, this is the
exception rather than the rule,” the statement said….</p>
<p><strong>And very corrupt</strong></p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_29797" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-29797" src="https://i0.wp.com/resumen-english.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/3-21-6720-tv-radio-marti-cuba.jpg?resize=300%2C152&ssl=1" alt="" width="300" height="152" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-29797" class="gmail-wp-caption-text">Radio and TV Marti have cost the people of the US $800 million</p></div>
<p><a href="http://www.cubadebate.cu/especiales/2019/07/08/el-pantanal-de-la-maquinaria-propagandistica-contra-cuba-videos/"><strong>Radio and TV Martí</strong></a><strong> have cost the US public purse some 800 million dollars</strong>.
It had around 100 workers between federal employees and contractors. Of
the 46 professional employees registered on the federal payroll, all
receive salaries of over $100,000 per year, despite the evident poor
quality of their content.</p>
<p>The abysmal journalism and rampant manipulation that has prevailed in
the anti-Cuban propaganda machine was reflected in a content audit
report by<a href="http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2019/05/22/auditoria-en-ee-uu-asevera-que-transmisiones-de-radio-y-tv-marti-estan-llenas-de-mal-periodismo-y-propaganda-ineficaz/"> a panel of experts that determined, in 2019,</a>
that the Office of Broadcasts to Cuba produces both “bad journalism”
and “ineffective propaganda” and […] “there is little or no attempt to
elicit a response or provide counter-information.”</p>
<p>“Well-established standards of objectivity are routinely ignored in
favor of propagandistic communication tactics,” the panel said.</p>
<p>Another US government report, in July 2014, revealed that Radio and
TV Martí suffered from ‘low morale,’ ‘lack of transparency, of
administrative rigor,’ ‘security breaches,’ and a ”case of theft of
property.” The report contains 34 pages of criticism of this project and
is signed by John M. Jones, of the Office of the Inspector General, who
carried out an audit of the US government’s Office of Cuba Broadcasting
(OCB).</p>
<p>The commission of inspectors reviewed the accounts of Radio TV Martí,
recommended attention to the vendors and the elimination of “covert”
transactions; and also detected irregularities in travel expenses (per
diems or allowances), which are mainly pocketed by its managers. The
report also expresses concern about the lack of control over
technological equipment, and refers to some specific incidents such as
the loss of equipment worth more than $25,000.</p>
<p><strong>In January 2015 it was revealed that the OCB had paid a total
of $4,087,706 to Phoenix Air Group, the contracting company that owned
Aero Martí, an airplane that did not fly anywhere because it had been
stranded in a warehouse for more than a year, from June 1, 2010 until
that date.</strong></p>
<p>The waste also reached the network; the space where Radio and TV
Martí gambled that they would have influence in Cuba. To do this they
created Piramideo, a social network aimed at sending millions of text
messages to Cuba. Although the project was a failure, its creator,
Washington Software, received $4,321,173 from June 2011 to July 2014.</p>
<p>Other subsequent projects continue to bet on the use of new
technologies for subversion and propaganda in the face of the failure of
radio and TV broadcasts. The Florida-based weekly<a href="https://www.miaminewtimes.com/"> Miami New Times</a> documented the<a href="https://www.cubaperiodistas.cu/2018/08/revelan-que-eeuu-utiliza-facebook-para-difundir-fake-news-de-cuba/"> operations on Facebook to create fake profiles and troll farms</a> funded by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which administers and directs broadcasts from the United States to Cuba.</p>
<p>The 2019 report by the experts states that Radio and TV Martí’s
broadcasts and publications “openly encourage opposition to and
hostility towards the Cuban Revolution in all its social, political,
cultural and economic aspects. Almost any criticism is allowed and they
make it with a rhetorical and ideological approach unchanged since the
hottest days of the Cold War. It failed then, and it is failing now.</p>
<p>The ideologues in the service of imperialism, when they founded the
misnamed Radio and TV Martí, thought that these broadcasts would be as
effective as those made by Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty to the
countries of Eastern Europe, in the sense of favoring political and
ideological subversion to destroy the Cuban Revolution, but it
backfired: <strong>They are neither seen, heard nor read in Cuba; they
have only served to drain millions towards a band of crooks and
mercenaries of the paid word.</strong></p>
<p><strong>And so?</strong></p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_29798" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-29798" src="https://i0.wp.com/resumen-english.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/3-21-Marco-Rubio-visita-Radio-y-TV-Marti-con-Tomas-Regalado-580x387-1.jpg?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1" alt="" width="300" height="200" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-29798" class="gmail-wp-caption-text">Marco Rubio visiting Radio and TV Marti with Tomas Regalado</p></div>
<p>Over the years, the Martí stations faced some budget cuts,
controversies surrounding their directors, plans to merge with the Voice
of America and criticism of their journalistic quality. At all times,
the Cuban-American congressmen from South Florida managed to keep them
operational.</p>
<p>Their television programming remained on the air for decades,
although it could not be seen on the island due to the Cuban
government’s interference with their signals. In recent years, the
television programming, which was mainly watched in Miami, was phased
out as the Bureau focused on promoting the online news site Martí
Noticias and video content for social media.</p>
<p>In 2021, ten U.S. lawmakers called on the Joe Biden Administration to
increase the budget for Radio and TV Martí and the programs created “to
promote democracy in Cuba.”</p>
<p>According to the document at the time, this media outlet “breaks the
regime’s information blockade to disseminate necessary and reliable
information to the Cuban people,” said Mario Díaz-Balart, <strong>Marco Rubio</strong>,
Rick Scott, Albio Sires, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Alex Mooney, Anthony
González, María Elvira Salazar, Nicole Malliotakis, and Carlos Giménez.</p>
<p>“We are concerned that further cuts will result in reductions in the
federal workforce and damage to OCB operations at a time when the people
of Cuba need information from the outside world and from their fellow
citizens on the island,” the congressmen and senators said.</p>
<p>The letter emphasized that “the US has supported democracy programs
in Cuba since 1996, and fiscal year 2008 (the end of W. Bush’s term) was
the highest level of funding for the Cuba democracy program, with $45.7
million.”</p>
<p>A week ago, the cutbacks department headed by Elon Musk included the
lease agreement for the Radio and TV Martí headquarters in Miami among
the targets to be “rescinded”. Canceling the lease on the Jorge Mas
Canosa building would save $5.32 million, according to the DODGE
website.</p>
<p>Will he now think of opening his big mouth to Marco Rubio?</p>
<p><strong>Time and depth</strong></p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_29799" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-29799" src="https://i0.wp.com/resumen-english.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/3-21-periodistas-finaciados-por-USAID.png?resize=300%2C300&ssl=1" alt="" width="300" height="300" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-29799" class="gmail-wp-caption-text">Paid journalism, image: AI</p></div>
<p>Some Republicans have accused the Voice of America (VOA) and other
publicly funded media outlets of being biased against conservatives, and
had called for their closure as part of the efforts of tech billionaire
Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency to downsize the
government.</p>
<p>So far, Musk’s DOGE has cut more than 100,000 jobs in the federal
civilian workforce of 2.3 million members, frozen foreign aid, and
canceled thousands of programs and contracts.</p>
<p>On Saturday, Musk played down the cuts to USAGM. “While this global
government propaganda agency is closed, it has been temporarily renamed
the Department of Propaganda Everywhere (DOPE),” he wrote on X.</p>
<p><strong>It is impossible to predict how long the freeze on funds for the anti-Cuban media</strong> machine will last. As with all Malthusian monstrosities, the strongest are sure to survive and the weak will disappear. <strong>But
Musk’s scythe has served to show the degree of servility and dependence
of these media on federal funds from Washington, and the inefficiency
and corruption that accompanies their actions.</strong></p>
<p><em><strong>Randy Alonso Falcon</strong></em> is a Cuban journalist
who is the General Director of IDEAS Multimedios and the Cubadebate web
portal, he is also the anchor of the popular Cuban Television program
“Mesa Redonda”.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://www.cubadebate.cu/especiales/2025/03/19/cuando-los-siervos-lloran-medios-anticubanos-financiados-por-ee-uu-piden-dinero-a-gritos/">Cubadebate</a>, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English</p>
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