The International Republican Institute was able to retain only five of its 95 programs funded by the State Department and USAID.
14ymedio, Havana, 19 March 2025 — The United States Department of State restored part of the financing that it had frozen weeks ago for independent Cuban media and non-governmental organizations, according to the Nuevo Herald on Wednesday, after confirmation with several sources related to the issue.
The newspaper CubaNet, dean of the independent press, was notified that a subsidy that financed its operations was no longer canceled, according to Roberto Hechavarría, director of the digital media which was founded in 1994, speaking to the American newspaper.
Likewise, the legal organization Cubalex and the NGO Outreach AID to the Americas were also informed by the State Department that a program related to part of its financing, previously canceled, had been newly approved.
Both institutions linked to Cuba, however, have had to reduce their teams and will not have all the budget that was approved before the current Administration suspended all aid distributed through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Sources related to the federal decision confirmed to the Nuevo Herald that the International Republican Institute was able to retain only five of its 95 programs funded by the State Department and USAID. These are all projects related to Cuba and Venezuela, including one that supports political prisoners on the island. They also indicated that the Democratic National Institute could only retain a couple of contracts related to Venezuela.
For his part, José Jasán Nieves, director of El Toque, said that the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an independent organization that receives funding from the US Congress, notified them of the disbursement of funds already committed, “but they still aren’t talking about reactivating the suspended programs.” The federal government released part of the previously frozen money after a lawsuit by the Foundation against the State Department.
Last year alone, according to the report prepared by tycoon Elon Musk at the request of President Donald Trump after the shutdown of USAID, the expenditure to “rebuild the Cuban media ecosystem” was one and a half million dollars. It is an infinitesimal part of the agency’s total budget of about 60 billion dollars annually, but it represents a substantial part of the spending of several independent media, which try to compensate for the propaganda of the Cuban regime with plural information.
In addition, dozens of Cuban organizations working for human rights, free enterprise and freedom of expression were benefiting from these funds.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated last February that some USAID programs will be exempted from the freeze on funds. “Every dollar we spend, every program we finance must be aligned with the national interest of the United States, and USAID has a history of ignoring that and deciding that, somehow, they are a global charity separate from the national interest,” he said.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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