IN February, the Trump administration announced a 90-day suspension of US Agency for International Development (USAid) programmes, and cut the agency’s staff from 10,000 to 300 as part of cost-cutting carried out by the Elon Musk-headed Department of Government Efficiency.
 
There was shock and outrage from many NGOs who said the decision would cost lives. War Child, Britain’s charity for children affected by conflict, feared it would lead to the disruption of “humanitarian programmes that provide education, protection and mental health support for millions of children in conflict zones.” The UNAids executive director, Winnie Byanyima, said it would lead to “2,000 new HIV infections each day and over six million further deaths over the next four years.”
 
While USAid is critical for important humanitarian programmes that conflict with President Trump’s America First policy, the announcement exposed a nefarious side to the organisation — its bankrolling of secretive “independent journalism” and “democracy-building” programmes that aim to ensure foreign governments fall in line with US economic interests and to remove them if they don’t.
 
While it is unknown which programmes will escape the chop after the State Department review as to whether they are aligned with “the national interest,” it would be a sure bet that funding for anti-revolutionary projects in Cuba returns to business as usual.
 
From 2001-2021, the US government spent $218,367,438 on political destabilisation in Cuba. Research by reporter Tracy Eaton discovered that this included “$125,986,260 to support democratic participation and civil society; $35,714,592 for human rights programmes; and $25,078,917 for media and free flow of information.” More recently, it has spent around $20 million annually, including $2.4m to support “independent” media.
 
Much of this money goes to large NGOs run by exiles in Miami or Spain, where a good living can be made from USAid grants. “Cuban democracy” programmes are a profitable industry in Florida. Since the early 2000s, the Cuban Democratic Directorate has received annual multi-million-dollar contracts to promote “democracy and freedom,” though it does little more than advocate pro-blockade policies.
 
In a social media post, the Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez questioned the ethics of the US government department: “It is unusual for an official development agency to spend money to support a change of government and enrich those who see a business in the suffering of the Cuban people,” he wrote.
 
In February, Rodriguez told the UN Human Rights Council that the US was using “the facade of human rights protection” to spend millions to “subvert sovereign governments” and “serve the political and illegitimate objectives” of the US government.
 
There are numerous examples of this in recent years. In 2014, the Associated Press ran a series of articles exposing USAid-funded subversion programmes, including ZunZuneo, a version of Twitter for Cuba, built on texts which it hoped could be used to stir unrest, undermine the government and trigger a so-called Cuban Spring.

It funded a project to infiltrate Cuba’s underground hip-hop movement and one of the country’s largest independent music festivals, in an attempt to spark a youth movement led by bands critical of the government. And HIV-prevention workshops were established to act as a front to secretly recruit “a younger generation of opponents to Cuba’s Castro government.”
 
In 2019, USAid offered grants of up to $3m to projects to collate evidence that Cuban doctors enroled in medical brigades were forced labour. This information was to be used “for advocacy within Cuba, in Latin America and with regional and international bodies, such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC).”

More recently, USAid has offered grants of up to $2m to train musicians and activists on the island. The US attempts to undermine Cuba’s humanitarian medical missions continue to this day, as seen with Marco Rubio’s threat to sanction individuals and family members who are associated with the brigades.
 
And these are only the examples that we know about!
 
Inadvertently, the Trump administration exposed the myth of “independent media.” Within days of the funding freeze, a host of anti-government “independent” Cuban media began appealing to readers and followers for money.
 
In an email to subscribers on February 10, Diario de Cuba, which is based in Madrid, lamented that “aid to independent journalism from the US government is suspended, which makes our work even more arduous.” Miami-based CubaNet said the cuts presented an “unexpected challenge.” Reuters reported that in 2023, CubaNet received $500,000 from USAid to engage “on-island young Cubans through objective and uncensored multimedia journalism.”
 
Foreign Vice-Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio tweeted: “Is there anything independent about a journalist, an activist or an opposition member who lives off the money paid by the US government through USAid and now feels suffocated when they shut off the tap?”
 
One long-term recipient of more than half a billion of US government funding is the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, better known as Radio and TV Marti. The channel, which ostensibly broadcasts news into Cuba, receives $25m a year, despite coming under fire in an internal 2019 audit for being “rife with bad journalism and ineffective propaganda” and its “strident advocacy for hard-line Cuban dissident causes.”
 
On March 14, following the directive for Budget cuts, Radio and TV Marti ceased broadcasting for the first time in 40 years. However, Rubio reversed this decision, allowing half the employees to return to work a few weeks later.
 
This is a likely scenario for other US-funded Cuba programmes. Rubio has long campaigned for hard-line action against Cuba and would be loath to allow funding for his dream to falter. Whether through a slimmed-down USAid or under the direct control of Rubio in the State Department, we can expect the continuation of US funding directed at destabilising the Cuban state, at the expense of the HIV and other life-saving programmes.
 
This is Rodriguez’s prediction, too. In March, he tweeted that Secretary of State and interim USAid chief Rubio would use the remaining USAid funds “for subversive programmes against Cuba and not for international development … in tune with his corrupt personal agenda.”
 
Natasha Hickman is communications manager for the Cuba Solidarity Campaign — cuba-solidarity.org.uk.