Cuban Independent Journalism Is Being Left in the Dark

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Editor’s Note: We welcome Caroline Val to The Latino Newsletter’s growing list of contributors.

MIAMI —  As the Trump administration continues to limit pathways to citizenship for Latino immigrants in the United States, most recently with over a dozen Cubans detained at a South Florida ICE facility during regular appointments, it has now also cut into a central part of pro-democratic efforts within the island of Cuba: independent journalism. 

Many people might not know that Cuban independent journalism has been thriving both in and out of the country for some time, working with journalists all over the world to offer alternative channels to state-run Cuban media. That’s because they have often moved under the radar, and primarily with the backing of the U.S. government, in order to do so.

That is, until now. 

Between shutting down of the Voice of America program, cutting federal funding for U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and ending political programs that helped activists and political prisoners, the Trump administration is now actively leaving voices hoping to cut through the Cuban government’s propaganda alone and in the dark. 

What Programs Are Being Impacted? 

Perhaps one of the biggest shocks to the Cuban exile community was the shutdown of Radio and Television Martí, an international broadcasting station based in Miami financed through the U.S. Agency for Global Media. An executive order signed by President Trump on March 14 ordered the end of the U.S. agency, subsequently terminating six other agencies under it, which includes the Voice of America.

Radio and TV Martí were equally instrumental in providing news and pro-democracy issues to Cuban people on the island, doing so by investing in social media and streaming in recent years. This way, while the Cuban government had the programming blocked in its own airwaves (even deemed “No See TV” in Cuba), many Cubans could still access the programming on their phones and other individual means of connection. 

The freezing of millions of dollars in funds to USAID is also comparatively putting other Cuban-focused media outlets at risk, such as Cubanet, the oldest Cuban independent news outlet based in Miami and developed in 1994. According to the Miami Herald, USAID’s website initially listed over $9,000,000 in programs focused within Cuba, including Cubanet and groups that tracked “arbitrary detentions, advocating for religious freedoms, sending humanitarian donations of food and medicines and supporting the families of political prisoners.” Other publications of note impacted by the USAID freeze include El Toque and Diario de Cuba, each based in Spain. 

How Are Cuban American Politicians Reacting?

While many Cuban American politicians from South Florida have long been vocal supporters of President Trump and the administration’s hardline immigration policies, these recent executive actions impacting independent journalism in Cuba have generated criticism among them. According to El País, representatives Mario Díaz-Balart, María Elvira Salazar, and Carlos Giménez are some of the Republican politicians who have pledged to fight for the orders’ reversals. 

Democrats in South Florida are also usually quite bipartisan with their Republican colleagues on issues pertaining to Latin America, like Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schulz, who stated that the shutdown of outlets like Radio Martí is a “gift to the Cuban communist regime.” She went on to say the following: “Closing all that down means that we are willfully further isolating Cubans on the island, and that’s on top of the fact that we have the regime in Cuba cracking down on freedom fighters, on people who have protested in the streets.”

What Happens Next?

With the changes in federal funding and support for Cuba-focused outlets, there are at least two general things that can be done to fill the void now on the island. 

The first includes supporting solutions-based journalism on the ground in Cuba. Initiatives like Periodismo de Barrio, founded by Nieman Fellow and Cuban journalist Elaine Diaz, is a fantastic example of journalism hoping to highlight lapses in Cuban communities where help is needed. Working to bring smaller issues to an end one community at a time, while also working with international journalists, is a means of bringing help and awareness to plights that everyday Cubans deal with, rather than the greater governmental issues that have plagued the Caribbean nation for decades. 

The second, which solutions-based publications like PDB rely on, is by donating and crowdsourcing. Now, once federally-funded publications like Cubanet and Diario de Cuba, are actively asking for users to donate to their publications to replace what federal funding once did for them. 

All of this adds to an all-too familiar story journalists and publications across the U.S. are facing nowadays—turning to an independent means of survival. While Cuban independent journalism is now having to do the same, it’s a grim outlook of where American priorities are going in terms of promoting democracy in Cuba and internationally, but a reminder that the power lies within the people in order to keep the cause going strong. 

About the Author

Caroline Val is a Miami-based journalist and news producer whose work has appeared in Business Insider, Teen Vogue, Hulu, ABC News, Miami New Times, and more.

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