Office of Cuba Broadcasting

Radio y Televisión Martí

Type	International broadcasting
Country	United States
Availability	Americas
Headquarters	Miami, Florida
Owner	Broadcasting Board of Governors
Launch date	May 20, 1985 (radio) March 27, 1990 (television)
Official website	martinoticias.com
Language	Spanish

Radio y Televisión Martí is an American radio and television international broadcaster based in Miami, Florida, financed by the Federal government of the United States through the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which transmits political propaganda in Spanish to Cuba. Its broadcasts can also be heard and viewed worldwide through their website and on shortwave radio frequencies.

Named after the Cuban national hero and intellectual José Martí, it was established in 1983 with the addition of TV Martí in 1990. The 2014 budget for the Cuba broadcasting program is approximately US$27 million.

Radio y Televisión Martí is an element of the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB). The sister elements in the IBB are Voice of America (VOA), Alhurra/Radio Sawa, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Farda, and Radio Free Asia (RFA). The IBB and the Broadcasting Board of Governors are independent federal entities spun off from the now defunct United States Information Agency.

In the early 1980s, the U.S. Government planned to create a radio station to be known as Radio Free Cuba, modeled on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the mission of fighting communism in the hope of hastening the fall of Cuban President Fidel Castro. The station – renamed Radio Martí after Cuban writer José Martí, who had fought for Cuba's independence from Spain and against U.S. influence in the Americas – was established in 1983 by President Ronald Reagan at the urging of Jorge Mas Canosa. Existing North American broadcasters objected strenuously to the establishment of Radio Martí, fearing that its broadcasts would lead Cuba to retaliate by jamming existing commercial medium-wave broadcasts from Florida.

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