Frozen US Aid Puts Salvadoran Civil Society in a Bind
Wednesday, March 12, 2025
Tuesday, March 11, 2025
Gabriel Labrador
Leer en español
February 26 was the last day that the investigative journalism magazine GatoEncerrado had a physical newsroom. It was one of 11 Salvadoran media outlets affected by the freezing of U.S. cooperation funds. Days earlier, preparations for the eviction had already begun at the magazine’s premises, a space of about 70 square meters in a neighborhood of San Salvador. Everything was being inventoried. From March onward, only half of the editorial staff will continue to work from home. February 20 was the last day of work for some of the journalists, who arrived at the office to sign their severance papers. One of them was Eugenia Velásquez, a veteran journalist specializing in political and legislative coverage. Before leaving the newsroom, she said she had no intention of giving up journalism, in a tone evoking years of experience: “Journalism has always been under attack. It's been like this since the war, with the difference that persecution is now more sophisticated.” Minutes later, she said goodbye to her colleagues and left. Seven other GatoEncerrado journalists no longer have a salary at the magazine.
The severing of U.S. cooperation triggered a domino effect of thousands of layoffs around the world. Employees of USAID, the main U.S. cooperation agency, and thousands of workers at hundreds of companies that served as intermediaries between the United States and the organizations receiving cooperation projects were also dismissed throughout February. Intermediary offices are certified organizations with sufficient institutional capacity to carry out multimillion-dollar projects, enabling them to receive funds from the U.S. Treasury and then implement the various projects and programs in recipient countries with local allies or partners. Some of the organizations that received the largest amounts of money to implement programs in El Salvador were Chemonics International, Inc; Creative Associates International; Pact World; and Development Alternatives, Inc. Then there are consolidated entities with their own mission, such as the Red Cross, World Vision, Catholic Relief Services, and Save the Children, which, in addition to their usual work, received U.S. funds for specific projects.
But almost no organization or spokesperson feels free to talk to journalists these days. “These are very difficult days, we will not be able to give any interviews, nor can we take you to the places where we worked,” said the press officer of an organization based in El Salvador that El Faro contacted in mid-February. With the recorder off, other employees of cooperation projects explained that their counterparts in the United States had instructed them to remain silent, as a way of ensuring that at least the money for severance pay would arrive.
This newspaper sought to interview 12 organizations that received funds from the United States, but the result was more or less the same. Some employees in these organizations agreed to talk only on the condition that they not be named. In mid-February, a program officer from an organization who spoke with El Faro explained that she was still employed, but that they had been officially told that their project would no longer continue after March. In the interview, although she was still employed, whenever she referred to her employment situation she used verbs in the past tense. I asked her why she couldn’t be cited in the article: “We can't give the impression that we’re still working, because that would be in breach of the work stoppage order they sent us,” he explained.
More:
https://elfaro.net/en/202503/el_salvador/27776/frozen-us-aid-puts-salvadoran-civil-society-in-a-bind