U.S. Expanding Latin Area Broadcasting

The Reagan Administration has begun a major expansion of the U.S. radio broadcasting capability in Central America and the Caribbean.

The Voice of America, the U.S. government’s overseas radio network, has a new transmitter in Costa Rica and plans to spend $50 million on as many as 11 additional transmitters in the Caribbean basin, a VOA official said.

The plan reflects the Administration’s determination to strengthen U.S. ties in the region and to thwart Soviet and Cuban influence.

Also, the Voice of America is preparing special programming to be aimed at Cuba, to be broadcast from Marathon, Fla., on a transmitter now used for regular VOA programming. For the Cuba broadcasts, the station will be called Radio Marti after Jose Marti, known as the father of Cuban independence.

The goal of the area-wide project is to make the Voice of America available from the eastern Caribbean to the Pacific on medium-wave frequencies. At present, most such broadcasting is on shortwave frequencies and reaches a limited audience because relatively few people own shortwave receivers.

Sandinista Protest

The first new transmitter in the project is near Costa Rica’s border with Marxist-ruled Nicaragua. The Sandinista government, in a recent diplomatic note to the Costa Rican government, complained that the station’s broadcasts are aimed at Nicaraguan territory “as a way of supporting the policy of aggression that the U.S. government pursues against the Sandinista revolution.”

Some Costa Rican leftists and nationalists have also objected to the new radio penetration.

Costa Rican law prohibits foreign interests from broadcasting in the country, so Voice of America is working through the Assn. for Information and Culture, a private local organization.

The association has started up a new radio station called Radio Costa Rica, which carries three hours a day of Spanish-language Voice of America programming from Washington. The material, including news and editorials, will soon be expanded to 5 1/2 hours a day.

Voice of America brought in a 50,000-watt portable transmitter for Radio Costa Rica that is operating at Ciudad Quesada, near the Nicaraguan border, and will finance construction of a permanent transmitter there.

VOA is also preparing to install two 50,000-watt transmitters at a jungle site in Belize. The Belizean government signed an agreement in December for the installation.

A Voice of America official in Washington said by telephone that a portable transmitter will begin broadcasting from Belize next summer and that a permanent installation will replace it later.

He added that the United States is negotiating with other Central American and Caribbean governments for “three or four” more transmitters out of the “approximately 11” that will eventually be installed in the area.

“We would hope that we could get on the air with at least temporary transmitters in most or all of the countries in a year or a year and a half,” the official said.

He said that medium-wave broadcasting by the Voice of America will multiply the number of potential Central American and Caribbean listeners.

“It’s got to at least double or triple, if not quadruple, the audience,” he said.