Research can be supported by funding from a wide variety of public and private institutions and donors.

For example:

This data is from 2009, but it shows clearly how in the US they do not only count on Federal funds. In the article where this figure is from, they were complaining about a decrease in federal support for research. But they still have some other sources. In Latin America, we are not even used to have some other sources, just from the government. The other type of support is beginning in Brazil for example.

Other sources, like donation, and industry count around 15% of the funding. And this kind of source is rare or absent in Latin American Institutions. This is a point that needs to increase and be worked. A good way to start would be doing like marketing of the researches that are been developed! Latin American researchers need to bring to the community what is going on in the lab! Promoting fairs, interactions of the community with science, open lecture to the public, generating the interest to the research, showing how important is and the benefits of what is been developed.

Anyway, from the sources available, Institutional money in Public Latin America Universities is a discussion for another BLOG. Latin America has a different reality than the US, and charge tuition from students, as happens in the US, in Latin America is something complicated.

Eugenie Samuel Reich, Thrift in store for US research,  Nature 476, 385 (2011) | doi:10.1038/476385a