USAID Was A Tool Of American Imperialism — Trump Will Find A Way To Replace It

-Analysis-

BOGOTÁ — In the early 1960s, in the midst of the Cold War, U.S. President John F. Kennedy, devised an imperialist control mechanism to stop the ‘contagion’ of the Cuban revolution: the Alliance for Progress. Touted as a tool for economic development in Latin American states, its real goal was of course to keep Latin America in a state of subjugation and ensure the United States could keep on meddling in their internal affairs. Within this framework, the United States created the Agency for International Development, later called USAID.

Now U.S. President Donald Trump has done away with this “international aid” organization, which for years also dedicated itself to financing non-governmental organizations and foundations. Not that the money ever went to independent bodies, as the goal was to domesticate the region in line with Washington’s needs.

The Alliance for Progress began its work in Colombia under a docile and obedient president, Alberto Lleras Camargo, founder of the National Front (of the Liberal and Conservative parties). It was soon being questioned at a well-known summit of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Punta del Este, Uruguay, where Cuba’s Minister of Industry Ernesto “Che” Guevara, quoted Cuban nationalist José Marti in a speech, saying “the nation that buys, commands; the nation that sells, serves. Commerce must be balanced to ensure freedom.” He also described the OAS as the ministry of the colonies of the United States.

Aid and Empire

Sometimes with strange “charity” mechanisms targeting certain poorer sectors in the region, and other times, with brazen intervention in countries’ internal affairs within the hemisphere using the CIA or more furtive agencies, the United States manipulated actors and events, concocted coups and raised or toppled presidents.

For better or worse, with or without violence and whatever the appearance, the United States was engaged in cultural and economic colonization. Ultimately, the best imperialism can do is to mask its hideous countenance. So why fuss today over ending USAID when it was all a bid to purchase “hearts and minds” and stage-managed big-power dominance?

Money made them talk, or shut them up.

This caricature of the charitable hand always included spending money to buy phony intellectuals, NGOs and barely independent media and enterprises, and cajole problematic journalists, infiltrate the law courts and even fabricate conservative “victims.” This was a veritable, transnational network of imperial lackeys.

New right, new dangers

They were more than talkative when it suited them but kept a diplomatic, or strategic, silence in set areas — like Israel’s genocide in Palestine. Money made them talk, or shut them up, because it always can when people are for sale! Money parading as generous “aid” allowed Yankeeland to set a news agenda invariably infected with ideology and disinformation.

Now, the “new right”, led by Trump and Elon Musk, does not have any intention of dezocratising anything, or that they were seized by a “libertarian” impulse. Their idea is to first strengthen the internal markets, and then, in their delirium, make an empire great again — even if said empire is clearly in decline.

The Alliance for Progress did not end the misery in Latin America. It maintained and deepened it.

Yes, the menacing, intrusive empire that masked its meddling as assistance is in decline. And Trump wants it great again – and bigger, too, to include Greenland and Canada. But you still wonder, what’s really behind an end to the aid?

Nixon to Musk

Going back to the beginning, the so-called Alliance for Progress, a farce by the United States to captivate its subjects, did not end the misery in Latin America. It maintained and deepened it. It worsened the food shortages, the famines, and much less was it able to end the belts of misery, extended across numerous countries, among them Colombia.

Seven years into the experiment, the U.S. President Richard Nixon said that malnutrition and food shortages in Latin America had worsened. Someone had to say it, and who better than an inveterate imperialist and the continent’s premier coup monger?

Aid is tricky and we’ve known for years to suspect it when there is some agency, or imperial policy, behind it. The aid may have stopped under Trump and Musk, but make no mistake, nations can expect other dangers lurking behind this pair of billionaires.