Category Archives: Colonialism and Resistance

Dismantling USAID: Yes, No, Maybe?

In late 1980, more than a year after the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution, the administration of President Jimmy Carter was still funding infrastructure in Nicaragua through USAID. By November 1984, with President Ronald Reagan’s “Contra War” well underway, your future bloguista was amused by this left-over sign at a road rebuilt near Matagalpa.

by Jim Hodgson

Back on launch day of Trump 2.0, the president issued an executive order that suspended international aid programs for 90 days, including those of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

The move came with a lot of over-the-top rhetoric and outright lies: that USAID spent “$100 million on condoms to Hamas” and that it “bankrolled” the Politico digital news company. “It’s been run by a bunch of radical lunatics. And we’re getting them out,” Trump told reporters on the evening of Feb. 2.

There are, of course, dozens of issues about which to criticize the Trump regime. But this is a blog that sets out to unwrap development issues, so let’s get into it.

Congress established USAID in 1961 to bring together programs that were administering foreign aid. Focusing on long-term social and economic development, USAID disbursed about $72 billion in 2023, less than 1% of the U.S. annual budget. It is one of the largest aid agencies in the world. 

You’ll remember, of course, that the United Nations target for spending on Official Development Assistance is 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product. Only five countries meet or exceed that goal: Norway, Luxembourg, Sweden, Germany and Denmark. In 2023, Canada contributed 0.37 per cent of GDP; the United States contributed just 0.24 per cent, seventh lowest among 31 OECD countries. 

Trump’s order, carried out by his government efficiency hatchet-man, Elon Musk, chopped humanitarian programs around the world: famine relief in war zones; programs to stall malaria in 22 African nations; vaccinations in vulnerable areas; and access to medications by people living with HIV and AIDS. Several U.S. government websites also removed resources on HIV. (That also happened when Trump first took office in 2017).

Newsweek reported Feb. 6 that just months before Musk shut down USAID, the agency was investigating its relationship with Musk’s Starlink satellite company.

In days since the order, enough voices were raised in alarm to get funding for HIV and other essential medicines restored—though it wasn’t clear if that included preventative drugs like PrEP. For more than 20 years, PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) worked within and alongside the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria and the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

Also, a federal judge on Feb. 7 temporarily blocked the administration from placing 2,200 USAID employees on paid leave, siding with workers who argued Trump and Musk lack the authority to immediately dismantle an agency created by congressional legislation.

The Trump regime blames “migrants” for much of what supposedly ails the United States, but in this time of unparalleled worldwide migration of people, the USAID cuts hit the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration (IOM)—two agencies that are critical in managing and measuring the flows of people.

No one should argue against humanitarian aid, although Musk and Republican members of congress who see empathy as a character flaw will do so. In a world still suffering from massive inequality, such aid is urgently needed. The U.S. Christian magazine Sojourners offered a strong defence of the humanitarian work of USAID.

What happens after the 90-day review? My guess is that some functions will be folded into the State Department and thus more susceptible to narrow political goals, like subversion of other countries’ governments. I feel badly for beneficiaries of the humanitarian programs and for many well-intentioned employees; not so much for the vast array of U.S.-based independent contractors who get rich from the misery of others.

Sheinbaum: “It’s better they close it”
As noted above, USAID was created in 1961—just two years after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. There was no artifice: USAID was to counter the influence of Soviet Union. In recent years, USAID has been at the heart of U.S. challenges to the growing influence of China, which has a successful “Belt and Road” foreign aid program of its own.
My venerable Mac laptop computer tells me that I have 226 files that mention USAID. Almost all of the documents are about the ways that USAID is used as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy, especially its work alongside other U.S. institutions that promote—or subvert—democracy in other countries: the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and even the Central Intelligence Agency.

USAID even had an Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) that gained infamy in 2014 over its covert “Cuban Twitter” (ZunZuneo) social media program that was aimed at overthrowing the Cuban government was revealed by Associated Press. 

Sheinbaum (left): USAID must be transparent; in Mexico, it has funded the opposition. Right: USAID still in the headlines Feb. 8.

In her morning news conference on Feb. 4, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, breaking away from the dispute over tariffs, lashed out at the overt political activity of USAID. “This agency has funded research projects and groups opposed to the government. That’s the case with Mexico.”
She mentioned an organization that she called, “Mexicans for Corruption.” (She was only half-joking: it’s Mexicans against Corruption. The group actively opposed her predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s effort to reform the judicial system, and it had support from USAID.) 
“And how is it that they get involved in politics, those agencies that are about aid. In that sense, if the United States wants to help with development, it should be transparent,” she continued.  “The truth is that there are so many things USAID does that in truth it is better they close it.”
In a similar vein, Colombian President Gustavo Petro said some U.S. help is not welcome and has to go. “Hundreds of immigration officials who guard our borders were paid by the United States. This aid is poison,” he said during a Feb. 3 cabinet meeting. “That should never be allowed. We are going to pay with our money.” In 2024, the agency paid nearly $385 million to Colombia.

Haïti chérie

Which brings me to Haiti, a country whose heartbreak I know well. For more than 45 years, it has been particularly afflicted by HIV and AIDS. The ongoing political crisis, worsened by uncontrolled activity by criminal gangs, continues to hamper relief efforts including support to people living with HIV and AIDS. 

Repeated U.S. interventions have made things worse. From 2011, with the presidencies of Michel Martellyand Jovenel Moïse and then the unelected leadership of Prime Minister Ariel Henry through early 2024, the United States and the local elites had the leaders they wanted: men close to the business sector who had close ties in the United States.

That fruitless model was finally shoved aside last June 11 with the installation of a transitional council (CPT). It’s wobbly but hope persists that it can finally organize new elections that produce leaders that Haitians want. A truth commission and an electoral council have been named.

In the meantime, the problem of gang violence is being addressed (though ineffectively) with the addition of the Multinational Security Support Mission (known as MMAS), led by police from Kenya and bolstered with police from El Salvador and Guatemala. Despite UN backing and many promises, it is underfunded and understaffed.

Feb. 4: U.S. aid to the security mission is frozen. Feb. 6: aid is renewed

A new blow came Feb. 4 when the UN announced that the shutdown of USAID meant funds for the MMAS were frozen. But two days later, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that MMAS would be protected despite the USAID cut, adding to speculation that Rubio, Musk and Trump are not all operating from the same playbook.

In the wake of the axing of USAID, the best piece that I have read about its activities in Haiti is by a long-time observer, Jake Johnston of the Center for Economic Policy and Research (CEPR). At the end of a Feb. 4 essay about the agency’s work in Haiti, he writes:

The term “aid” encompasses many different things: humanitarian assistance and development programming, contracts and grants, support to local organizations and multimillion dollar contracts to DC-area firms. 

There are many parts of the US foreign aid industry that can and should be stopped or significantly reformed. But that doesn’t mean that shutting down USAID, or making its assistance even more overtly political by placing it under the umbrella of the State Department, is going to be a good thing, either in the short or long term. 

The reality is that, where foreign assistance is least effective, it is largely because it is designed to promote US interests rather than address the needs of those ostensibly on the receiving end. The changes announced by the Trump administration are not likely to truly disrupt US soft power abroad. If anything, it will make political interventionism an even more explicit aim of US foreign assistance.

Late but welcome: Biden lifts terrorist insult against Cuba

by Jim Hodgson

Less than a week before he vacates the White House, U.S. President Joe Biden removed Cuba from the U.S. government’s State Sponsors of Terrorism (SSOT) List. The move had been demanded by governments around the world and by U.S. civil society since it was imposed four years ago in a similar last-minute move by then out-going President Donald Trump.

The Biden administration also suspended Title III of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act. That measure, suspended by all presidents until Trump, allows U.S. claimants whose property was nationalized during the Cuban Revolution to sue companies for doing business on that property. Canada has persistently objected to the extraterritorial implications of that act, and promised to defend Canadians doing business in Cuba.

Biden also rescinded a 2017 national security memorandum (NSPM-5) that restricted financial transactions by various Cuban entities, including many hotels.

Now that Trump is returning to the White House (with an anti-Cuba hardliner, Marco Rubio, as his Secretary of State), the measures may not last long.

On the same day (Tuesday, January 14), “in the spirit of the Jubilee year 2025,” Cuba announced the release of 533 prisoners after talks with Pope Francis and other Vatican officials.

Cuba welcomed the new U.S. moves. “Despite its limited nature, this is a decision in the right direction and in line with the sustained and firm demand of the Government and the people of Cuba, and with the broad, emphatic and reiterated call of numerous governments,” said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Those calls had been echoed by political, religious and social organizations in the United States and elsewhere.

In the United States, the National Network on Cuba (NNOC) reaffirmed its commitment to fight against the blockade and noted the efforts of solidarity to achieve the result made public on Tuesday by the Biden administration. The co-president of the NNOC, Cheryl LaBash, told Prensa Latina that “When we fight, we win!”, referring to the “many resolutions that represent more than 60 million people in the United States—municipal councils, state legislatures, unions – who made their voices heard.”

Colombian President Gustavo Petro also celebrated the exclusion of Cuba from the list. He said that eliminating punitive measures, even partially, constitutes progress. The Colombian Foreign Ministry also expressed gratitude to the Cuban people for their unrestricted support in the negotiation and dialogue processes necessary to achieve peaceful coexistence in Colombia.

“Due to our firm conviction in multilateralism as a principle of international relations, we reject the imposition of sanctions and unilateral measures and therefore, together with other allied countries in the region, we support the efforts and requests for the sister Republic of Cuba to be excluded from this list,” the ministry said. 

Trump’s officials had put Cuba back on the SSOT four years ago after Cuba had hosted a dialogue between a previous government of Colombia and one of the guerrilla armies, the National Liberation Army (ELN). It was originally placed on the list by the Reagan administration in 1982 for supposedly aiding the liberation movements in Central America: that while Reagan sponsored the “contras” in their dirty war against Nicaragua.

Among all the sanctions levied against Cuba over the past 65 years, the SSOT designation may be the most damaging. Foreign-owned ships won’t dock in Cuba and foreign banks are reluctant to transfer funds for fear of running afoul of the U.S. laws. To understand better the impact of the SSOT in Cuba, please read a long report by the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).

For more background on the SSOT list, please see: “How Biden Embraced Trump’s Terror Smear Against Cuba,” by Alyssa Oursler and Jack Mcgrath (The Jacobin).

For more on Title III, please see: “Billboards and Backchannels: Deep Inside the Lobbying Campaign to Crush Investment in Cuba,” by Reed Lindsay and Daniel Montero (Belly of the Beast).

Cuba-U.S. relations: the thaw that didn’t happen

by Jim Hodgson

A decade ago this week came news that the United States and Cuba would begin a process to restore relations broken in 1961 in the wake of the Cuban Revolution and at the height of the Cold War. 

Simultaneous announcements, December 17, 2014. Image: OnCuba News. For more background, please see my 2021 series of posts about Cuba, beginning here.

“Today, America chooses to cut loose the shackles of the past so as to reach for a better future—for the Cuban people, for the American people, for our entire hemisphere, and for the world,” said President Barack Obama. 

“As we have repeated, we must learn the art of coexisting, in a civilized manner, with our differences,” said President Raúl Castro. 

Obama did not, however, back away from historic U.S. criticisms of Cuba’s revolutionary option; nor did Castro promise to surrender national sovereignty or its political system. But a process was set in place for dialogue over differences. Prisoners were released on both sides of the Straits of Florida. People could visit each other once again. Perhaps the United States would finally become a “good neighbour” to Cuba and other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Tragically, hope inspired that week and by Obama’s visit to Havana in March 2016 has proved but fleeting—“ephemeral” says an editorial Tuesday in Mexico’s La Jornada daily newspaper. 

When Donald Trump came to power in January 2017, he cancelled all the advances of the Obama era and, as La Jornada puts it, added “new layers of sadism to the criminal blockade against Cuba.” He even maintained his “maximum pressure” on Cuba during the COVID-19 pandemic, obstructing Cuba’s efforts to obtain vital medical supplies during the crisis. (Yes, Cuba produced its own vaccines, but syringes and other specific items were in short supply.)

We kind of knew then (as we do now) that dealing with Trump in a rational manner would be difficult, but it was a disappointment that President Joe Biden failed so miserably to alter any but the most minor of sanctions that the United States—alone in the world—applies to Cuba. The harshest measure—maintaining Cuba on a U.S. list of “state sponsors of terrorism”—blocks Cuba from normal international financial activity. It is applied in an “extraterritorial” way, complicating efforts even by humanitarian organizations in other countries (including Canada) to share financial resources or for freight companies to carry material aid to Cuba.

As I have said before, sanctions in almost every instance harm civilian populations and fail to produce their stated goal: regime change. In Cuba today, the consequences verge on catastrophic (again, the word used by La Jornada): Cuba is now “unable to generate urgent resources in order to restore its energy system, start food production, take advantage of its tourism potential, and restore industries devastated by the isolation to which Washington has subjected it.”

Cubans will march to the U.S. embassy in Havana on Friday, December 20, against “imperial shame” and for an end to hostility.

In these next four years, leaders of the United States represent a menace to their own population—especially Trans people, pregnant women, and immigrants—but also to other nations. In the face of Trump’s tariff threats, Canada and Mexico are both scrambling to mitigate damage. They’ll be choosing which battles to fight.

Canada, together with countries like Mexico, must retain its distinct foreign policy, a feature of which for 65 years has been solidarity with Cuba. And those of us who care for Cuba’s choice to do things differently must remind Trump and his cohort that they cannot punish a country simply because it chooses not to govern itself as the United States wishes.