Over the last year, a common narrative has circulated through conservative commentary about Latin America’s political shifts. Washington dismantled the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the argument goes, and conservative candidates began winning because American taxpayers stopped subsidizing their opponents. This narrative is misleading once placed under the microscope. But that has not stopped prominent figures on the MAGA right to spin a narrative.
Donald Trump Jr. claimed on Twitter/X:
Since we gutted USAID, the left hasn’t won a single presidential election in Latin America.
Billions in taxpayer cash were funding NGOs, “democracy” programs, and activist networks that conveniently always backed the same side. They called it aid but it was election interference.
Thank you @elonmusk for dragging this into the light. The grift is over.— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) October 5, 2026
His October 5 post began by arguing that the left had not won a Latin American presidential election since the USAID cuts. The historical record simply does not show an agency consistently backing one ideological camp. Foreign aid is distributed according to Washington’s cynical geopolitical interests, not along left versus right ideological lines.
Latin America’s recent conservative victories have local and regional explanations. Journalist David Agren identified crime, immigration, cartel power, Venezuela’s economic collapse, and a habit of voting out incumbents as important drivers. He also noted that leftist governments in Bolivia and Ecuador expelled USAID more than a decade ago, which weakens claims that the agency’s recent disappearance explains their political changes.
Brazil then broke the streak. Its electoral court declared Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva the winner of the October 25 presidential runoff against Flávio Bolsonaro, with 51.8% of the vote. Reuters reported that Lula’s victory interrupted a run of right wing election victories across Latin America.
Historically speaking, USAID programs were used to destabilize several leftist governments in Latin America in the last few decades. The common denominator were these government’s hostile posture to Washington’s universalist, neoliberal agenda.
The clearest documentary challenge to the idea that USAID uniformly favored the left comes from Venezuela. A November 2006 embassy cable described a five-point strategy. It began with “Strengthening Democratic Institutions” and continued with “Penetrating Chavez’ Political Base,” “Dividing Chavismo,” “Protecting Vital US business,” and “Isolating Chavez internationally.” The cable described the activities of USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives under four of those five aims.
Officials reported supporting more than three hundred Venezuelan civil society organizations with training and financial support upwards of $15 million. They described more than three thousand forums, workshops, and training sessions that connected opposition activists with Chávez supporters, with “the desired effect of pulling them slowly away from Chavismo.”
The document also records rights advocacy, including support for disability access, prison conditions and the victims of an alleged army massacre of twelve miners. It states that strengthening democratic institutions represented the majority of the office’s work and describes its approach as nonpartisan.
Later assistance supported Venezuela’s interim government under Juan Guaidó. USAID official Joshua Hodges testified in 2020 that the agency provided “direct technical training, staffing support, equipment, and communications support” to the interim government and the National Assembly.
Associated Press investigations uncovered another revealing case. USAID financed ZunZuneo, a Cuban text messaging network whose American sponsorship was concealed from its users and whose planning documents contemplated political mobilization. The service attracted tens of thousands of subscribers before ending in 2012. USAID acknowledged the project but disputed accusations that it intended to provoke unrest.
A separate AP investigation found that young Latin Americans traveled to Cuba to identify potential activists, often posing as tourists. A contractor’s report called one HIV prevention workshop “the perfect excuse” for the program’s political aims. USAID said the workshop served a dual purpose, including providing health information.
In Bolivia, governance assistance became controversial because it reached regional governments, including lowland ones that Morales accused of trying to overthrow him in 2008. Documents that journalist Jeremy Bigwood obtained through FOIA included a 2002 embassy letter describing a USAID party reform project meant to build parties that could serve as a “counterweight to the radical MAS or its successors.” Morales expelled USAID in 2013, alleging interference. The State Department rejected the accusations as baseless.
Indeed, USAID has been largely gutted by the second Donald Trump administration. The Government Accountability Office found that approximately 6,780 of 7,510 USAID awards were terminated between January 2025 and March 2026. Staffing fell from about 13,600 worldwide to 241 by April 2026.
After USAID stopped administering foreign assistance on July 1, 2025, as State announced, the State Department assumed responsibility for the surviving awards. A September 2026 GAO report put active awards at about $52.1 billion as of March 2026. That figure counts cumulative obligations back to 2015, not annual spending. The $79.1 billion attached to terminated awards uses the same measure.
However, Brian Berletic warned early that attacking USAID’s unpopular expenditures did not necessarily mean that United States would abandon its policy of interfering in the internal affairs of Latin American countries.
“They have not mentioned foreign interference, regime change, subversion, stifling development, and they have not said that they are going to stop any of that,” he told Useful Idiots in February 2025.
In February 2026, Congress preserved separate democracy assistance channels in the FY2026 appropriations law. It funded the National Endowment for Democracy at $315 million, the same as the prior year, even though the administration had proposed eliminating it. The law also set aside $50 million for Venezuela, $25 million for Cuba and $15 million for Nicaragua in democracy programs. It kept a Democracy Fund of $205 million at the State Department, down from prior years. Moreover, prominent Trump campaign operative Brad Parscale has used his companies to run social media campaigns that helped elect Trump-friendly candidates across Latin America.
Whether USAID’s demise helped conservatives win elections matters far less than the principle at stake, as the United States has no business meddling in Latin America’s domestic affairs through any agency, campaign operative, sanctions campaign, or military intervention.
