International cooperation should be built on the basis of a horizontal relationship between allied countries. However, compliance with this condition of solidarity among nations is the exception rather than the rule, especially in the case of alliances between countries of the North and the Global South. While the former usually have better conditions to take advantage of the benefits of global governance, the latter are left in a relationship of dependence and subordinated to the decisions of the most powerful countries. An example of this inequality is the Trump administration’s unilateral decision to suspend the resources of the international assistance programs implemented by USAID, which has serious consequences for the organizations and recipient states that have been benefiting from this alliance. 

But, alluding to the saying “look at the glass half full”, this juncture could be a golden opportunity for Colombia in future international cooperation agreements to integrate greater horizontality, flexibility and transparency in its alliances, in order to mitigate the negative effects of geopolitical decisions such as those of Trump.

 A necessary evil 

In general, cooperation programs are not always aligned with the territorial priorities of the countries. However, it is undeniable that the measure announced by Trump is a hard blow to the sustainability of civil society action and some state programs in Colombia, especially at the subnational level, where public policies have been executed whose implementation depends partially or totally on external financing. 

In this context, USAID has become a strategic partner, especially in addressing issues related to human rights, peace building, rural development and institutional strengthening. The problem is that this structural dependence limits the autonomy of the State, social organizations and communities to set their own agendas, since, as we will see below, the guidelines of this cooperation between countries respond more to U.S. interests than to local demands, blurring the solidarity and horizontal relationship that should prevail in international cooperation.   

In 2024, Colombia was the second country in the Latin American region that received the most aid from USAID, and the territories that received the greatest investment from U.S. cooperation were Antioquia, Nariño and Norte de Santander. Here, social and community organizations, public institutions such as municipal mayors’ offices, judicial and administrative control entities were able to execute work plans, have the means to meet and even hire technical personnel. 

Programs such as: “Generating Equity” had the purpose of developing training for historically vulnerable populations, especially women’s groups, ethnic and LGBTIQ+ communities; “Integra” facilitated helping migrants, refugees and returnees through a comprehensive humanitarian center, as was the case in the city of Cartagena; “Nuestra Tierra Próspera” and “Conciliadores en equidad” were national programs with territorial prioritization that respectively delivered property titles in urban and rural areas; and bet on increasing access to justice services through institutional strengthening and civil society participation. 

And, although after so much investment it is not possible to say that the social fabric of the community has been rebuilt, not having these resources will mean a vacuum for citizen mobilization and for municipalities to guarantee public goods that promote regional development. For territories where the local State has low capacity, where communities suffer from high socioeconomic inequality and suffer the consequences of the armed conflict, these donations become a necessary evil, being better to have them than not to have them at all.

The mixed picture of USAID in Colombia’s regions

USAID’s presence in Colombia is not recent. By the 1960s, it was already involved in interventions related to employment, housing, health and food. But it was with Plan Colombia and its successive transformations since 1999 that the cooperative relationship between Colombia and the United States strengthened in terms of security, since the war against drugs was the priority of the United States. From then on, a strategy of territorial recovery and war against “narco-terrorism”  was implemented, creating agreements that prioritized militarization over socioeconomic development.  

According to the Truth Commission created by the Peace Agreement between the Colombian State and the extinct FARC-EP, with this cooperation alliance, the Colombian State, in coordination with the U.S., resumed aerial fumigations without territorial restrictions; the first US Special Forces training was given to the Colombian Army; the National Plan for Territorial Consolidation (PNCT) was implemented; and the controversial Decree 2002 was issued, which produced serious, massive human rights violations, such as the arbitrary detentions that Dejusticia describes in Que nos llamen inocentes (May They Call Us Innocents).

One of USAID’s strategies of influence at the territorial level were the so-called consolidation zones, with the subregions of La Macarena in the department of Meta and Montes de María in the Colombian Caribbean being the most emblematic. The former was used as a model for the design of the national strategy and the latter was conceived as a “peace laboratory” after the paramilitary demobilization and the implementation by the national State—with little influence from the local State—of humanitarian assistance programs for victims of the armed conflict who were in the process of returning. 

On paper, the initial objective of the consolidation zones was to begin with high-value military operations to establish conditions of “territorial security”, then seek to bring in civilian institutions for the provision of public goods, and finally withdraw most of the military forces from these zones and consolidate a guaranteeing state and a territory free of armed groups and drugs. 

In practice, however, this was not the case. In the first place, the implementation of the program had a vertical logic, since decisions were made by the national government, while the local government had a very low degree of involvement. Secondly, there was an asymmetry between military and civilian initiatives. The military was frequently observed working on roads, schools or sewage systems, while at the same time holding meetings with the communities and even promoting the formation of peasant associations to work directly with the PNCT. 

They also conducted police checkpoints where they took photographs of passengers, made lists of civilians’ telephone numbers and restricted the transit of vehicles, as noted in the report A la espera de la consolidación (Waiting for Consolidation) by organizations such as Wola, Minga Indígena and Indepaz. These organizations observed difficulties in pulling local civilian institutions together due to institutional distrust rooted in a political class allied with illegal armed groups, governments that did not finish their terms and little will, added to a precarious judicial system that increased impunity.  

USAID resources in consolidation zones such as La Macarena were used for land titling programs for landless peasants and agricultural development projects. This investment was relevant to generate income in the communities of returnees. However, possibly the greatest negative impact has to do with the fact that the implementation of these funds was done through the contracting of U.S. companies and were executed through operators, which makes us uncertain about the real impact of these funds, since a strong bureaucratic backdrop was created around these projects. In addition, these were projects that had to be implemented in short periods of time without taking into account regional needs and dynamics. 

The glass half full

How can we reduce the imbalance between countries in North-South cooperation and reduce dependence on U.S. resources? There is not an easy answer. The State should make use of fiscal policy principles to incentivize new sources of sustainable financing, especially the subnational State. But, seen from a territorial and decentralized approach, future international cooperation agreements between Colombia and other countries should be transformed into horizontal and transparent alliances that develop projects with a logic of interconnected processes that integrate the diverse worldviews of peace and regional development. Respect the rights of the communities, without supplanting their voices, without assuming paternalistic attitudes or reproducing stigmatization schemes. In that way, we could build a civil society more resilient to the kind of threats such as those presented by Trump. This is the path it seems we need to go down.