Cut to USAID funding affects rural regions of Colombia

Kevin Rivadeneira leans over the side of a canoe floating in the Laguna Grande, or Great Lake. He points toward a flock of pink birds in the distance. 

“Check out the flamingos,” Rivadeneira said in Spanish.

Indeed, hundreds of pink flamingos bob in the salty water. This is why thousands of tourists come to the Flora and Fauna Flamingo Sanctuary in Colombia’s remote La Guajira region every year. Rivadeneira runs a local eco-tourism agency here called Perlaguaneque. Since 2020, he’s worked with a team of locals to offer tours of the flamingo sanctuary as well as intercultural experiences and fishing expeditions. But it’s been harder to attract visitors lately. 

“We worry about safety,” Rivadeneira said. “This region has often been affected by security issues.” 

La Guajira is a rural and impoverished part of Colombia, home to sizable Indigenous and Afro-Colombian populations. The region has a long history of violence and forced displacement. It remains a stronghold for the National Liberation Army, or ELN, a guerrilla group involved in cocaine trafficking, illegal mining, and attacks on oil infrastructure.

Up until about a year ago, Rivadeneira’s tour group received funding from the US Agency for International Development, or USAID. Perlaguaneque was promised three years of funding from USAID, but received only the first year’s funding before cuts to USAID took effect in early 2025. The initial $30,000 Rivadeneira received went toward equipment like a computer and printer, life jackets and canoes, publicity for the agency, staff trainings and even conservation work. 

It was part of a $60 million foreign aid package President Donald Trump mocked in a presidential speech last March. 

“Just listen to some of the appalling waste we have already identified,” Trump announced. “$60 million for Indigenous peoples and Afro-Colombian empowerment.”  

Before the cuts last year wiped out nearly all US foreign aid to Colombia, the US spent hundreds of millions of dollars in Colombia annually, making it the largest USAID recipient in South America. A significant chunk of those dollars helped support the implementation of Colombia’s 2016 peace agreement that demobilized Colombia’s largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or the FARC. 

USAID projects ranged from support for minority-owned businesses nationwide to youth programming, aid to Venezuelan migrants in Colombia, and land titling in rural areas. Elizabeth Dickinson, deputy director for Latin America with the International Crisis Group, said many of these programs sought to upend cycles of poverty and inequality that fueled recruitment into illegal groups and the international drug trade. Colombia produces more cocaine than any other country in the world. 

“Imagine that an armed group comes to your house and offers you a salary. Offers you what they claim will be a better life, a material life that you’ve never had access to,” Dickinson said. “That’s a very tempting offer, and unfortunately, we’re seeing hundreds of children taking that offer.” 

Dickinson said giving people opportunities and boosting economic prospects in impoverished Colombian communities actually helped the US government accomplish major policy goals back home. For instance: the drug trade.

“A stable Colombia means there’s fewer drugs, means that there’s fewer drugs going to the United States,” Dickinson said. 

Richard Moreno Rodriguez, a lead coordinator with the Bogotá-based National Afro-Colombian Peace Council, said US foreign aid was also critical to his council’s work.

“This support was vital to peace,” Rodriguez said. “In each place where a project was executed, there was a possibility to lessen the violence and reduce deaths and displacement.” 

Since the cuts to USAID, Rodriguez said some organizations have had to shut down completely. 

Back at the flamingo sanctuary, Rivadeneira heads to a local Indigenous homestead, a ranchería. He often takes visitors there to learn about local traditions and handicrafts. Yaneiris Bonivento, a local leader, spins in a circle around the ranchería’s dusty open patio in a bright red, flowing dress. It’s a traditional dance she often demonstrates for visitors. She said welcoming tourists to her community is more than an additional source of income.

“It’s a way to let the outside world know that we exist,” Bonivento said. “That we can show them our culture and not have to hide it.” 

For now, further expansion and development of Rivadeneira’s tour agency is largely on hold. Rivadeneira has yet to find replacement funds for the US foreign aid money lost. 

“There were so many hopes and plans we had,” Rivadeneira said. 

It affects the fortunes of some 40 families in the village, from local tour guides and drivers to empanada vendors and hostel owners.

On a grander scale, Dickinson said the souring of US-Colombia relations will have ripple effects. 

“Colombia is the United States’ strongest security partner in the region, strongest development partner,” she said. “Should that relationship be affected in the long term, it’s not just Colombia that suffers. It’s the United States.”

In the meantime, Rivadeneira and his fellow residents will rely on fishing in local lakes to make ends meet, just as they always have. 

“These lakes are what have kept us fed, allowed us to go to school, to afford clothes and shoes,” Rivadeneira said. “This is a place we have to preserve and take care of.” 

As he makes his way through the dirt streets of his hometown, Rivadeneira whistles and shouts at friends as he passes. He knows nearly everyone in this town of 900 people, after all.