The United States government has a long record of involvement in coups, destabilization of democratically elected governments, and active sabotage of emancipatory public policies in Latin America. Often, cooperation and development agreements signed by international government agencies are used as an instrument to undermine democratic processes and direct the actions of the governments of these countries in ways that benefit the interests of the U.S. and big international capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The prime example, among many, is the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which played an acknowledged role in structuring the repressive apparatus that sustained dictatorships throughout the continent. In Brazil, the controversial agreements between the Ministry of Education and Culture and USAID, signed in the 1960s during the military dictatorship, aimed for cooperation between the Agency and the Brazilian government to reform higher education in the country. Denounced at the time as symbols of the increased U.S. presence in Brazil, the agreements represented, on the one hand, a step backward in education, eliminating subjects such as Philosophy from the curriculum and reducing the teaching load of subjects such as History.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the other hand, in the corridors of the Brazilian state, within the framework of an agreement with the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC), a consultancy was implemented to train and technically modernize the police forces<\/a>, with U.S. police advisors training the Brazilian repressive forces, a seminal program of Operation Condor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n U.S. police advisors had been present in Brazil since the government of Jo\u00e3o Goulart. At that time, Frank Jessup, head of the USAID program’s advisory team at the time of the 1964 military coup, celebrated in a telegram to Washington that police authorities in the eight states where U.S. forces were present had joined the coup. Jessup also celebrated that the Goulart government or the Brazilian left never questioned the presence of the country’s police advisors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Venezuelan migration<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Starting in 2019, USAID’s presence was again a constant in South America, especially focused on the Venezuelan issue. First, the agency participated in the operation to send \u201chumanitarian aid\u201d to Venezuela supporting Juan Guaid\u00f3, who, at the time, was recognized by the U.S. as the president. A subsequent report indicated that the operation \u201cdid not follow humanitarian principles,\u201d and that officials were directed to align the operation’s decisions \u201cto bolster the credibility of the interim government.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Guaid\u00f3’s parallel government received $158 million from USAID as funding for the \u201cVenezuelan government\u201d under an agreement signed in October 2019 to establish \u201cdevelopment projects.\u201d Since 2017, the U.S. government has allocated US$656 million to assist displaced Venezuelans<\/a> or for development projects involving Venezuelans \u2014 of which US$437 million has been committed by USAID.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Brazil, USAID’s recent presence has been mainly linked to support for projects with Venezuelan migrants developed by civil society organizations, under the umbrella of the humanitarian rationale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Oportunidades <\/em>(Opportunities) project, with a budget of US$4 million, has the objective of facilitating Venezuelan migrants’ access to formal employment and income-generating opportunities. It was launched in partnership with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in January 2020, shortly after Jair Bolsonaro’s government adopted the slogan \u201cSocialism excludes, Brazil welcomes\u201d for Operation Acolhida<\/em> (Welcome Operation), created to manage the flow of Venezuelans on Brazil’s northern border and implemented by the Armed Forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n