- July 29, 2025
Dictators win as Trump cuts aid to human rights groups in Cuba, Venezuela
The dictators of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua are breathing more easily these days. Human rights groups and independent media in their countries are being decimated, courtesy of President Trump’s massive foreign aid cuts to pro-democracy groups abroad.
In the wake of Trump’s July 18 law slashing $9 billion from foreign aid and public broadcasting, many pro-democracy groups in Latin America are drastically downsizing. Some are considering shutting down altogether, activists tell me.
Trump’s budget cuts stripped $8 billion from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and other organizations that provided foreign assistance. Nearly half of that — $4 billion — had funded international organizations and pro-democracy groups, countering China and Russia’s outsized cultural and political propaganda programs in developing countries.
If you think that America is spending too much on foreign aid to promote democracy, think again. Trump’s recently passed ‘Big Beautiful’ law injects $170 billion in new funds — over 4,000% more — to arrest and imprison undocumented immigrants. That includes $45 billion earmarked for immigration detention centers — critics call them concentration camps — to keep mostly hard-working undocumented people who have committed no serious crimes.
Many human rights groups in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador and other countries are now facing “an existential threat” because of U.S. budget cuts, says Juan Pappier, Latin America director at the Human Rights Watch advocacy group.
Much of this aid flowed through the International Republican Institute (IRI), a nonprofit group linked to the Republican Party. But since the start of Trump’s second term, the IRI has had to suspend 92 of 95 programs to defend democracy in authoritarian countries, the Miami Herald reported in March.
About 85% of the IRI’s staff have been laid off, and all of its 64 overseas offices have been closed, according to TheHill.com.
On Wednesday, the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee approved legislation that could restore some of the foreign aid programs that Trump wants to defund, but the scope and fate of that congressional effort is still unclear.
Laritza Diversent, the U.S.-based executive director of CubaLex, one of Cuba’s best-known human rights groups, told me that “there will be a major weakening of human rights organizations that are operating in Cuba” as U.S. foreign aid dwindles. Her own group, which gathers data on political prisoners and provides them with legal help, has had to lay off some employees and cut 50% of its contract workers, Diversent told me.
Justicia 11J, another Cuban human rights group, has had to cancel presentations before the United Nations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to denounce the plight of Cuban prisoners. The group helps hundreds of political prisoners arrested during the massive demonstrations of June 11, 2021.
Camila Rodriguez, head of Justicia 11, told me the group was informed earlier this year it would lose 90% of its U.S. funding for a key project. Later, they were told some aid would be restored, but it’s not clear how much, or when.
Right now, Justicia 11J is operating with a skeleton crew that is doing all of its work on a voluntary basis, Rodriguez said. This has caused “a significant decrease in the production and dissemination of content aimed at documenting and denouncing systematic violations of the right to peaceful protest in Cuba,” she added.
A similar crisis is hitting the Voice of America and independent news websites in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, El Salvador and other countries, as their U.S. funds are being cut.
In many countries, these websites are the only sources of critical news, and are competing against Russia’s state-run Russia Today en Español and Telesur regional TV network, funded by the Venezuelan and Cuban regimes.
“Trump’s budget cuts to USAID and the Voice of America are manna from heaven for China and Russia,” Arturo Sarukhan, a former Mexican ambassador to the United States, told me. He added, “This withdrawal of U.S. soft power, the abandonment of public diplomacy, and the capacity to counter Russian propaganda in Latin America is an own goal for the United States.”
I agree. Worst of all, these cuts to support human rights groups and independent media in Latin America amounts to peanuts compared to the astronomical sums the Trump administration plans to spend arresting mostly hard-working immigrants who are doing jobs that most Americans won’t do.
Indeed, the dictators of Russia and China, and their allies in Latin America, will have a field day, thanks to Trump’s abrupt end to the post-World War II bipartisan consensus that promoting democracy abroad is a moral duty, and a smart thing to do to keep the U.S. safe.