The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) returns to Ecuador after been expelled five years go by former President Rafael Correa. Now, under Lenin Moreno’s administration, the agency will reinstate its operations, according to Ecuador’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  

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On Wednesday, Ecuadorean Foreign Affairs Minister, Jose Valencia and USAID administrator Mark Green signed in Quito a memorandum of understanding, announcing a disbursement of US$30 million for so-called humanitarian aid. 

“This reflects the new era of cooperation between the U.S. and Ecuador," Valencia said, adding that the money was already delivered by the foreign agency. While Green “congratulated” Moreno’s administration on “this new era of U.S. - Ecuador bilateral cooperation focused on mutual interest.”

The agency had entered the Andean nation in 1961 as part of John F. Kennedy’s “Alliance for Progress,” a plan to push for U.S. presence and intervention in Latin America amidst mounting Cold War confrontations and rising interest for leftists ideologies in the region. Since then, USAID has been categorically denounced as a front for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). 

According to WikiLeaks, between 2004 and 2006, it carried out various actions in Venezuela transferring about US$15 million to dozens of non-government organizations, to carry out the strategies of looking for fractures inside the government and funding opposition sectors, in the name of “democracy.”

In Peru, the agency was linked to the process of forced sterilization of Peruvian Indigenous women people between 1995 and 2000 in the government of Alberto Fujimori. According to the Ministry of Health of Peru, 331,600 women and 25,590 men were sterilized during this period. USAID financed the government’s “planned family” program with about US$36 million.

Through decades of intervening in political and social areas, the U.S. agency came to become infamously known through the world, which is why Russia,  Burkina Faso, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Dominica, Nicaragua and Venezuela decided to expel the agency from their territories. 

In Ecuador, this was carried out during former President Correa’s reconfiguration of how foreign NGO’s operated in the country. By 2012, Correa warned that he would expel USAID, after denouncing financing to institutions "disguised as NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations)," under an alleged "strengthening of democracy" program.

"We are going to evaluate the role of USAID, to put very clear lines of action, and if they do not want to comply, let them go help other countries," Correa said at that time. By 2013, the Agency halted its operations and a year later officially left the country.

USAID is very similar to another CIA front, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA," said NED cofounder Allen Weinstein back in 1991. So it is not a coincidence that current administrator of USAID, Mark Green, served as president of the International Republican Institute (IRI), a public-known branch of NED, from 2014 to 2017.

Now five years later, Moreno’s government announces its return, allowing for the agency to meddle in all state matters, which will include, according to an official statement: economic and social development, conservation of the environment, management of natural resources and renewable energy, education at all levels, migration and refugee services, risk management and public policy regarding the structure and operation of the state.