Cuts to USAID severed longstanding American support for Indigenous people around the world
June 4, 2025
The effort to protect the Peruvian Amazon from deforestation related to the cocaine trade was long supported by financial assistance from the U.S. Agency for International Development. The agency spent billions of dollars starting in the 1980s to help farmers in Peru shift from growing coca for cocaine production to legal crops such as coffee and cacao for chocolate. But the Trump administration’s recent sweeping cuts have thrown that tradition of U.S. assistance into doubt. Without American help, Indigenous people in the Amazon are worried. They are bracing for a resurgence of the cocaine market, increased threats to their land and potentially violent challenges to their human rights.
