A popular meme spread across social media after Flávio Bolsonaro won the first round of Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday. It claimed that no Left-wingers have won a Latin American election since Elon Musk and DOGE scrapped the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

To cite one example, Donald Trump Jr posted on X: “Billions in taxpayer cash were funding NGOs, ‘democracy’ programs, and activist networks that conveniently always backed the same side. They called it aid but it was election interference.” Another X post called it “a generational move by the Trump administration”.

According to its proponents, USAID supported programmes for poor farmers battling drought, resettlement efforts for migrants and environmental protection in the Amazon, among other initiatives. It also funded non-governmental groups ostensibly exposing corruption, working with the media and protecting human rights. However, this quickly drew scorn from the Left and Right, with both sides often accusing USAID of subverting their governments.

There is a kernel of truth in these Right-wing claims. Latin America has favoured conservative candidates in recent years, including many aligned with President Donald Trump, such as those in Chile, Colombia and Peru. That string of Right-wing victories coincides with DOGE taking a wrecking ball to USAID.

Correlation, however, does not equal causation. The claim overlooks the fact that Left-wing, anti-American governments in Bolivia and Ecuador expelled USAID more than a decade ago. In Nicaragua, the sons of President Daniel Ortega claimed that Trump had “turned off the faucet for terrorists”, while former-Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro claimed USAID tried to destabilise his country. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum publicly celebrated USAID’s demise, saying at the time: “The truth is it’s better that they close it down.”

The fact is that USAID probably didn’t move the political needle all that much in Latin America. The region has been electing Right-wingers for a series of local and regional factors. Latin American politics traditionally swings between Left and Right. The Left ascended in the 2000s, buoyed by a resource boom as countries such as Brazil and Argentina sold agricultural bounties to China. The Leftist Chavista regime in Venezuela, meanwhile, plied the region with cheap oil and petrodollars.

But the failure of Venezuela, where the economy collapsed and nearly eight million people fled the country, discredited the Left. The decline of Chavista acolytes in Ecuador and Bolivia damaged the Left’s reputation even further, and mobilised the Right. Latin American countries have also ruthlessly voted out incumbent parties over the past decade — with Mexico, El Salvador and Paraguay being notable exceptions — a trend that has impacted the Leftists elected in the late 2010s and early 2020s.

USAID has faced many accusations over the years in Latin America, but its demise didn’t bring the Latin American Right to power. The rise of the Latin American Right has more prosaic explanations. The Left failed to address the region’s pressing issues: immigration, crime and the power of drug cartels. Now the Right has its turn, and the pendulum will swing Left again if it doesn’t deliver.