DORAL, Fla. — The U.S. State Department recently announced “committing $15.5 million in funding for emergency shelter, food, protection, and earthquake assessments” after a 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck on Monday in western Colombia.

Abelardo De La Espriella, the new president of Colombia, had taken his oath of office on Friday in Cali, where Mayor Alejandro Eder announced Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele sent a plane with 50 tons of aid and was preparing to send a second.

Adam Ratzlaff, a Florida International University researcher with experience in conducting analysis for the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank has been following the updates.

“This may be an opportunity to see the U.S. government working hand-in-hand with the new Colombian administration,” said Ratzlaff, the founder and chief executive officer of Pan-American Strategic Advisors, a strategic advisory firm and think tank.

The U.S. State Department also announced the deployment of a disaster assistance response team of humanitarian experts to Colombia.

“This is going to be a real testing point for the administration at a time when he is still staffing up. He is very close to the Trump administration. Obviously, the Trump administration would like to see him doing well,” Ratzlaff said.

The Trump administration deployed the U.S. military to northern Venezuela and committed more than $386 million in humanitarian assistance after the devastating 7.2 and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes on June 24.

The U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, under Trump’s second administration faced both sweeping program cancellations and massive staff layoffs.

“The United States just gave a lot of aid money to neighboring Venezuela. The administration has laid out the Western Hemisphere as its priority. The question will be, ‘How much appetite is there for addressing humanitarian crisis?’” Ratzlaff said.

The U.S. hosts the largest portion of the Colombian diaspora, estimated at 1.6 to 2 million Colombian-Americans and immigrants, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank based in Washington, D.C.

“It may mean that a lot of the aid going to Colombia will have to come from the diaspora,” Ratzlaff said. “The largest diaspora in the United States from South America is from Colombia, so we would hope to see a lot of aid flowing in country from the diaspora, but the geo-politics on this will be complicated.”

Before the earthquakes, the U.S. had already pledged $1 billion in security assistance to Colombia, and De La Espriella announced Colombia was joining the “Shield of the Americas,” also known as the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition, which Trump launched in March.

Earthquake response to test U.S.-Colombia relations under new president, expert says

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