Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.
The highlights this week: Latin American countries respond to Trump’s rapprochement with Russia, Bolivia opens a Chinese-backed steel plant, and Colombia chairs overtime U.N. biodiversity talks.
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Latin American policymakers have watched closely in recent days as U.S. President Donald Trump has moved away from the West and warmed up to Russia. Trump administration officials have held meetings with their Russian counterparts on the war in Ukraine—without including Kyiv—and begun to vote with Russia in United Nations resolutions about the conflict.
U.S.-Russia relations matter to Latin America. Of the many critiques that Washington has leveled at governments in the region over the years, being too close to Moscow is one of them.
During both Trump’s first term and President Joe Biden’s administration, senior U.S. officials spoke openly about their desires to push back against Russian influence in Latin America. In 2022, most countries in the region voted in favor of a United Nations resolution condemning Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But the fact that most did not sanction Russia or arm Ukraine became a point of tension with the United States.
When Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called for Russia-Ukraine peace talks in 2023 and said that the United States should stop “encouraging” the war via arms exports to Ukraine, a White House spokesperson labeled Lula’s comments as “misguided” and said that he was “parroting Russian and Chinese propaganda.”
Now, it’s the U.S. president who is pushing for peace talks. But Trump’s overtures have so far not become an area of convergence with Brazil. To Lula, the United States has now swung too far in Russia’s direction. “You have to call both sides to the negotiating table,” he said of Trump’s decision to exclude Ukraine from initial negotiations.
Lula also called for other European countries to be included in deliberations about the war. He and French President Emmanuel Macron spoke on the phone about Ukraine last week, the latest sign of intensifying relations between Latin America and Europe in the age of Trump.
Trump’s pivot to Russia is not an automatic win for any Latin American country. Instead, it has become yet another prickly issue to navigate in relations with the United States, even if some consensus may be possible.
The Economist reported that U.S. officials have floated the possibility that Brazilian or Chinese troops could serve as peacekeepers in postwar Ukraine. Lula said last week that “Brazil will not send troops”—although he did voice openness to a “peace mission.”
Time will tell if Brazil’s relatively cautious strategy toward Trump pays more dividends than strongly leaning in toward the new U.S. administration. Neighboring Argentina has adopted the latter approach, switching from a trend of backing Ukraine in U.N. votes to abstaining on Monday.
Argentine President Javier Milei traveled to Washington last week, his second such trip during Trump’s presidency. Milei spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where he gave businessman and Trump advisor Elon Musk a chainsaw meant to symbolize both men’s crusades to raze government bureaucracy.
Milei spoke with Trump on the sidelines of the event but did not score a White House visit while in Washington. The Argentine leader did have an official meeting with the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), where he is trying to obtain new financing while limiting the agency’s requirements for potentially painful currency reforms.
In 2018, when Argentina’s president was a friend of Trump’s, the country was fast-tracked for the IMF’s biggest loan in its history. If Milei’s embrace of Trump delivers him friendly policies, they could also be visible in a new IMF deal, as well as in a White House invite that Trump proposed for some time in “the coming months.”
Friday, Feb. 28, to Wednesday, March 5: Countries including Brazil, Colombia, and Trinidad and Tobago celebrate Carnival.
Saturday, March 1: Yamandú Orsi is inaugurated as president of Uruguay.
Tuesday, March 4: U.S. tariffs of 25 percent on Mexican and Canadian goods are scheduled to take effect.
Tuesday, March 4: The U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments in a Mexican lawsuit against U.S. gun manufacturers.
EU courts CARICOM. Last week, Ursula von der Leyen became the first European Commission president to pay an official visit to the Caribbean. The European Union’s outreach to the region is part of its efforts to diversify ties amid strained relations with the United States.
Von der Leyen attended last week’s Caribbean Community (CARICOM) summit in Barbados and highlighted EU investments in areas such as green hydrogen, satellites for internet connectivity, and local pharmaceutical production.
Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley celebrated von der Leyen’s interest in the Caribbean. But the summit included some tensions, too.
Outgoing CARICOM chair and Grenada Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell told von der Leyen that as the EU engages more in the Caribbean, the “issue of reparations for trans-Atlantic slavery” is a matter that “we will take up with you.” In her speech, von der Leyen said that slavery was a crime against humanity but did not mention compensation.
Bolivia’s steel plant. Bolivia opened its first steel plant this week, decades after officials first envisioned a facility at the site of a large iron ore deposit in the country’s east. The project, which cost more than $500 million, was financed in large part by the Export-Import Bank of China as part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.
A Chinese firm is due to operate the site in its first year. The head of the Bolivian state firm that is also involved in operations said that the plant is projected to cut Bolivia’s need for steel imports by half.
Bolivian authorities have been slow to move forward with mining iron ore in the past due to both commercial disputes and environmental concerns. Local sustainability watchdogs are scrutinizing the new plant.
Revelers perform during Barranquilla Carnival in Barranquilla, Colombia, on Feb. 11, 2024.
Revelers perform during Barranquilla Carnival in Barranquilla, Colombia, on Feb. 11, 2024.Charlie Cordero/AFP via Getty Images
Commentary at Carnival. This weekend formally kicks off annual Carnival festivities across Latin America, but some cities started celebrating early. Ayacucho, Peru, marks Carnival by holding a contest for best mask. The masks typically include Indigenous imagery as well as cultural and political references.
This year’s winning mask depicted an alliance between the local governor and Peruvian President Dina Boluarte. It shows Boluarte wearing a Rolex watch, a reference to allegations that she used undisclosed assets to buy luxury wear. (Boluarte has denied the accusations of wrongdoing.)
Polls in recent months have showed the president’s approval rating well below 20 percent and at times even under 10 percent. In Ayacucho, some other finalists in the mask contest also featured Boluarte.
One of the region’s biggest Carnival parades is in the city of Oruro, which lies in what country?
Ecuador
Bolivia
Peru
Brazil
Carnival celebrations there feature Indigenous iconography and customs.
Colombian Environment Minister Susana Muhamad opens the COP16 biodiversity conference at the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization headquarters in Rome on Feb. 25.
Colombian Environment Minister Susana Muhamad opens the COP16 biodiversity conference at the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization headquarters in Rome on Feb. 25.Alberto Pizzoli/AFP via Getty Images
Although Susana Muhamad announced her resignation as Colombia’s environment minister earlier this month, she is seeing out one final task: chairing an overtime session of U.N. biodiversity talks after they hit an impasse last November in Cali, Colombia.
That Cali conference was a gathering of the 196 countries that are parties to a U.N. biodiversity treaty. The countries previously agreed to protect 30 percent of their land, waters, and seas by 2030. In Cali, they were supposed to decide how developing countries would receive funding support for those efforts.
But talks broke down. Rich countries wanted to keep channeling money through the existing Washington-based Global Biodiversity Framework Fund, while poorer ones criticized it as slow and hard to access, calling for a new financing method.
Negotiators reconvened this week in Rome. Late Thursday, they agreed on a five-year plan to boost financing in an “effective, timely and easily accessible manner,” including through domestic government spending, bilateral donations, and multilateral groups. While many full details remain to be ironed out, the commitment to move forward—and monitor next steps—was celebrated at the talks.
The talks yielded an additional innovative development: the creation of a separate conservation fund to be filled by businesses that profit from genetic information found in nature. Dubbed the Cali Fund, it is based on longtime critiques that sectors such as biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics benefit from genetic data in the natural world without giving back.
Still, though a top U.N. biodiversity official said that paying into the fund would “reap enormous reputational benefits” for companies, none immediately announced plans to do so at launch.
Above all, the Rome talks demonstrated the challenge of global environmental dealmaking in what Muhamad called “this very difficult geopolitical world.” Trump was elected in the period between the Cali and Rome conferences, and he has spurned environmental commitments, ordering the United States to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement on the first day of his presidency.
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Publish date : 2025-02-28 00:00:00
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