New Leaders Turn the Region's Geopolitics on Its Head

Welcome back to Foreign Policy's Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Argentina and Colombia chart new foreign-policy paths, Venezuela's opposition unites around a presidential candidate, and a Brazilian actor stars in the United States' Civil War.

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South American geopolitics is in the midst of a flip-flop.

Around this time in 2023, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was advocating for Argentina—then still governed by a left-wing president—to join the BRICS+ grouping of emerging economies, which initially comprised Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. But since "anarcho-capitalist" President Javier Milei took office last December, his administration has moved to reorient Argentina's foreign policy away from the global south and toward the United States, Israel, and a loose club of Western right-wing populists.

Last week, Milei took his latest step in this direction—submitting a formal letter requesting that Argentina become a "global partner" of NATO. The status is afforded to a handful of countries that collaborate closely with the military alliance, including South Korea and Colombia.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro, meanwhile, announced that he would now seek entry into BRICS+. Lula, who was in Bogotá on a state visit, endorsed Colombia's application. Petro is Colombia's first avowedly left-wing leader in its history.

No timeline for Argentina's or Colombia's prospective accession processes was immediately clear. Each would require the consensus of existing NATO and BRICS+ members, respectively.

For now, the moves are highly symbolic. BRICS+ is a provocative critic of Western hegemony, which is arguably embodied by NATO. But Colombia has no plans to relinquish its NATO partnership status. And, as frosty as Lula's and Milei's opinions of each other might be—Lula skipped Milei's inauguration—Argentina is highly dependent on Brazil economically.

Still, the ideological differences between Colombia and Argentina have major consequences for the prospects of Latin American regional integration. Countries have strived for varying degrees of political and economic coordination in recent decades, but many of those efforts eventually faltered. Argentina and Brazil, especially, have worked closely together in regional fora.

Lula and Petro often praise the prospect of regional integration. But carrying it out "is very difficult," Lula told reporters on Tuesday. The two left-wing leaders have so far underperformed on this front. Their clashing views on oil production loomed over an Amazon summit last year—where Petro called on countries such as Brazil to abandon plans of drilling in the Amazon rainforest region—and specifics of the Brazil-Colombia bilateral agenda have been slow to materialize.

But it appears that Milei's election late last year gave new urgency to the prospect of deeper Colombia-Brazil ties. In addition to Colombia's BRICS+ candidacy, Lula and Petro have begun to more closely coordinate their approach to Venezuela's July election. The two countries also signed six different cooperation agreements last week, including on agriculture and tourism.

Bilateral trade between the two countries has roughly doubled in the decade up to December 2022, though it fell sharply last year amid slow growth in Colombia. Cars and corn are among Brazil's leading exports to Colombia, while coal and plastics top flows the other way.

More coordination between Brazil and Colombia—and between Colombia and other emerging countries—is likely on the horizon. Milei's priorities are farther afield.

Sunday, April 28: Mexico holds a presidential debate ahead of elections in June.

Sunday, April 28, to Tuesday, April 30: Argentina's foreign minister visits China.

Tuesday, April 30, to Wednesday, May 1: The International Court of Justice holds preliminary hearings in Mexico's case against Ecuador.

Argentina's austerity. The Argentine government recorded a quarterly budget surplus for the first time in 16 years, Milei reported this week. Reducing the nation's deficit by slashing public spending has been one of Milei's main goals as president.

The cuts have inflicted pain across multiple sectors of Argentina's economy. Public universities are especially hard-hit: Their real budgets for this year are on track to fall as much as 80 percent due to Milei's policies. High-quality public education is broadly celebrated in Argentina, and Argentines from across the political spectrum hit the streets in nationwide protests on Tuesday to demonstrate against austerity.

Accompanied by his dog, a man votes in Ecuador's referendum on security and economic issues at a polling station in the capital city of Quito on April 21.Rodrigo Buendia/AFP via Getty Images

Resounding referendum. Ecuadorians overwhelmingly backed President Daniel Noboa's suite of security reforms in a referendum on Sunday. His proposals included increasing military-police cooperation and hardening criminal punishments. The vote reflected broad public approval of Noboa's crackdown on organized crime since he declared the country to be in a state of "armed internal conflict" with gangs in January.

Security reform wasn't the only thing on ballot, however. Noboa also tried, and failed, to gain approval for pro-market economic reforms that included changing labor regulations. He is expected to try to move those reforms forward in Ecuador's legislature later this year, which could imperil his high popularity ahead of presidential elections in 2025.

Civil War's Brazilian star. The top movie at cinema box offices in Brazil and the United States this past weekend was the dystopian film Civil War, which stars Brazilian actor Wagner Moura alongside American actor Kirsten Dunst. Moura plays a wire reporter covering an internal conflict that has erupted in the United States.

Brazilian audiences have been celebrating the film's 81 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. They are also musing about its parallels to real-life political polarization in the United States and Brazil. Online disinformation, highly familiar to Brazilians, plays a role in the film's plot. The scenario of civil war seems "frighteningly close," Moura told Folha de São Paulo.

Moura is one of the best-known Brazilian film stars working internationally today. His past roles include playing Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar in Netflix's Narcos. "Even when my character is not Brazilian," Moura told Globo television on Sunday, characters "are always a big reflection of who we are."

Moura also played the titular role in the Netflix film Sergio, a biopic of a Brazilian diplomat. What historical event is the backdrop of the movie?

Sérgio Viera de Mello was working as the United Nations high commissioner for human rights when he was killed in the bombing of a U.N. compound in Baghdad in 2003.

• The Iran-Israel War Is Just Getting Started by Raphael S. Cohen
• Why Arab States Haven't Broken With Israel by David E. Rosenberg
• A Tale of Two Megalopolises by Jan-Werner Müller

Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González poses for a picture in Caracas on April 24.Ronald Peña/AFP via Getty Images

After many ups and downs, Venezuela's opposition has united behind a single presidential candidate whom election authorities have certified is eligible to run in the elections scheduled for July.

The unlikely candidate is former diplomat Edmundo González, 74. González was registered as a last-minute substitute when both Marina Corina Machado, who had won the opposition primary, and her alternate Corina Yoris were banned on what were widely understood to be politically motivated charges.

At first, the plan was that González would act as a stand-in to be substituted for a consensus candidate at a later date. But in recent days, intense negotiations among opposition groups led them to agree to support his candidacy. Manuel Rosales, the opposition governor of Zulia state, withdrew his own presidential candidacy to support González. Machado endorsed González as well.

On Wednesday, González gave his first public speech as the official unity opposition candidate. He thanked Machado and others for their support and said that he aimed to restore Venezuela's economy, public services, and social unity. In a calm address posted to YouTube, he pledged not only to work toward freedom for Venezuela's political prisoners, but also toward a Venezuela free of political persecution.

The latter statement hints at the possibility that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his allies might not need to fear the worst consequences for potential abuses that they have committed if they leave office peacefully in the event of an opposition victory.

González is not the only person engaging with the once far-fetched prospect of a Maduro defeat. In Bogotá last week, Petro and Lula issued a joint statement calling for a plebiscite to guarantee that the loser of Venezuela's presidential election would not suffer political persecution. And Wednesday in Caracas, Machado said that the proposal merited discussion; it is "absolutely a priority" to reach "agreements about guarantees and institutional safeguards for a transition process," she added.

Together, the comments signal to Maduro's government that allowing the opposition to win—as polls suggest it would—would not pose maximal punishment for members of the regime. Machado, who was once known for hard-line anti-Maduro positions, has recently exercised "strategic moderation," political analyst Pablo Andrés Quintero told Venezuelan outlet Efecto Cocuyo on Wednesday. The opposition needs to show Maduro that "that they can conduct a transition in peace," Quintero said.