US President Donald Trump was yesterday to meet with a dozen right-wing leaders from Latin America and the Caribbean to discuss issues facing the region, from organized crime to illegal immigration. The “Shield of the Americas” summit also aims to serve Washington by boosting US interests in the region and curbing those from foreign powers such as China.
Trump has already staked bold claims in Latin America with the ouster of former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and working with his replacement, Delcy Rodriguez, to claim Venezuelan oil reserves for the US. The summit at Trump’s golf club in Doral, Florida — not far from his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach — marked the latest instance of the president moving ahead with his so-called “Donroe Doctrine” of asserting expanded US authority in the Western Hemisphere.
Among the leaders to attend the summit are Argentine President Javier Milei, Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele — whose security crackdown is seen as a model for many in the region.
Photo: AFP
Most of the right-wing heads of state share concern about the rising power of drug cartels in Latin America, a phenomenon that has spread to countries considered fairly safe until recently such as Ecuador and Chile, International Institute for Strategic Studies Latin America expert Irene Mia said.
“All those countries used to be quite secure and didn’t really have an issue with organized crime, but they’ve seen increasing levels of organized crime because of the reconfiguration of the drug trade,” Mia said.
The strained security situation, which has contributed to the Latin American right wing’s recent string of electoral victories, means the trend of US intervention has received less pushback than in the past, she added.
Some of leaders, such as Noboa, have worked to deepen ties to Washington since coming to power.
Just this week, the US and Ecuador announced joint operations to combat drug trafficking that has turned one of the previously safest countries in Latin America to among the deadliest in just a few years.
In addition to Milei, Bukele and Noboa, Trump would also host the leaders of Bolivia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, and Trinidad and Tobago — as well as Chilean president-elect Jose Antonio Kast.
Although some of the leaders have much to thank Trump for — such as US$20 billion in financial support to Argentina, or an endorsement that buoyed Honduran President Nasry Asfura’s razor-thin electoral victory — the durability of such a conservative coalition remains to be seen, Mia said.
“It’s entirely a negative agenda,” she said. “It’s all about the threats coming to the region for US security: migration, organized crime.”
Mia also pointed at the glaring absences from the summit, Mexico and Brazil, which are lead by leftists Claudia Sheinbaum and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva respectively.
“Without Mexico and Brazil, it’s not going to be very successful in tackling those issues” of narcotrafficking and counterterrorism, she said.
“The Mexican cartels are really the CEO of the drug trafficking supply chain. And Brazil is also so important, because its organized crime groups are also increasingly powerful, they control the ports in Brazil and are key for the narco-trafficking towards Europe,” she added.
The support of the right-led Latin American countries for US interests “is quite fragile, because the relationship between Latin America and the US is so problematic,” Mia said.
“It’s a very fine balance to see whether the population will approve of Trump’s policy and until when,” she added.
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