Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Chinese firm BYD reshapes Brazil’s auto industry, Argentine health officials race to find the origins of the hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship, and the United States indicts a Mexican governor.

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Chinese firm BYD reshapes Brazil’s auto industry, Argentine health officials race to find the origins of the hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship, and the United States indicts a Mexican governor.

BYD’s Brazil Breakthrough

Last year, in one of Brazil’s most popular soap operas, a billionaire gifted her boyfriend a car: the BYD Song Pro. Her chauffeur drove a more affordable BYD model. This was not a coincidence, but the result of a product placement campaign to reshape perceptions of the Chinese automaker.

Chinese cars used to have a negative reputation in Brazil, and electric cars were often met with skepticism, BYD Senior Vice President for Brazil Alexandre Baldy said on a podcast this year. The company’s extensive publicity campaign aimed to change that.

It appears to be working: In April, BYD became the best-selling car brand in Brazil’s retail market for the first time. Though the company has yet to lead in annual sales, these figures point to a broader trend in both Brazil’s auto market and China’s industrial footprint in Latin America.

Chinese investment in Brazil’s auto sector reached nearly $1 billion last year, according to the Brazil-China Business Council. This influx has supported BYD’s new manufacturing hub in the state of Bahia, which the company says has already received orders to export 50,000 cars each to Argentina and Mexico.

China’s growing economic presence in Latin America has drawn concern from successive U.S. administrations, and U.S. President Donald Trump has urged countries in the region to reject closer ties with Beijing.

Brazil, by contrast, has largely treated Chinese engagement as an opportunity. “China is Brazil’s best partner today,” Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said while discussing trade in March, even as he has sought to maintain positive relations with the United States. That balancing act was on display when he met with Trump at the White House on Thursday.

Yet Brazil’s debate over ties with China is not black and white; it increasingly centers around the terms of that relationship. In the auto sector, government officials,........

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