Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Latin American countries react to the U.S. capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, Guyanese authorities crack down on gold smuggling, and new Mexican tariffs go into effect.

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Latin American countries react to the U.S. capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, Guyanese authorities crack down on gold smuggling, and new Mexican tariffs go into effect.

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The acronym TACO, which stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out,” spread on U.S. social media last year as the White House backed down from some tariff threats against trading partners. But U.S. President Donald Trump’s brazen actions in the last week indicate that he may have left that moniker behind in 2025.

On Jan. 3, elite U.S. military forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, bombing Caracas in a nighttime raid and killing an estimated 75 people. It was the first time that the United States had apprehended a sitting foreign leader since 1990. The couple were then flown to New York, where they are now standing trial on drug trafficking and other charges.

U.S. officials say they will use a blockade on Venezuelan oil to apply the pressure needed to direct policy in the country, especially in its oil sector, for an indefinite amount of time.

The events showcased a new U.S. comfort with using military force to achieve Trump’s objectives. They also made world leaders take even more seriously his threats to use military force against Colombia, Mexico, and Greenland.

True to current political division in the region, Latin American leaders issued a range of responses to the raid.

Right-wing administrations friendly to Trump, such as those in Argentina and Ecuador, celebrated what they characterized as the capture of a drug trafficking boss. But leftist-led countries such as Brazil and Colombia saw Trump as breaking international law and stealing sovereign resources.

Many officials in Europe and Latin America have released statements in recent days calling for respect of international law and the United Nations Charter. The Trump administration has paid little importance to such arguments in the past. On Wednesday, Trump announced plans to withdraw from dozens of international and U.N. bodies.

Privately, officials have debated strategies for preserving their sovereignty in the face of U.S. threats. This includes both the short-term work of “putting out the fire” of the day as well as the long-term work of rebuilding an “international order that is minimally based in........

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