Foreign & Public Diplomacy

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Some Latin American countries expand cooperation with partners in Africa, hundreds more troops ready for a deployment to Haiti, and a Miami trial pulls back the curtain on Venezuela’s lobbying efforts in the United States.

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Some Latin American countries expand cooperation with partners in Africa, hundreds more troops ready for a deployment to Haiti, and a Miami trial pulls back the curtain on Venezuela’s lobbying efforts in the United States.

The Americas-Africa Link

Colombia hosted two international forums last week: a leaders’ summit for the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the first-ever CELAC-Africa High-Level Forum.

CELAC was founded in 2011 as a space for regional leaders to discuss their affairs without the presence of the United States and Canada, which are members of the older (and better-resourced) Organization of American States.

Latin America is currently dominated by leaders intent on signaling positive relations with U.S. President Donald Trump, and the CELAC summit was—perhaps unsurprisingly—sparsely attended. Only four leaders from the region showed up: those of Brazil, Colombia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Uruguay.

The CELAC-Africa event was more noteworthy. It attracted Burundian President Evariste Ndayishimiye, who is also serving as the rotating chair of the African Union, and showcased recent policy evolutions for some Latin American and Caribbean countries.

Around 1 in 4 Latin Americans identify as being of African descent. Seeking to acknowledge this shared history to pursue broader south-south cooperation strategies, a few Latin American governments have sought to boost their political and business ties to African countries in recent years.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro is one figure at the forefront of these efforts. Petro and Francia Márquez, the country’s first Black vice president, have prioritized an explicit Africa strategy that has seen Colombia’s bilateral trade with Algeria, Nigeria, and Senegal roughly double—and increase twentyfold with Ethiopia—since 2022, albeit from low starting points.

Petro and Márquez have also opened embassies in Ethiopia and Senegal and launched cooperation projects with additional countries regarding sustainable agriculture and shipping logistics. Their administration established a “very different baseline for our relationship with Africa,” said Jerónimo Delgado-Caicedo, an African........

© Foreign Policy