Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Suriname holds elections, Argentina withdraws from the World Health Organization, and Brazil remembers photojournalist Sebastião Salgado.

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Suriname holds elections, Argentina withdraws from the World Health Organization, and Brazil remembers photojournalist Sebastião Salgado.

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Suriname held legislative elections on Sunday. Tucked into South America’s northern coast, the former Dutch colony rarely attracts major international attention. But this vote was different: A string of recent oil discoveries off Suriname’s shores had investors watching the results closely.

Oil extraction from the country’s first major offshore project, which is run by France’s TotalEnergies and the United States’ APA, is expected to begin in 2028 and eventually churn out more than 200,000 barrels per day. Suriname’s state oil company Staatsolie aims to soon enter the project. The country’s next government will set policies for other international firms that want to drill in the country’s waters.

This week, Suriname also expanded its influence in regional affairs. On Monday, Albert Ramdin, a former Surinamese foreign minister, took office as secretary-general of the Organization of American States (OAS). He is the first person from a Caribbean Community country to hold the role.

Suriname’s step into the spotlight comes as the country still faces deep challenges at home. It experienced a debt crisis in 2020; in the interim years, it has been implementing austerity measures as part of an International Monetary Fund plan.

Discontent with the economy may help explain the results of Sunday’s election, which saw the main opposition party gain a narrow plurality, Wil Hout, a political scientist at Erasmus University Rotterdam, told Foreign Policy.

The leftist opposition National Democratic Party (NDP) won 18 seats in Suriname’s unicameral legislature, according to a preliminary vote count, while the incumbent centrist Progressive Reform Party (VHP) won 17 seats. A two-thirds majority of lawmakers is required to elect the country’s president.

Hout, a longtime scholar of Suriname, said that “disappointments with the government’s initial attempt to curb corruption” also likely played a role in the outcome. Last year, the country’s attorney general

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