Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez attends the United Nations General Assembly, oil-rich Guyana prepares to launch a development bank, and a Bolivian biologist discovers a new cat species.

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez attends the United Nations General Assembly, oil-rich Guyana prepares to launch a development bank, and a Bolivian biologist discovers a new cat species.

Venezuela Returns to UNGA

Latin America was in the spotlight this week at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Venezuela saw a reentry of sorts into the international community, as acting President Delcy Rodríguez became the first Venezuelan leader to address the gathering in-person in eight years. Her predecessor, Nicolás Maduro, avoided the event in part due to fear of being arrested following his 2020 U.S. indictment on drug trafficking charges.

Maduro returned to New York this year but on very different terms: Since the U.S. military captured him in January, he has been held in a federal prison in Brooklyn, not far from the United Nations. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is working with Rodríguez on efforts to rebuild the country’s oil industry.

According to polls, Venezuelans overwhelmingly want free elections to choose their own leader. But both Rodríguez and the United States have declined to provide a timeline for a vote.

When Rodríguez took the podium at the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday, she pledged that elections would occur in the country—but at an unspecified “right moment.” While in New York, she also met with U.S. President Donald Trump, who made no public mention of such a vote.

Some Latin American presidents seemed to show a growing willingness to go along with Trump in normalizing Rodríguez’s leadership. On his way to New York, Paraguayan President Santiago Peña made a stopover in Caracas, becoming only the second head of state after former Colombian President Gustavo Petro to pay the Rodríguez administration an official visit.

In New York, Chilean President José Antonio Kast—a longtime critic of Rodríguez’s Socialist movement who invited Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado to his inauguration in March—held a meeting with Rodríguez.

Meanwhile, between meetings, Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino brushed aside a question about whether Machado should be able to return to the country, saying, “That’s a problem for Venezuelans, not for me.”

Machado has been outside Venezuela........

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