Welcome again to International Coverage’s Latin America Temporary.
The highlights this week: The leaders of Brazil and Mexico attend the G-7 summit, Bolivia celebrates a syncretic non secular competition, and Nicaragua remembers its first feminine president.
Two Latin American leaders attended this week’s G-7 summit in Kananaskis, Canada: Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.
Lula is a well-recognized face on the G-7. He was in his first time period as president when the grouping of rich international locations, then-known because the G-8, was starting to broaden its annual dialogues to incorporate friends from creating nations in 2003. On the time, the group was responding to criticism that it had develop into too unique.
Lula has usually used his G-7 appearances to name for a higher function for the worldwide south in worldwide politics. On the 2003 summit, he argued for the creation of a fund to struggle world starvation. Although the thought didn’t make it into that yr’s official communiqué, an identical proposal grew to become a actuality in 2024, when Lula hosted the G-20 summit in Rio de Janeiro.
Different concepts that Lula defended at previous G-7 summits have been endorsed extra rapidly. He known as for wealthy international locations to take away agriculture subsidies that Brazil considered as unfair competitors, a problem that was talked about within the 2008 summit declaration. And he voiced assist for a strong deal to struggle the local weather disaster properly earlier than the Paris Settlement was adopted in 2015.
This yr, Lula prompt that rich international locations ought to improve their local weather funding to poorer ones and that every one international locations ought to tax their super-rich residents extra. In a optimistic sign for Lula’s agenda, forward of the G-7 summit, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney agreed to attend the United Nations local weather convention in Brazil in November.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, one other G-7 visitor, additionally sought a gathering with Lula, a shift from his previous criticism of the Brazilian president’s makes an attempt to mediate an finish to Russia’s warfare in Ukraine. Nevertheless, the assembly was canceled on account of what Brazil attributed to a delay in occasions.
Although Lula has been a daily visitor of the G-7, Sheinbaum was attending her first summit. Mexico’s president has been continuously invited to the G-7 since 2003. However Sheinbaum’s predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, by no means attended a summit. Sheinbaum took workplace final October.
López Obrador’s absence from the summits was a part of his broader reluctance to journey overseas or make investments a lot time in diversifying Mexico’s overseas relations past conventional companions, resembling the USA and a handful of Latin American international locations.
Though Mexico and Canada negotiated a trilateral commerce pact with the USA underneath López Obrador, Mexico-Canada relations grew to become extra strained by the top of his time period, former Canadian and Mexican diplomats stated on a latest webinar hosted by the Canadian Council for the Americas.
“On the finish of the day, it’s Canada’s relationship with the U.S. and Mexico’s relationship with the U.S., which is all the time going to take priority over the trilateralization of the agenda,” former Mexican diplomat Arturo Sarukhan stated.
Sheinbaum’s journey to Alberta marked a transparent break from López Obrador. “In an interdependent world, no nation can isolate itself,” she stated throughout a summit session. Sheinbaum held bilateral talks with the leaders of Canada, Germany, India, and the European Union. She was additionally on account of meet with U.S. President Donald Trump earlier than he left the gathering early; the 2 later spoke by cellphone.
Carney stated that it was “instantly clear” based mostly on Sheinbaum’s G-7 participation that Mexico must be “on the heart of worldwide cooperation.” Sheinbaum responded by giving the Canadian prime minister a soccer ball adorned with Indigenous Mexican artwork, in honor of subsequent yr’s FIFA World Cup, which will probably be co-hosted by Canada, Mexico, and the USA.
Though Carney didn’t point out “our third co-host, the opposite president” by title, he stated that they “are completely aligned in our pleasure, enthusiasm for the gorgeous recreation.”
Saturday, June 22: São Paulo hosts the world’s largest LGBTQ+ delight occasion.
Wednesday, June 25, to Friday, June 27: The Group of American States hosts its annual meeting in Antigua and Barbuda.
Native leaders caught in Israel. The Israel-Iran battle that escalated final week has highlighted a comparatively low-profile Israeli diplomatic technique towards Latin American international locations. Native officers from Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Guatemala, and Uruguay have been briefly caught in Israel amid the preventing, which shut down the nation’s predominant worldwide airport.
The Latin American officers had traveled to attend a safety expo. The Brazilian officers’ itinerary additionally included assembly with victims of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, assault and their households, the Intercept Brasil reported. As some Latin American leaders criticize Israel’s warfare conduct in Gaza, Israel has sought to additional public diplomacy on the subnational degree.
Final yr, Israel named Lula persona non grata after he stated Israel was committing genocide in Gaza and in contrast its actions to the Holocaust. Many Brazilian mayors on the most recent journey hailed from Brazil’s opposition.
Lots of the Latin American leaders have since managed to depart through Jordan. Although Brazil’s overseas ministry labored to soundly extract the mayors, it additionally made some extent to say they’d disobeyed its journey advisory by visiting Israel throughout a warfare.
Brazil’s crucial minerals. China has tightened rare-earth export controls in latest months, underscoring how essential it’s that international locations have numerous suppliers of the crucial minerals. Brazil has the world’s second-largest uncommon earth reserves after China, in accordance to the U.S. Geological Survey, and Lula says the nation is working to broaden manufacturing.
However that’s up from a really low baseline: In 2024, Brazil was liable for lower than 1 p.c of world rare-earth mining manufacturing, whereas China was the supply of round 70 p.c.
Brazil’s nationwide growth financial institution is among the many authorities actors working to ramp up funding within the crucial minerals sector. Final week, the financial institution introduced it had chosen 56 mineral initiatives to obtain particular financing, together with 10 involving uncommon earths; others give attention to lithium, graphite, copper, and silicon.
Collectively, the initiatives characterize over $8 billion in funding. Firms concerned hail from international locations together with Australia, Brazil, Canada, and the USA.
Dancers of the Diablada fraternity carry out in the course of the Jesús del Gran Poder non secular competition in La Paz, Bolivia, on June 14.Aizar Raldes/AFP through Getty Photographs
Syncretic non secular competition. Final Saturday, Bolivians celebrated the annual competition of Jesus of Nice Energy, which mixes Catholic and Indigenous Andean traditions with elaborate costume parades and dancing within the streets.
Its origins lie in a portray of Jesus displayed within the 1600s at a Catholic chapel in La Paz, which is Bolivia’s capital right this moment. Ultimately, La Paz residents started holding ceremonies in honor of the depicted Jesus’s supposed means to grant miracles.
Though tens of 1000’s of individuals take part within the occasion yearly, this yr’s festivities have been extra subdued within the wake of lethal political demonstrations in Bolivia. Six individuals died in clashes between supporters and opponents of former President Evo Morales in latest weeks. Parades in the course of the competition featured a black ribbon of mourning and requires peace.
Along with uncommon earths, one other mineral essential to the power transition is copper. Chile has Latin America’s largest copper reserves. Which nation has the area’s second largest?
Mexico
Peru
Bolivia
Brazil
Mexico is available in third, based on the U.S. Geological Survey.
Nicaraguan President Violeta Chamorro arrives on the Nationwide Stadium in San José, Costa Rica, on Might 8, 1990. She was there to attend the inauguration ceremony of Costa Rican President-elect Rafael Ángel Calderón Fournier.David Ake/AFP through Getty Photographs
Final week, Nicaragua stated it might sever ties with the United Nations refugee company, months after doing the identical with the Worldwide Group for Migration. The strikes added to the sluggish drip of worldwide isolation and political repression which have outlined Nicaragua underneath authoritarian President Daniel Ortega.
However the dying of former Nicaraguan President Violeta Chamorro final Saturday recalled visions of a unique time within the nation’s historical past.
Chamorro grew to become politically lively within the late Nineteen Seventies, when she stepped in to run a newspaper that was against Nicaragua’s Somoza dictatorship following the assassination of her husband, who was its editor in chief. The dictatorship dominated from 1936 to 1979, when the leftist Sandinista rebels overthrew Somoza.
Chamorro served for a number of months as a part of the Sandinista provisional authorities, however she quickly departed amid opposition to the Sandinistas’ Marxist path and focus of energy. Through the Eighties, the Sandinistas fought off armed resistance by U.S.-backed rebels in what is named the Contra Struggle.
In 1990, Chamorro ran as a unity opposition candidate in opposition to Ortega, who represented the Sandinistas. She received a shock victory and went on to serve a six-year time period, serving to transfer the nation previous civil warfare and opening the door to extra pluralistic politics.
As president, Chamorro oversaw the disarmament of former rebels and established extra numerous worldwide relationships, together with with the USA. Her administration was adopted by two totally different center-right presidents earlier than Ortega was elected in 2007. He has remained president ever since.
When Chamorro’s daughter, Cristiana, tried to run in opposition to Ortega in 2021, she and several other different opposition candidates have been barred; the Ortega administration later stripped Cristiana of her Nicaraguan citizenship.
Chamorro and her 4 youngsters lived exterior of Nicaragua within the years earlier than her dying; her funeral was held in Costa Rica. One other considered one of her youngsters, journalist Carlos Chamorro, stated on the funeral service that his mom’s life served for example of “hope.”
However in a grave signal for the political local weather contained in the nation, he stated, a number of Nicaraguan clergymen kept away from mentioning Chamorro’s title throughout Sunday providers as a result of they’d been warned by confidantes that they may face penalties for doing so.
Correction, June 20, 2025: A photograph caption in a earlier model of this text mistakenly referred to the Costa Rican president-elect on the time as Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia; it was Rafael Ángel Calderón Fournier.
