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.
Suriname in the Spotlight
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 requested a preliminary probe into the incumbent president and two ministers for alleged misuse of funds, which they denied; no official charges against them have been filed.
On Tuesday, a handful of smaller parties announced that they would support the presidential candidacy of the NDP’s Jennifer Geerlings-Simons, a former doctor and legislative speaker. If elected, she would be Suriname’s first female president.
When it comes to oil, the NDP’s election platform called for new requirements that international companies source labor and products locally. Still, Hout said, both parties generally support a significant role for Staatsolie and a focus on growing the country’s sovereign wealth fund.
Staatsolie has been a “pocket of effectiveness” within Suriname’s public sector for years, Hout has written. There is a broad political consensus around leaving the company under government control but allowing it operational independence.
Unlike the state oil company in neighboring Guyana, which is also experiencing an oil boom, Staatsolie is involved in upstream operations such as drilling. That makes it eligible to participate in the TotalEnergies and APA project.
Although the contract governing oil exploration in the part of the ocean where the project will occur is not public, Staatsolie says it mandates that Suriname receive a 60 to 70 percent share of proceeds from oil fields after costs are accounted for, depending on the oil price.
That is better than the terms of Guyana’s agreement with U.S. major ExxonMobil and its partners, which leaves the government with a 50 percent share and 2 percent royalty.
Foreign policy is another area where Suriname’s major parties converge, Hout said. While NDP governments of the 2010s had more of a “nationalist” and “global south orientation” than the VHP, “there’s a fair degree of pragmatism on both sides.” Both parties have sought Chinese and Western investments in the infrastructure and energy sectors.
Ramdin, the new OAS secretary-general, has suggested he will bring similar pragmatism to the job. He won his election pledging to reinvigorate the often-fractured organization. His statement upon assuming office pledged to make the OAS “inclusive” and “results-driven.”
Upcoming Events
Sunday, June 1: Mexico holds judicial elections.
Wednesday, June 4, to Monday, June 9: Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva travels to France.
What We’re Following
Tropical forest loss. Brazil and Bolivia lost the largest amounts of tropical primary forest by area last year, in part due to wildfires, according to data from the University of Maryland published last week. Destruction in both countries rose, and Bolivia became the world’s No. 2 offender, up from No. 3.
The University of Maryland’s numbers differ from those of MapBiomas, a Brazilian alliance of universities and nonprofits that is frequently cited in the country. By its count, deforestation in Brazil fell by 32 percent last year. But MapBiomas does not take into account forest loss due to fire, said Global Forest Watch, which shared the University of Maryland data.
Though the Lula administration is in part staking its reputation on efforts to protect the Amazon, there is no similar push in Bolivia. There, forest loss is directly connected to a political crisis, Bolivian environmental activist Jhanisse Vaca Daza argued in the Journal of Democracy this month. Two successive Bolivian governments have incentivized land clearing through fires, she wrote.
Milei emulates MAGA. Argentina ratified its decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization this week as U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visited Buenos Aires. It’s only the latest way that right-wing Argentine President Javier Milei has sought to emulate the Trump administration.
This month, Milei’s government also tightened the rules for obtaining Argentine residence and nationality. Foreign nationals will need to pay for health and education services, and those who apply for citizenship must stay in Argentina for two uninterrupted years or make a significant financial contribution to the country. The new rules also make it easier to deport people.
The new policy is designed to “make Argentina great again,” a presidential spokesperson said.
Visitors attend the exhibition “Gold: Serra Pelada” of the late Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado at the CAIXA Cultural Recife Cultural Center in Recife, Brazil, on May 23.Diego Nigro/AFP via Getty Images
Photojournalism legend. Brazil’s Sebastião Salgado, who died last week, was widely regarded as one of the greatest photojournalists of his generation. Raised on a small cattle farm in southeastern Brazil, he studied economics before turning to photography in the 1970s.
As an employee of the International Coffee Organization, Salgado traveled often to Africa. He eventually photographed workers, wars, and nature in more than 100 countries. His most iconic images were in high-contrast black and white.
The intimacy with which Salgado photographed mine workers in Brazil and refugees in Ethiopia prompted some critics to question the political value of depicting beautiful images of suffering. Salgado responded that it was natural to him to seek out well-composed images.
Salgado’s work has been shown in galleries across the world and on the cover of the New York Times Magazine. Later in life, he focused his work on the Brazilian Amazon’s peoples and landscapes, becoming beloved to Indigenous groups.
Question of the Week
What is the capital of Suriname?
The city is on the northern coast, where the Suriname River meets the Atlantic.
FP’s Most Read This Week
- How America Blew Its Unipolar Moment by Max Bergmann
- We Can No Longer Dismiss Trump’s Blatant Racism by Howard W. French
- Russia Has Started Losing the War in Ukraine by Michael Kimmage
In Focus: Voting in Venezuela
Venezuelan opposition leader and deputy candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski votes while holding his son at a polling station during regional elections in Caracas on May 25.Federico Parra/AFP via Getty Images
The same day as Suriname’s vote, nearby Venezuela also held legislative and regional elections.
Public attitudes toward voting in Venezuela have shifted starkly since last year’s presidential election. The July 2024 contest saw a large-scale turnout push by the country’s opposition. But the opposition and several foreign governments alleged fraud after President Nicolás Maduro quickly declared victory.
This time, many opposition parties told voters to stay home. Maduro’s ruling Socialist party won 23 of 24 governorships and more than 80 percent of legislative seats, electoral authorities said. The Maduro government detained a top opposition organizer shortly ahead of the vote.
Authorities also held an election in a hastily created district near the Guyanese-administered region of Essequibo, which Venezuela claims as its own. The Maduro government claimed the victor would govern Essequibo; Guyanese President Irfaan Ali rejected the move as a “full-frontal assault on Guyana’s sovereignty.”
During his first administration, U.S. President Donald Trump responded to Venezuela’s measures to close civic space with so-called maximum pressure sanctions. But the White House has quietly moved forward with talks with Maduro in recent weeks.
Though the exact details of the negotiations are unclear, they could mean that the White House realizes “maximum pressure … did not serve U.S. objectives,” Geoff Ramsey and David Goldwyn wrote in Foreign Policy last week.