Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.
The highlights this week: The United States condemns Colombia’s anti-narcotics efforts, Mexico announces plans for tariffs on China, and Brazil remembers a percussion pioneer.
A Symbolic U.S. Sanction on Colombia
U.S. President Donald Trump and Colombian President Gustavo Petro have had a rocky relationship since Trump took office in January, trading barbs on topics such as U.S. tariffs and deportations.
Those tensions reached new heights on Monday, when the Trump administration labeled Bogotá as noncooperative in Washington’s global anti-narcotics work as part of an annual review. In announcing the decertification, Trump took direct aim at Petro, writing that Colombia’s failure to meet its drug control obligations “rests solely with its political leadership.”
In 2023, Petro’s first full year in office, Colombia’s potential cocaine production rose 53 percent, the most recent United Nations data shows.
Petro has vocally departed from the punitive paradigms that for decades characterized the U.S.-led war on drugs. The Colombian leader instead favors strategies such as offering farmers economic alternatives to growing coca and trying to negotiate cease-fires with some trafficking groups. The Petro administration also focuses on using intelligence to dismantle trafficking networks.
Despite Colombia’s decertification, defenders of U.S. aid to the country scored a key win: Washington issued a waiver so that Bogotá could continue to receive U.S. financial support.
Decertification without the waiver would have triggered major cuts in U.S. aid as well as a requirement that Washington vote “no” on potential loans for Colombia at multilateral development banks. The United States has not decertified the country without a waiver since the 1990s.
U.S. aid to Colombia has traditionally encompassed both economic development support and security assistance, with total aid reaching around $500 million per year in the last decade. The country was traditionally the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid in South America.
Much of that funding was already cut as part of Trump’s dramatic drawdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development this year, although researchers have struggled to pinpoint exactly how much. Even before the U.S. decision on decertification, the Washington Office on Latin America said it was unlikely that U.S. aid to Colombia in 2025 would exceed $100 million.
Retaining U.S. assistance was so consequential for Colombia that Colombian military and civilian officials traveled to Washington in recent days to stress why aid supports the United States’ counternarcotics goals.
Some U.S. lawmakers defended the aid, too, voicing the same arguments: Around 85 percent of the intelligence used by a U.S. task force that interdicts northbound drug shipments comes from Colombia, the country trains counternarcotics officials from around the region, and it was also responsible for 65 percent of global cocaine seizures last year, U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks, a Democrat, wrote in a letter to Trump last Friday.
The continuation of some U.S.-Colombia anti-drug cooperation stands in contrast to recent U.S. actions off the coast of Venezuela, where the United States has appeared to allow warlike impulses to overrule a collaborative strategy.
This month, the U.S. military killed the passengers of multiple boats with airstrikes that were not authorized by Congress. The Trump administration has produced no public evidence to substantiate its claims that those killed were drug traffickers.
Although Washington’s decision to declare Bogotá noncooperative may prove a blow to Petro’s ambitions for global drug policy reform, Colombia’s legacy on the issue is bigger than Petro alone.
In 2016, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos signed a deal with the guerrilla and drug trafficking group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), an effort that won him the Nobel Peace Prize that year. Some FARC fighters agreed to lay down their arms and be tried for crimes they had committed during their war against the government in a special peace court.
The court issued its first sentences for former FARC fighters on Tuesday, followed by another sentencing for former government soldiers on Thursday. The two groups acknowledged that they had committed mass kidnappings and killed civilians, respectively, and were sentenced to different types of community service. Actors in the conflict who rejected the charges against them face prison sentences.
Juanita Goebertus, the Americas director at Human Rights Watch, told Caracol Radio this week that Colombia’s 2016 peace deal is a “model for the world.”
Upcoming Events
Friday, Sept. 19: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney concludes a visit to Mexico City.
European Union foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas concludes a visit to Brazil.
Monday, Sept. 22: The U.N. fact-finding mission on Venezuela gives a press conference.
What We’re Following
More trade with Europe. Mercosur countries announced on Tuesday that they had reached a trade deal with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), a group that consists of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland. Talks had been ongoing since 2017.
Once the agreement is ratified by both sides, it is due to create a combined market of around 300 million people. Bolivia joined Mercosur as a full member last year. However, the deal was struck only with the four original members—Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay—because Bolivia had not been part of most of the negotiation process.
Currently, EFTA countries mostly export pharmaceutical products to Mercosur countries, which largely send agricultural products back. The two blocs’ trade deal is the latest to be accelerated due to U.S. protectionism.
Convergence on Haiti. Despite the Trump administration’s recent complaints about the direction of the Organization of American States (OAS), the United States and other OAS members have united to back a proposal for boosting security in Haiti.
OAS members are calling on the U.N. to approve an expansion in the size and responsibilities of the Kenyan-led multinational security mission in Haiti, from under 1,000 to more than 5,000 people, according to a draft U.N. Security Council declaration submitted by the United States and Panama this month. The U.N. endorsement of the mission is set to expire on Oct. 2.
The draft pledges to also address “weak democratic institutions, corruption, poverty, and persistent striking social inequalities,” without going into much more detail. A U.N. vote on the OAS-backed proposal is expected by the end of September.
Brazilian musician Hermeto Pascoal performs during a rehearsal with the Midi-Pyrénées conservatory’s big band in the Saint Pierre des Cuisines church in Toulouse, France, on June 18, 2005.Georges Gobet/AFP via Getty Images
Percussion pioneer. This week, Brazilians are remembering instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal, a bushy-bearded composer who mixed jazz with Brazilian folk music and earned Miles Davis’s praise as “one of the most important musicians on the planet.” Pascoal died Saturday at the age of 89.
Nicknamed “the Sorcerer,” Pascoal’s primary instruments were the flute and the piano. But his compositions often drew on unorthodox sounds, such as recordings of falling water and the movements of children’s toys. In recordings, he used his hands to play teapots, live pigs, and even his own beard.
Pascoal’s knowledge of music from Brazil’s countryside stemmed from his childhood in the rural northeast of the country. Although albinism forced him to spend long periods inside, he still absorbed the local sound traditions—and then spread them throughout the world.
Question of the Week
Which country illegally cultivates the second-most coca in the world after Colombia, according to the U.N.?
Third is Bolivia, which generally monitors coca farming through a nonviolent community-run system.
FP’s Most Read This Week
- The Golden Age of Multilateralism Is Over by Jo Inge Bekkevold
- Iran’s Foreign Policy Is Changing in Real Time by Sina Toossi
- The End of Development by Adam Tooze
In Focus: Mexico-China Tariff Tensions
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum looks on during the daily morning briefing at the National Palace in Mexico City on Aug. 28.Hector Vivas/Getty Images
Last week, Mexico’s economy minister announced plans for 50 percent tariffs on cars and car parts from countries with which Mexico does not have a free trade agreement. The levies would fall overwhelmingly on China, which is Mexico’s top car supplier. China exports more cars to Mexico than to any other country in the world.
President Claudia Sheinbaum described the measure as an industrial policy meant to boost Mexico’s own car industry, one of the largest sectors in its economy. But the Trump administration also urged Mexico to take this step. In February, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent praised the idea of creating a “Fortress North America” to keep out Chinese goods.
Beijing pushed back after Mexico’s tariff announcement, saying that it was made “under coercion to constrain China.” Sheinbaum said the move wasn’t “conceived as part of negotiations with the United States.”
Although Trump has cited the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement trade pact in decisions to exempt some Mexican and Canadian products from his global tariffs, the deal is due to be reassessed in the coming months as part of a scheduled review mechanism.
With its tariff announcement, Mexico appears to be betting on North American economic integration while also trying to diversify its trade relationships. Mexico struck a trade deal with the EU in January and has been in talks with Brazil about boosting ties.
Sheinbaum’s new tariffs could placate Trump, but they could also bring new costs for Mexico. Mexican auto factories count on Chinese components. “It is no small thing to change that supply chain,” Óscar Ocampo of the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness told Deutsche Welle.