Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.
The highlights this week: Brazilian negotiators prepare for November’s United Nations climate conference, a Nicaraguan dissident is killed in Costa Rica, and a Peruvian Japanese restaurant in Lima tops the list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants.
Climate Diplomacy, From Bonn to Belém
Negotiators from around the world gathered in Germany this week to conclude the main preparatory talks for the upcoming United Nations climate summit in Belém, Brazil. The Bonn talks offered a preview of key issues at the November event, known as COP30.
COP30 will be one of the biggest diplomatic tests yet for Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has had big global ambitions since taking office in January 2023. Yet some of Lula’s high-profile diplomacy has so far proved unsuccessful, such as an effort to mediate an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Progress at the U.N. climate talks depends on negotiators’ abilities to work with countries of different income levels and politics. Lula has ample experience doing so via forums such as BRICS and the G-20—Brazil hosted last year’s G-20 summit—and claims to champion environmentalism.
COP30 appears to be an arena where Brazilian diplomacy could excel. But a long-simmering contradiction in the country’s climate ambitions emerged in headlines just as negotiators arrived in Bonn.
Despite his professed environmental bona fides, Lula supports plans to dramatically scale up Brazil’s oil production, including by opening new ocean drilling sites around 300 miles from the mouth of the Amazon River. Those plans were initially delayed amid lawsuits and objections from Brazilian environmental regulators.
But after the regulators issued a partial license last month—a sign that full approval may soon follow—Brazil’s national oil agency went ahead and held an auction last Tuesday for drilling rights in 47 offshore zones in the area.
The auction was a “horrible signal for those who are worried about life and the future of this planet,” Carolina Marçal of the Brazilian climate group Instituto ClimaInfo said in a statement.
The details of the auction show a more complicated story, however. Only around 40 percent of the oil blocs on offer near the mouth of the Amazon were leased. Several lawsuits have been filed to stop drilling in the area. The plaintiffs are not only environmentalists; they also include Brazil’s Public Prosecutor’s Office as well an oil workers’ union.
“It was new of [the oil workers] to take such strong action on the issue,” Natalie Unterstell, the head of the climate think tank Instituto Talanoa, told Foreign Policy.
Oil giant Shell bought drilling rights elsewhere in Brazil at the auction but avoided the zone near the mouth of the Amazon. A company director for exploration, Lucio Prevatti, told O Globo that the difficulty of procuring a license in the area was one of the factors that convinced Shell not to bid. All told, environmentalists considered the low uptake at the auction a partial success.
When she was questioned in Bonn about Brazil’s expansion of drilling, Ana Toni, a top Brazilian official who is overseeing the Belém conference, said that as long as there continues to be oil demand in the world, there should be a fair debate about which countries should be allowed to produce the fuel.
Writing for the Backchannel newsletter this week, former French climate negotiator Anne-Sophie Cerisola, who helped get the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement across the finish line, suggested that Brazil should actively communicate not only its current oil exploration decision-making but also its specific strategy and timeline is to exit fossil fuel production.
Brazil should “invite to this discussion countries that face the same implementation issues and need help to transition away from fossil fuels,” Cerisola wrote.
Until only a few years ago, international climate summits did not include anything about fossil fuel production in their final decisions. The topic went unmentioned in the Paris Agreement, which focused on greenhouse gas emissions. The phrase “fossil fuels” only appeared in a summit decision in 2021; two years later, countries committed to “transition away” from them.
Climate activists have called for a COP30 decision that features stronger and more specific language on that transition. In a public letter, Brazil’s organizers listed progress on “transitioning away from fossil fuels” as one of their main summit objectives.
But the official negotiating sessions will determine what kind of language makes it into the summit’s final agreement. In Bonn, Colombia pushed to include strong wording on fossil fuels, while Russia and Bolivia were among the countries that questioned it.
By the end of the week, countries had written up potential draft language affirming that the transition away from fossil fuels should include energy security and socioeconomic opportunities—punting a final decision on the matter to November.
Upcoming Events
Friday, June 27: The Organization of American States’ annual assembly concludes in Antigua and Barbuda.
Wednesday, July 2, to Thursday, July 3: Argentina hosts the Mercosur leaders’ summit in Buenos Aires.
Sunday, July 6, to Monday, July 7: Brazil hosts the BRICS leaders’ summit in Rio de Janeiro.
What We’re Following
Tumult in Costa Rica. Costa Rica has had a turbulent week. Last Thursday, a prominent Nicaraguan dissident was shot dead in the capital of San José. The killing of Roberto Samcam occurred just days after the funeral of former Nicaraguan President Violeta Chamorro, who lived in exile in the same city. Another Nicaraguan dissident was shot in San José last year and survived.
Nicaraguan activists called for Samcam’s killing to be probed as part of a “broader strategy of transnational repression” promoted by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.
Then, on Monday, prosecutors in Costa Rica accused President Rodrigo Chaves and several of his political allies of illegal campaign financing, requesting that the country’s Supreme Court lift Chaves’s presidential immunity from prosecution. Chaves accused the prosecutor of trying to block his agenda.
Costa Rica holds elections next February. Though Chaves does not plan to run for reelection, someone from his center-right party likely will, and the accusation could play a role in the brewing presidential race.
Giant telescope. A U.S.-funded telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert published its first photos this week. The Vera C. Rubin telescope has the world’s largest digital camera and will survey the sky above the Southern Hemisphere.
The telescope can identify new asteroids that might be on a collision course with Earth. (Of the around 2,000 it first identified, none appeared to be headed our way, its team said.) Over a 10-year period, the telescope will also conduct long-term studies on relatively little-understood properties of the universe, such as dark matter.
The research partnership behind the telescope includes several Chilean universities. Chilean astronomer Daniela Grandón is part of the telescope’s key research team alongside U.S. scientists.
Peruvian chef Mitsuharu Tsumura poses for a photo in the kitchen of his Maido restaurant in Lima, Peru, on June 24. Juan Carlos Cisneros/AFP via Getty Images
Culinary honor. Lima, Peru, now joins Copenhagen as the only other city to have more than one restaurant take the top spot on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. This year’s honoree is Japanese Peruvian restaurant Maido.
The restaurant’s head chef, Mitsuharu Tsumura, was born in Peru to a family with origins in Osaka, Japan, where he returned to study cuisine. Maido also features ingredients and traditions from the Peruvian Amazon, such as the giant paiche fish, which is sliced like a ham.
Tsumara’s restaurant in Lima is part of a well-trodden gastronomical circuit. Peru has a whopping four restaurants on this year’s list. In Latin America, Mexico City comes in second with Quintonil and Rosetta.
Peru’s Japanese diaspora is large and influential. Its highest-profile figure is divisive former President Alberto Fujimori. The recognition on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list marks the ascent of a different kind of Japanese Peruvian giant.
Question of the Week
Another famous cuisine in Peru is Chinese Peruvian food. What is it called locally?
Chifa specialties include fried wonton soup.
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In Focus: New Latin American Diasporas
Protesters hold Venezuela’s flag during a demonstration for Venezuelan democracy in Madrid on Jan. 9.Thomas Coex/AFP via Getty Images
U.S. President Donald Trump’s deportation policies and an asylum shutdown have upended migration patterns in Latin America. Some migrants wary of traveling to or staying in the United States have gone back to their home countries, while others have headed elsewhere.
Governments in Latin America as well as Europe have echoed Trump’s restrictive immigration policies, making it harder for foreigners to get permission to live and work. But there are some exceptions.
In recent months, Cubans have applied for refugee status in Brazil by the thousands, becoming the leading nationality to do so in the first quarter of 2025, overtaking Venezuelans. Many Cuban immigrants have chosen to settle in the southern city of Curitiba, which has a growing economy, Bloomberg reported. Though Cubans have experienced some xenophobia, many reported being able to find work.
Venezuelans, meanwhile, are increasingly migrating to Spain. Spain has taken an opposing path to the restrictive migration stances of its European neighbors, offering waves of regularization for migrants. Some economists credit migrant labor with making Spain one of the fastest-growing economies in Europe.
Notably, Spain’s far-right Vox party does not seem to share the same level of xenophobia toward Spanish-speaking migrants as some of its regional counterparts.