Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: The United States lifts sanctions on Venezuela’s interim leader, meteorologists warn of a destructive El Niño, and Uruguay holds a secular Easter week.

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Around 100 days have passed since the United States launched a military raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and empowered his deputy, Delcy Rodríguez. U.S. President Donald Trump views the maneuver as so successful that he has repeatedlymentioned it as a model for change in Iran.

Though events in Tehran have spiraled in a different direction, U.S.-Venezuela cooperation under Rodríguez’s interim government is humming forward. The United States has praised the administration’s recent move to liberalize the oil sector and last week removed sanctions that it imposed on Rodríguez in 2018 for undermining democracy.

Venezuelan economist Asdrúbal Oliveros estimates that the country’s GDP could grow by between 12 percent and 15 percent this year—a reversal from years of underperformance.

The last few weeks have also brought signs of political liberalization, which U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says is another U.S. goal in Venezuela. More than 400 political prisoners have been released since early January, according to rights group Foro Penal, although certain releases may be temporary.

Some independent media organizations in Venezuela have said they are able to report more freely, and dissidents who were freed from jail have participated in political rallies without being arrested. The government’s “repressive apparatus is still standing,” but it “is sending signals that it is not open to carrying out a bloodbath,” historian Pedro Benítez told news site Efecto Cocuyo.

Whether Oliveros’s bullish economic forecast comes to fruition will depend in part on if foreign oil companies move forward with investments in Venezuela.

Chevron has said it wants to increase its Venezuelan oil output by 50 percent in two years. In late February, French firm Maurel & Prom moved a drilling rig back into the country’s main crude-producing region for the first time in eight years. A strong oil industry revival would have spillover effects in other parts of the economy, such as road construction and real estate.

Even so, Oliveros told news site MundoUR on Wednesday, there is a difference between the economy performing well in the eyes of the United States versus for everyday Venezuelans, for whom inflation is a key metric. Venezuela’s inflation remains toweringly high, at more than 600 percent per year, according to the International Monetary Fund.

On Wednesday—the day before a planned protest against economic hardship in Caracas—Rodríguez announced that she would raise the minimum wage, but did not specify by how much. At Thursday’s rally, at least 10 journalists were beaten by police, the national journalists’ union said.

Despite Trump’s praise, Rodríguez remains highly unpopular among Venezuelans. If an election were held today, only 9 percent of Venezuelans who could name a preferred candidate would choose Rodríguez, pollster Ricardo Ríos told Efecto Cocuyo.

That is based on a recent survey conducted by Ríos’s consultancy, Poder y Estrategia. A whopping 63 percent would choose opposition leader María Corina Machado, and 16 percent would choose Machado’s close ally Edmundo González Urrutia, according to the same poll.

Machado has been outside of Venezuela since last December, when she came out of hiding to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway. Last week, she met in Washington with Rubio, who reportedly voiced a commitment to holding elections in Venezuela but cautioned against setting a precise deadline, given that the U.S. priority is economic stabilization.

Machado and her supporters argue that a democratically elected government committed to strong institutions will be good for business in Venezuela. But Trump appears reluctant to disrupt his arrangement with Rodríguez. During Machado’s visit to Washington, the president told her that she should not return to the country immediately, the New York Timesreported last month.

“We feel like there is a light at the end of the tunnel, but we’re not out of the tunnel yet,” Benítez, the Venezuelan historian, said. “It looks like the tunnel is much longer than we thought.”

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Sunday, April 12: Peru holds presidential elections.

Tuesday, April 21: The United Nations Security Council discusses Colombia.

Thursday, April 23: The U.N. Security Council discusses Haiti.

Friday, April 24, to Wednesday, April 29: Colombia co-hosts a conference about transitioning away from fossil fuels.

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Cuban prisoner release. Cuba announced a large-scale prisoner release last week amid its negotiations with the Trump administration over an economic and political opening. More than 2,000 people were slated to be freed in what Havana called a “humanitarian and sovereign gesture.”

Meanwhile, despite Trump’s threat to slap tariffs on any country supplying oil to Cuba, a Russian oil tanker docked on the island without U.S. intervention last week. The arrival could be a signal that the United States is making progress in talks with Cuba—or simply that it is responsive to widespread criticism of its energy blockade on the island.

Though the total number of prisoners released last week was high, Cuban human rights groups said that none of those freed were political prisoners. An estimated more than 700 political prisoners remain incarcerated on the island, according to human rights groups.

Russian interference in Argentina? An entity backed by Russian intelligence services claimed in leaked internal documents that they spent around $280,000 in efforts to place articles in more than 20 Argentine media outlets in 2024, according to a joint investigation by OpenDemocracy, Forbidden Stories, and Filtraleaks.

Dozens of articles were published as a result, including pieces critical of right-wing President Javier Milei’s government. Milei has voiced support for Ukraine in its war against Russia.

Many of the media organizations said that the pitches reached them through intermediaries. All the interviewed outlets denied receiving funding from Russian citizens or being approached by Russian operatives, although two sources said they accepted payments for publishing the articles. A handful of outlets declined to be interviewed.

Russian politics researcher Maxime Audinet told Forbidden Stories that the financial figures in the document should be read with skepticism given “endemic and intrinsic corruption” in Russia’s propaganda operations, and that the real amounts paid were likely lower. But the report nevertheless suggests that there was an active Russian propaganda effort in Argentina.

Uruguay’s un-Holy Week. Many countries across Latin America and the Caribbean marked Holy Week with government holidays—except Uruguay, where progressive reforms in the early 20th century secularized the government and gave alternative branding to religious holidays. Holy Week is recorded on Uruguayan government calendars as “Tourism Week” instead.

Over the decades, the rebranding has grown beyond name changes. Easter weekend in Uruguay has a decidedly pro-travel flair, with local governments and tourism companies promoting activities such as bike circuits and even a beer week.

Pew Research Center has called Uruguay an “atypical” Latin American country when it comes to religiosity: In a 2014 survey, 37 percent of residents said they had no religious affiliation.

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• Why Trump’s Speech Was So Worryingby Howard W. French
• China’s Absence Draws America Deeper Into Risky Warsby Jo Inge Bekkevold
• U.S. and Iran Agree to 2-Week Cease-Fireby John Haltiwanger

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The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts announced on Sunday that there is a high chance of a supercharged El Niño weather pattern this year, which could bring highly disruptive flooding and changes to agriculture conditions.

Normal El Niño events are declared when the surface temperature of the tropical Pacific Ocean warms to 0.5 degrees Celsius above average, triggering faraway meteorological consequences. These often include droughts on Caribbean islands and in northern Brazil, as well as flooding in Ecuador and Peru.

During the last El Niño in late 2023 and early 2024, water levels in the Panama Canal dropped so low that the number of ships allowed to pass was restricted. Southern Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul state experienced floods that killed more than 170 people.

A so-called super El Niño—what the European agency predicts is in store for 2026—sees Pacific water that is 2 degrees Celsius above average, triggering severe effects. They tend to occur every 10 to 15 years.

During the last El Niño, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) helped respond by providing farmers in Latin America with drought-tolerant seeds and cash assistance, saying that governments in the region should strengthen their emergency response systems, too. It calculated that 1.3 million people in the region were exposed to severe drought.

This year’s predicted climate strains come on top of rising fuel and fertilizer prices due to the war in Iran. Writing in Foreign Policy last week, former WFP Director Ertharin Cousin warned that these “dual pressures” are converging to create a global food crisis.