Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.
The highlights this week: Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa visits China, Venezuela’s interim government agrees to a prisoner release amid U.S.-brokered talks with the opposition, and Brazil’s state oil company makes a new oil discovery.
Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa is on a weeklong state visit to China, his second trip to the country since the start of his term last year.
The right-wing president has embraced a close partnership with the Trump administration, which in word and deed is pushing back against Chinese economic ties in Latin America. But despite that pressure, Noboa is trying to shore up relations with Beijing, advancing Ecuador’s participation in the Belt and Road Initiative and seeking more trade and investment from China.
Ecuador is “a friend on the other side of the Pacific that you can count on,” Noboa said in Beijing this week.
Ecuador’s struggle to stimulate economic growth helps explain its continued engagement with both Beijing and Washington.
China-Ecuador bilateral trade has increased since a free trade deal between the two countries took effect in 2024. In the first half of this year, it was 20 percent higher than during the same period last year, according to Chinese government statistics.
Ecuador’s bilateral trade with the United States also increased over the same period, by 13 percent. The Trump administration imposed duties on Ecuador as part of its global tariff regime, some of which remain in place after negotiators from both countries agreed to exemptions in March. U.S. tariffs likely kept Ecuador’s exports to the United States from growing even more, according to analyst Sebastián Hurtado of Quito-based consultancy Prófitas.
Economic growth was not Noboa’s top campaign promise. During his two successful presidential runs in a 2023 snap election and 2025 general election, his main pitch to voters was that he would use a hard-line security strategy to reduce gang violence, which had soared after the COVID-19 pandemic amid battles for control of drug routes.
But Noboa has now been in office for nearly three years, and homicides in Ecuador remain near historic highs. “The lack of progress on security is a key threat to the Noboa administration,” Hurtado said.
Noboa has entered a militarized anti-gang partnership with the Trump administration in the hopes of strengthening his hand, but it has not yielded major progress. Instead, the initiative has triggered criticism from human rights and civil society groups over its opacity and potential civilian deaths. Ecuador’s government has generally avoided answering questions from the media about the U.S. military partnership.
Ecuadorians looking to evaluate Noboa on another metric, the economy, see a country that is expected to grow more slowly this year than last. While Noboa has reduced Ecuador’s deficit per International Monetary Fund recommendations, he has not advanced a clear strategy for boosting growth, Hurtado argued: “Everybody assumes he’s business friendly, but that’s not enough.”
Against the backdrop of a slowing economy, engaging with China gives Noboa more options for generating trade and investment. Ecuador seeks to work with Beijing in the mining, renewable energy, and infrastructure sectors, Noboa said this week.
In the past few years, Chinese companies have announced multiple investments in Ecuadorian copper mines, though some of those projects are being held up while Ecuador presses for different terms, such as demands that the projects generate their own energy.
In addition to broad statements of partnership, Noboa’s engagement with China yielded at least one concrete result this week: China ended a ban on imports from several Ecuadorian shrimp plants that it had blacklisted in recent months amid a dispute over sanitary testing. Ecuador’s government said the move followed months of “negotiations and joint technical work.”
Friday, Aug. 21, to Friday, Aug. 28: Noboa concludes his trip to China and travels onward to Singapore and Vietnam.
Friday, Aug. 21, to Saturday, Aug. 22: Chilean Foreign Minister Francisco Pérez Mackenna concludes a visit to China.
Friday, Aug. 21, to Sunday, Aug. 23: Progressive lawmakers attend Panamerican Congress in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Former political prisoner Angela Vasquez reunites with relatives after her release outside El Rodeo I prison in Guatire, Venezuela, on Aug. 14.Juan Barreto/AFP via Getty Images
Venezuela talks. Venezuela’s government released dozens of political prisoners beginning last Friday, rights group Foro Penal said. The interim government of President Delcy Rodríguez said that the move was part of a process toward “democratic coexistence” in the country; it came amid U.S.-backed reconciliation talks between the Rodríguez administration and a limited number of opposition representatives.
Washington invited opposition politician Dinorah Figuera to return from exile in Spain to participate in the talks, rather than endorsing the participation of Venezuela’s most popular opposition figure, María Corina Machado. Figuera is seen as more moderate than Machado.
The talks produced progress beyond the prisoner release: The opposition signed on to a demand from the Rodríguez administration that the Bank of England unfreeze $4 billion in frozen Venezuelan gold, while the administration agreed to a reform process at the country’s Supreme Court.
Mexico’s disappeared students. A Mexican judge ruled last week that evidence was sufficient to allow a trial to move forward against the former governor of Guerrero state, Ángel Aguirre, for his alleged involvement in the 2014 abduction of 43 students. Aguirre will be tried on charges of forced disappearance and obstruction of justice.
Although the abductions shook Mexico, a full investigation has been beset by interference and delays. In 2022, a government truth commission found that the disappearances were a “state crime” that officials of all levels of Mexico’s government knew about.
Both former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and current President Claudia Sheinbaum pledged to get to the bottom of the case. While last week’s charge came from a new investigative unit that the Sheinbaum administration authorized, the line of inquiry into Aguirre was not new.
An independent international rights group that investigated the case floated his involvement in 2015. Since then, a witness with information against Aguirre who had previously kept quiet came forward, Mexico’s attorney general said.
Aguirre has denied wrongdoing. He is now in a maximum security prison awaiting trial.
Pope on tour. The Vatican’s announcement that Pope Leo XIV will tour South America in November has set his adopted country of Peru abuzz.
The Chicago-born pope obtained Peruvian citizenship in 2015 while on a lengthy posting to the northern Peruvian city of Chiclayo. He will now return, tacking on additional visits to Argentina and Uruguay.
In Peru, the government has ordered a special planning committee to prepare for Leo’s visit. The Lima chamber of commerce estimated that Peru could see a windfall of hundreds of millions of dollars of economic activity during the visit.
Tourists are expected to tread the circuit of pope-related tourism spots that have sprung up in Chiclayo since Leo’s selection as pontiff last May. They include several churches and an archeological site where the then-bishop used to pray.
And for the reported hundreds of Peruvians hoping to sing in Leo’s welcome choir, there’s an audition for that: In Lima, 18 to 60-year-olds are invited to try out this Sunday at the Metropolitan Cathedral.
When was the last time a pope made an official visit to Latin America?
Pope Francis visited Chile and Peru that year, but never traveled to his native Argentina during his tenure.
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In a photo released by Brazilian state oil company Petrobras, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is seen on a Petrobras ship in the Amazon Mouth Basin on Aug. 17.Agência Petrobras
Brazil’s presidential campaign officially kicked off on Sunday. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is running for reelection, does not appear to be focused on cultivating climate activists.
For a smiling photo op on Monday, Lula traveled to the state where national oil company Petrobras just struck oil. Petrobras had been drilling off the coast of the Amazon River basin, a project that has triggered a fierce, yearslong pushback from environmentalists.
While it’s not yet clear whether the oil found there is commercially viable, Lula hyped the possibility, saying that the discovery could be the “passport to the future.” He also recreated a well-known 2010 photo of himself visiting the site of another oil discovery, invoking the memory of Brazil’s oil-fueled economic boom in the early 2010s.
Lula’s invocation of Brazil’s boom years—and downplaying of environmentalists’ concerns—signal the importance of kitchen-table issues in the election and was an attempt to reach voters beyond his base. Environmentalists unhappy with the drilling are unlikely to vote for Lula’s more right-wing opponents.
For months, the polls have consistently shown that Lula and right-wing Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro have far more support than other candidates but also that neither is earning much backing beyond their bases. Economic security ranks among top voter concerns, along with violence and healthcare. Bolsonaro, too, has been talking up cost-of-living concerns at campaign events.
Petrobras could take a year or more from first discovery to determine whether there is enough high-quality oil to make business sense for large-scale drilling. Geologists have said this offshore zone of Brazil has many similarities with that of nearby Guyana, which has propelled a major economic windfall there.