Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Washington tightens the screws on Cuba’s economy, Mia Mottley wins a third term in Barbados’s elections, and Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show earns applause throughout the region.

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Cuba’s already-dire economic crisis has worsened in the weeks since the United States captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and suggested that it wants political change at the top of Cuba’s communist government, too.

Washington is working to prohibit oil sales to the island via a naval buildup near Venezuela and a Jan. 29 tariff threat against other countries that might sell fuel to Havana. Cuba depends on such imports for part of its energy supply. The White House claims that Cuba poses a national security threat to the United States.

Fuel is dwindling fast. Fewer people are driving in Havana in order to preserve gasoline. Many are using charcoal or wood fires to cook. The tourism sector, a major part of the Cuban economy, is downsizing. International airlines are suspending flights to the island, and hotels are closing their doors. Multiple foreign embassies have reviewed plans for potential staff evacuations.

Late last week, Cuban officials said that the government would start to ration energy. As part of the rationing at a public hospital, a worker there told news site 14ymedio this week that “all surgeries and transportation of patients from other municipalities have been canceled because of lack of gasoline.” Medicine is also running low.

“Some of us who have a little business have a bit to eat, but many, many, many people do not have it,” pizzeria owner Isben Peralta told CBC. “It’s very, very bad.”

The top U.S. envoy in Cuba, Mike Hammer, told Telemundo on Tuesday that he was in talks with unspecified Cuban officials to bring about political change in the country this year. Hammer suggested that Washington sought to repeat its recent formula in Venezuela, where then-Vice President Delcy Rodríguez was willing to cooperate with U.S. demands. She became acting leader following Maduro’s ouster.

Washington may be seeking concessions from Havana that include an economic opening to U.S. businesses, restrictions on military cooperation with Russia and China, and compensation for properties of U.S. companies and Cuban Americans that were expropriated by the Cuban government, William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh wrote in Foreign Policy earlier this month.

The United States conducted secret negotiations with Maduro for months before ousting him on Jan. 3. But during those talks, Washington did not trigger sudden and widespread fuel shortages in Venezuela the way that it is now doing in Cuba.

The humanitarian cost of Trump’s Cuba strategy is decidedly higher for the general population—and has started to prompt international criticism. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned of a disaster in Cuba, as have a handful of U.S. Democratic lawmakers. On Thursday, a group of U.N. experts called Trump’s Jan. 29 threat against oil suppliers to Cuba “a serious violation of international law.”

“It is very unjust,” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Monday of the U.S. approach. “You cannot strangle a people like this.” In response to Trump’s tariff threat, Mexico, which had recently been the main oil supplier to Cuba alongside Venezuela, suspended those shipments. Instead, it is sending humanitarian aid to the country.

Chile announced on Thursday that it would also provide Cuba with assistance, with President Gabriel Boric calling U.S. restrictions against Cuba “criminal and an attack on the human rights of an entire people.” Russian pro-government newspaper Izvestiareported that Moscow planned to export fuel despite Trump’s tariff threat.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry criticized the U.S. restrictions against Cuba this week and already announced humanitarian aid for the island last month. It was not immediately clear if more was on the way. Beijing often supports Havana in U.N. votes but has become frustrated in recent years over Cuba’s failure to pay back loans and its refusal to open its economy more.

If Havana’s international partners are only willing to provide the island with limited support, then the humanitarian situation stands to worsen. In that case, experts say there is a growing risk of an outcome that the White House claims it does not seek: a new migrant outflow from Cuba.

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Tuesday, Feb. 17, to Tuesday, Feb. 24: Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva visits India and South Korea.

Tuesday, Feb. 24, to Friday, Feb. 27: The Caribbean Community (Caricom) holds a leaders’ summit.

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Barbados casts ballots. The anti-incumbent mood sweeping Latin America and the Caribbean missed Barbados in its parliamentary elections on Wednesday. Prime Minister Mia Mottley’s Barbados Labour Party won every single seat that was up for grabs, according to state media.

The Labour Party’s campaign focused on affordability and social justice, as well as Barbados’s role in the world. It pledged to continue a nonaligned foreign policy described as “Friends of All, Satellites of None.” In her most recent term, Mottley has also bucked the region’s trend of restricting migration permissions, championing a new Caricom policy last year in which four countries allowed full freedom of movement for their nationals.

Although Barbados is small, with fewer than 300,000 residents, it has long punched above its weight on the global stage. The Mottley administration has pushed global climate and banking initiatives that later gained wide support.

Argentina-U.S. trade deal. Officials from both countries last week announced a trade and investment agreement in which the United States would end tariffs on nearly 1,700 Argentine products and Argentina would remove tariffs on more than 200 categories of products from the United States. Argentina’s base tariff rate from the Trump administration stands at 10 percent, among the lowest imposed on any trade partner.

U.S. tariffs of 50 percent on Argentine steel and aluminum would remain but go under review, the Trump administration said. Washington also pledged to increase the amount of Argentine beef that it imports tariff-free.

The administration of Argentine President Javier Milei hailed the deal as a victory and said it was part of the country’s economic opening to the world. But officials in Brazil, one of Argentina’s partners in South American customs union Mercosur, have flagged the agreement as a potential violation of its rules and are reviewing it, Reuters reported.

Brazil’s role in the world. The Munich Security Conference kicks off today. Ahead of the event, organizers published fresh survey data on what citizens of countries around the world think about foreign policy.

Brazil has been a part of this dataset since 2021. After a year of Trump’s tariffs and other heavy-handed moves, Brazilian respondents elevated the United States in the list of global risks that their country faces. Like respondents in Germany, Canada, and France, they also downgraded China as a risk.

Notably, the threats that Brazilians listed as the most severe were not other countries, but rather phenomena: climate change and economic inequality. Together with India, China, and South Africa, Brazil was among the top countries where citizens said that their governments should contribute more to global problem-solving as other countries do less.

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• NATO’s Leader Is Totally Lostby Stephen M. Walt
• Who Killed the Liberal International Order?by Nick Danforth
• Europe Is Getting Ready to Pivot to Putinby Anchal Vohra

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Sunday’s Super Bowl halftime show by Bad Bunny sparked a surge of attention across Latin America, and not only because he was singing in Spanish.

After proclaiming “God bless America,” Bad Bunny elaborated that he was referring not only to the United States, but to all countries in the Americas. He then named them, from south to north, while giant flags of each country billowed behind him. “Together, we are America,” read a message that he displayed on a football.

Bad Bunny’s celebration of a shared identity attracted praise (and extensive media coverage) throughout the region. It even drew comment from politicians.

A Mexican lawmaker said on the floor of Congress that Bad Bunny represented “the struggle of the Latin American people.” A Colombian presidential candidate called the performance an “endlessly valuable expression of Latin American pride.” And a Brazilian lawmaker filed a petition to grant Bad Bunny Brazilian citizenship, saying that celebrating him “is also celebrating our own identity.”

Several Latin American and U.S. intellectuals over the decades, perhaps most famously Cuban revolutionary and poet José Martí, have used a capacious concept of “América” to refer to multiple countries in the Americas, emphasizing their shared history and positive potential.

By invoking that concept, Bad Bunny struck a decisively different tone than the White House, which often frames the rest of the hemisphere as a source of problems such as drugs and illegal immigration. Trump called the halftime show “absolutely terrible.”

For the NFL, however, greenlighting Bad Bunny’s performance may be part of a long-term business strategy. The league is trying to expand internationally. It has staged games in Mexico and Brazil, where Bad Bunny is crossing over the language divide that often serves as a barrier to artists who sing in Spanish.

Bad Bunny graced the cover of Brazil Vogue and GQ this month, and his latest album received the ultimate cultural endorsement: becoming a Carnaval costume.