Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.
The highlights this week: Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva kicks off an Asia tour in India, another Peruvian president is impeached, and Uruguay celebrates the world’s longest carnival.
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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi traveled to Brazil and Argentina last year, and this week, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is leading one of the largest-ever Brazilian delegations to India, including 11 government ministers and hundreds of business leaders. The trip marks Lula’s second to the country during his current term.
Brazil and India share membership in several multilateral groupings, but their bilateral relationship has long underperformed its potential, according to Hari Seshasayee, an expert on India-Latin America relations. “India has had a ‘neighborhood first’ policy for many years,” he told Foreign Policy.
Unlike its engagement with Africa, India does not convene regular summits with Latin American countries, nor has it produced a strategy white paper for the region that is comparable to those issued by China or the European Union. Although Indian trade and investment in Latin America have grown in the past decade, the private sector has led that effort.
That dynamic now appears to be changing. Since returning to office in 2023, Lula has sought to deepen ties with Asian partners. This accelerated after U.S. President Donald Trump imposed some of his steepest tariffs on Brazil and India, which turned to each other to diversify their partnerships.
Increased cooperation is already underway. Ahead of Lula’s trip, Brazilian aerospace firm Embraer signed an agreement to manufacture aircraft in India, and Brazil’s health minister announced new funding to import Indian components for so-called smart hospitals powered by artificial intelligence.
Brazil and India are hedging against instability and great-power competition with their growing cooperation. As Trump shakes up the global system, “the character of the international order that will emerge will be very much determined by the behavior of middle powers,” said Hussein Kalout, an international advisory board member at the Brazilian Center for International Relations.
Rare-earths cooperation and AI are both focal points of Lula’s visit this week. At a global AI summit in New Delhi, he delivered a speech arguing that the technology’s benefits must extend to the global south and that regulation is necessary to curb its harmful effects, such as disinformation.
Brazil’s executive branch has already launched a sweeping AI action plan, and lawmakers are expected to pass a regulatory framework in the coming weeks. Still, Brazil’s approach to AI policy has caused some pushback at home, and not only from tech companies fearing red tape.
Ronaldo Lemos, the founder of the Institute for Technology and Society of Rio de Janeiro and one of the authors of Brazil’s 2014 internet bill of rights, told Foreign Policy that Brazil’s draft AI legal framework leans so heavily into regulation that the country stands to miss out on economic benefits.
Brazilian officials, for their part, have argued that their proposed AI policies strike a balance between innovation and safeguarding against potential harm.
If enacted in its current form, Lemos said, the AI action plan “would cause significant stagnation in the artificial intelligence innovation sector.” He noted that the legislation does little to address the need for large-scale education and workforce retraining. Though the plan mentions retraining, Lemos said it is an area where Brazil can learn from India.
Lula’s appearance at the summit in New Delhi is at the very least subjecting Brazil’s AI policies to greater international debate, and it could yield new approaches and partnerships. After India, Lula will travel to South Korea, a technology powerhouse that has also signaled its intention to upgrade its relationship with Brazil.
Tuesday, Feb. 24, to Friday, Feb. 27: The Caribbean Community (Caricom) holds a leaders’ summit.
Saturday, March 7: Trump will host multiple Latin American leaders in Miami.
AI-assisted raid. The U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro ignited fresh controversy this week after the Wall Street Journal and Axios reported that the U.S. Defense Department used the AI model Claude in the Jan. 3 military operation. The reports did not specify how the tool was used but noted that AI can be applied to tasks such as scenario-planning and drone control.
Claude’s developer, Anthropic, did not comment on whether the technology was used in the raid but stressed that there is a usage code for the product; the code prohibits its use to facilitate violence. In recent days, Anthropic and the Pentagon have reportedly been at odds over the company’s request for assurances that its technology will not be used for mass surveillance or to operate fully autonomous weapons.
Earlier this month, a few Latin American countries, including Chile, Ecuador, and Panama, were among the signatories of a global pledge promoting the responsible military use of AI. The United States did not sign it, nor did Colombia, which has deployed AI-equipped armed drones in operations against drug traffickers.
Canada-Mexico ties. Representatives from more than 200 Canadian companies are in Mexico City this week seeking to boost trade and investment amid mixed signals from the United States on the future of North American free trade. A follow-up mission is in the works for March, when a top Canadian trade official said he expects that specific investments would be announced.
The future of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement will likely not be clear until at least July. In the meantime, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is pitching another potential trade pact that would link the European Union with the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, of which both Canada and Mexico are members.
Dancers perform at the Llamadas Parade, held on Feb. 7 and Feb. 8, 2025, in Montevideo, Uruguay.Santiago Mazzarovich/dpa via Reuters Connect
The longest carnival. Carnival festivities wrapped up this week across much of Latin America, except for Uruguay, where they will continue through March as part of the world’s longest Carnival celebration.
As elsewhere, Uruguay’s celebration is heavily shaped by the country’s Afro-descendent population. Drumming traditions brought to South America during the trans-Atlantic slave trade laid the foundation for the candombe music tradition. During Carnival, candombe bands parade through the streets alongside costumed dancers.
Another central element of Uruguay’s Carnival traces its roots to Spain. In 1909, a traveling Spanish opera troupe performed in the country, inspiring local adaptations. Today, musical theater performances known as murgas occur during every Carnival, often satirizing social and political themes of the day.
At this year’s festivities, some murgas made critiques of the U.S. fuel blockade on Cuba and the rising use of ChatGPT in classrooms.
The word “carnival” is believed to derive from Latin. What does it mean?
That is a reference to Lent in the Christian calendar, during which some observers give up meat. (“Meat” in Latin is carnis, so Spanish and Portuguese speakers may have guessed this.)
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New interim Peruvian President José María Balcázar is seen after his election at the National Congress in Lima on Feb. 18.Ernesto Benavides / AFP via Getty Images
This week, Peru swore in its eighth president in a decade. After impeaching and removing President José Jerí on Tuesday, the country’s Congress selected left-wing politician José Balcázar as his interim replacement. Balcázar will lead the country until the end of July, when a new president—chosen during general elections in April—will take office.
The development continues Peru’s cycle of rapid presidential turnover. Jerí was impeached only four months after taking office, following the impeachment of President Dina Boluarte. And Balcázar belongs to the same party as former President Pedro Castillo, who was elected in 2021 and impeached in 2022.
Jerí came under scrutiny last month after reports surfaced that he had met with a Chinese businessman holding a government contract without officially registering the encounter as required. As criticism mounted over so-called “Chifa-gate”—a reference to Chinese-Peruvian cuisine—journalists also uncovered new evidence about a 2024 rape allegation against Jerí, which he denies.
Though Peru’s economy has largely remained stable despite the frequent presidential turnover, its democracy has not fared as well.
“Peru’s democracy is falling apart,” Human Rights Watch’s Juanita Goebertus wrote in a statement. “The constant changes of president are just the tip of the iceberg in a country where Congress constantly legislates in favor of organized crime, judges and prosecutors fear retaliation for doing their jobs, and criminal groups are expanding.”
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