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Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.
The highlights this week: Brazil hosts the G-20 leaders’ summit, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits Guyana, and a sexual misconduct scandal rocks Chile.
Donald Trump has yet to be inaugurated as U.S. president, but his anti-multilateralist approach already lurks over global diplomacy. Argentine President Javier Milei shook up this week’s G-20 leaders’ summit in Rio de Janeiro with Trump-style tactics after meeting with the U.S. president-elect last Thursday at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
In the days before the G-20 summit, Argentine diplomats suddenly objected to points in an official communiqué from the group that had been months in the making, including language about the importance of promoting gender equality and taxing the ultra-rich.
The communiqué requires unanimous consent to be adopted, and Argentina’s stance threatened to block key points that Brazil fought for. It was not Argentina’s only unorthodox diplomatic move of late: The country pulled its negotiating team from the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) last week.
The government did not explain its reasoning for withdrawing from COP29, but Milei has previously called climate change a “socialist lie.”
Frustrated G-20 countries successfully pushed back against Argentina at the summit in Rio. Argentina “is in a very difficult situation economically,” and pressure from other countries was effective, the University of Brasília’s Roberto Goulart Menezes told The Associated Press. Argentina’s objections were reduced to a statement issued separately by Milei.
Although G-20 countries still have rifts over the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, negotiators ultimately agreed to include vague condemnations of human suffering in both conflicts in the communiqué. They even posed for a group photo for the first time since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The communiqué broke new ground on addressing economic inequality. It pledged to cooperate “to ensure that ultra-high-net-worth individuals are effectively taxed,” referring to G-20 ministerial-level talks that studied proposals to tax billionaires.
“This is an issue that had never appeared in a G-20 communiqué,” said Laura Carvalho, the director of economic and climate prosperity at Open Society Foundations. “It reflects how a country from the global south can use these multilateral spaces to introduce agendas” that “are related to injustice and inequality.”
In another first, the joint statement complemented a customary call to climate action with a call for developing countries to be supported in “ambitious green industrial planning and strategies.”
Especially on economic policy, G-20 documents can have real-world impact. A report produced under Italy’s and Indonesia’s G-20 presidencies in 2021 and 2022 was embraced by institutions such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank. Both are changing their lending policies to dole out additional billions of dollars to poor countries each year.
Last year, when India led the forum, countries also urged development banks to lend more. The fact that a few countries in the global south have led the group consecutively has introduced momentum on issues of inequality. South Africa will chair the G-20 next year.
By then, Milei won’t need to serve as a stand-in: Trump himself is due to be there. Though Washington will be harder to pressure on key issues than Buenos Aires, Trump will still face a world where global south countries are capably pushing their own agendas.
Sunday, Nov. 24: Uruguay holds a presidential runoff election.
Wednesday, Dec. 4: The United States’ Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) hosts it first-ever CPAC Argentina event in Buenos Aires.
Bolsonaro coup plot. On Thursday, Brazilian police recommended criminal charges against former President Jair Bolsonaro and at least 30 others for what they called a broad plot to cling to power after Lula was elected in 2022.
The recommendations are the latest step in a long-running case. On Tuesday, police arrested five people, including a former Bolsonaro administration official, in a probe of a plan to assassinate Lula, Vice President Geraldo Alckmin, and Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes. The group included military officers and planned to use military expertise to carry out the killings, but ultimately abandoned the plan, according to the police probe.
The details unsealed Thursday did not reveal how much Bolsonaro knew about the purported plan to kill Lula. Bolsonaro has long maintained his innocence in the coup plot case. He is barred from leaving the country due to the investigation.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, accompanied by Guyanese President Irfaan Ali, is welcomed upon landing at the airport in Georgetown, Guyana, on Nov. 19.Denis Chabrol/AFP via Getty Images
Modi’s trip to Guyana. Amid Guyana’s oil boom, this week, Narendra Modi became the first Indian prime minister to visit the country in 56 years, despite the fact that some 40 percent of Guyanese are of Indian origin. British colonists brought Indian indentured laborers to Guyana before either nation gained independence; one of the country’s main political parties historically relies on an Indo-Guyanese voter base.
Modi received a red-carpet welcome in Guyana, including a key to the capital of Georgetown. India and Guyana signed 10 cooperation deals and Modi stayed in town for the second-ever summit between India and Caribbean Community nations.
India’s interest in engaging with the Caribbean bloc reflects its growing geopolitical ambitions. It is also an acknowledgement of the Caribbean’s energy resources; Suriname is also expanding offshore oil drilling.
Sexual misconduct in Chile. Former Chilean Deputy Interior Minister Manuel Monsalve was arrested last Thursday after being accused of rape by a 32-year-old female staffer. Monsalve resigned last month when the charges became public.
The case has tainted leftist President Gabriel Boric’s aspirations to run a “feminist” government in Chile. Boric testified as a witness in the case, saying that “no one is above the law.” Monsalve was one of the most visible senior officials in a more than two-year anti-crime push from Chilean authorities.
The charges against Monsalve are not the only such scandal to hit a Latin American government in recent months: In September, Lula sacked the Brazilian human rights minister, who was accused of sexually harassing at least two women, including the minister of racial equality.
Croissant controversy. Cross-cultural encounters at this week’s G-20 summit were not confined to the negotiating rooms. Some of the visiting officials embraced Brazilian customs in moments that went viral on social media.
French President Emmanuel Macron and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store went jogging on the beach in Rio. Store also embraced the fact that Norway is a top codfish exporter to Brazil and donned a waiter’s apron to serve fried codfish appetizers—a local classic—in a popular restaurant.
A popular French comedian based in Brazil, Paul Cabannes, requested to film a video with Macron that has now been viewed more than 1.5 million times on TikTok. The two discussed the differences in how Brazilian and French bakeries serve croissants; in Brazil, the pastry is often offered with fillings such as strawberry jam rather than being served plain, as it is in France.
When asked for an official French diplomatic position on this practice, Macron said that Paris opposes the filled croissant custom but “would have a hard time” changing it.
Guyana is expected to soon become Latin America’s third-largest oil producer. Which country will it knock out of that ranking?
Mexico
Brazil
Venezuela
Colombia
Colombia has halted new oil exploration contracts under President Gustavo Petro.
U.S. President Joe Biden signs a proclamation designating Nov. 17 as International Conservation Day during a visit to the Amazon rainforest in Manaus, Brazil, on Nov. 17.Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping tacked on extra rounds of diplomacy in Brazil this week, offering a look at Brazil’s bilateral relations with both the United States and China.
On Sunday, Biden became the first sitting U.S. president to visit the Amazon rainforest, announcing $50 million in support for a rainforest protection fund while speaking in the city of Manaus. He also highlighted tens of millions of dollars of U.S. investments in reforestation, fire management, and environmental research, and he endorsed a Brazil-backed fund for global tropical forest preservation.
On Tuesday, Biden and Lula held a lunch on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Rio, where both leaders committed to joint work on clean energy technologies.
Xi spent time with Lula on Wednesday. The Chinese president received a state visit in Brasília and signed 37 agreements. China opened its markets to imported Brazilian grapes and other products that a Brazilian official said would result in $450 million per year in additional trade.
Brazil’s development bank also announced a loan from a Chinese bank that will be its first yuan-denominated transaction, while a memorandum of understanding paved the way for a Chinese competitor to Elon Musk’s Starlink to enter Brazil.