Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Hurricane Melissa pummels the Caribbean, Argentine President Javier Milei prevails in midterm elections, and Mexicans honor deceased pets ahead of Day of the Dead.

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This year’s United Nations climate conference is not due to start for more than a week, but Hurricane Melissa’s deadly path through the Caribbean has brought the costs of climate change into catastrophic focus for the region.

Early on Tuesday local time, Melissa became the strongest storm to ever hit Jamaica. It also blazed a path through Cuba, dumped life-threatening rain on Haiti, and had killed dozens of people by Thursday afternoon. Warm water temperatures have made Atlantic tropical storms more intense in recent years.

Melissa damaged countries that have both distinct political systems and differing relationships with the United States. The storm is testing how those models perform in a climate disaster, as well as how Washington will approach humanitarian aid after dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development this year.

Jamaica, where the storm hit first, is a U.S.-friendly country that the International Monetary Fund has trumpeted as a pro-market reform success story. Haiti also leans hard toward the United States, but it has little state capacity and is heavily dependent on international aid. Cuba has a hostile relationship with Washington and is isolated from much of the global economy by U.S. sanctions.

On Wednesday, the U.S. State Department said it would assist countries in the region with hurricane response. A U.S. official told the New York Times that the State Department had asked the military to help. And U.S. warships and tens of thousands of troops have been stationed in the Caribbean for weeks, as the United States bombs alleged drug-trafficking boats and their passengers.

On Thursday, the State Department posted on social media that disaster response teams from Virginia and California had traveled to Jamaica. U.S. officials told The Associated Press that U.S. teams would assist nearby countries, too. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Washington was ready to offer humanitarian aid to the Cuban people via local partners.

In Jamaica, Melissa appears poised to trigger a response tool that other nearby countries lack: a catastrophe bond. A cat bond, as it is known, is a special type of insurance held by a country through which a payout is triggered if an extreme weather event breaches certain thresholds, such as wind speed or air pressure.

One cat bond specialist told Bloomberg that he expected Melissa to unlock most or all of Jamaica’s top potential disbursement of $150 million. The payout lends Jamaica a financial cushion that it lacked after last year’s Hurricane Beryl, the last major storm to hit the island. Beryl’s air pressure was slightly lower than the threshold for payment.

There is an ongoing debate in the climate finance community about whether cat bonds are wise, given that countries can suffer significant damage without receiving a payout. Some countries, such as Barbados, have said that they would prefer to invest directly in climate adaptation measures such as reinforcing sea walls rather than buy insurance.

Jamaica secured its cat bond due to officials’ savviness with financial markets. Nearby Haiti cannot say the same: The country has seen a rotating cast of interim leaders amid a yearslong security crisis. Haiti does not have a cat bond, though it does participate in a joint Caribbean disaster insurance scheme. Gang control of some neighborhoods may hinder relief efforts.

The Cuban government, meanwhile, is politically dominant but financially isolated. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans received evacuation orders ahead of the storm, but years of underinvestment in the island’s basic infrastructure will surely exacerbate damage. Furthermore, U.S. sanctions block Cuba from financial markets and straightforward access to disaster insurance.

At the U.N. climate conference in Brazil next month, known as COP30, countries will refine strategies for funding projects that adapt to climate change. But as the divergent fates of the three countries in Melissa’s path show, certain adaptation methods are not available to all—especially when access to global markets is limited.

Thursday, Nov. 6, to Friday, Nov. 7: The COP30 leaders’ summit takes place in Belém, Brazil.

Saturday, Nov. 8: Bolivia inaugurates President Rodrigo Paz.

Sunday, Nov. 9, to Monday, Nov. 10: The European Union and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States hold a summit in Colombia.

Monday, Nov. 10, to Friday, Nov. 21: The main COP30 negotiations take place.

Lula at ASEAN. This week, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva became the first Brazilian president to attend a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)—part of Brazil’s strategy to grow trade ties with the group. Brazil trades more with ASEAN countries than it does with the other countries in Mercosur, the South American customs union. Brazil-ASEAN trade increased by 8.1 percent last year.

At the summit, Lula discussed a trade deal between Indonesia and Mercosur, which the Brazilian leader said he hopes can move forward before the end of the year. Brazil and Malaysia also committed to working together on semiconductors; a senior Brazilian trade official said that the countries would develop a joint venture for semiconductor development.

Malaysia’s role as a potential semiconductor supplier has become more salient due to an export control dispute that caused China to freeze some overseas sales of chips made at Chinese plants in response to U.S. measures. The stoppage threatened to paralyze car manufacturing plants across the world, including in Brazil.

China’s trade detente with the United States, reached on Thursday, may de-escalate this issue, but it leaves the longer-term supply chain vulnerability unresolved.

Boat strike pushback. U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration continued to expand its military strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats in the waters around northern South America in recent days, prompting pushback from regional leaders.

Last week, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley said the campaign was becoming “dangerous and untenable,” adding, “we do not accept that any entity has the right to engage in extrajudicial killings of persons they suspect of being involved in criminal activities.” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has worked to maintain a positive relationship with Trump, said on Tuesday that Mexico does “not agree” with the boat strikes.

Even so, other Latin American officials have endorsed or even echoed Trump’s tactics, including the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, which has served as a docking point for U.S. vessels. Due to proximity to drug trafficking, there is “no zone of peace” in the country, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said this week.

Meanwhile, in Brazil, the right-wing governor of Rio de Janeiro echoed Trump’s language on Tuesday, using the accusation of “narco-terrorism” to justify a heavy-handed anti-drug raid that is estimated to have killed more than 120 people. Authorities did not immediately provide details about the victims.

CNN Brasil previously reported that the governor sent a dossier to the Trump administration this year seeking for it to designate Brazilian crime groups as terrorists—going against Lula’s position on the matter.

A papier-mâché skeleton dog sit amid marigold flowers. Behind it are papier-mâché skeletons and Mexico’s presidential palace, flying a Mexican flag.

A giant papier-mâché sculpture of a Mexican hairless dog is seen at the Zocalo square in Mexico City on Oct. 26, ahead of the Day of the Dead.Rodrigo Oropeza/AFP via Getty Images

Day of the Pets. This weekend, Mexicans will observe Day of the Dead, in which they use altars and offerings to pay remembrance to loved ones who have passed away. A spinoff holiday has grown in popularity in the country: Oct. 27, when Mexicans honor their deceased pets. The Mexican government erected a giant statue of a dog skeleton in Mexico City’s main Zócalo square to mark the day.

Mexican writers and historians have pointed out that dogs have long been understood in Mexican folk tradition as links to the afterlife.

But the country’s embrace of the new tradition is also interwoven with demographic changes. Mexican women are, on average, having fewer children—and pets are enjoying some of the spare attention. In fact, a company in Mexico City’s growing pet funeral sector proposed holding a Day of the Dead for pets in 2019. (Mexicans eventually settled on a different day than the company suggested.)

With which ASEAN country does Brazil trade the most?

Malaysia

Indonesia

Vietnam

The Philippines

Bilateral trade reached more than $7 billion last year, a record.

Argentine President Javier Milei places his ballot into a box at a polling station, making a thumbs up with his left hand. He wears a black leather jacket.

Argentine President Javier Milei poses for a picture before casting his vote at a polling station in Buenos Aires on Oct. 26.Luis Robayo/AFP via Getty Images

Argentina’s midterm elections on Sunday brought good news for President Javier Milei and his allies in the Trump administration. The White House directly intervened in Argentina’s currency market to support Milei’s economic program and pledged $40 billion in potential bailout money this month, suggesting that it was conditioned to strong electoral performance by Milei’s party.

Milei’s libertarian party won around 41 percent of the congressional vote to the leftist Peronist opposition’s 32 percent. Because not all seats were up for grabs, the Peronists remain the largest group in both houses of Argentina’s Congress—but Milei’s party now has enough lawmakers to block an override of his presidential vetoes.

In the second half of his presidential term, Milei is expected to use his expanded legislative influence to keep pushing a pro-market economic overhaul forward.

Weeks ahead of the vote, a drop in the value of the Argentine peso sparked fears that Milei’s reforms—such as the removal of currency controls—could go off the rails. That’s when the Trump administration stepped in with its pledges of support.

“He had a lot of help from us,” Trump told reporters after Milei’s positive election result.

What made Trump’s move extraordinary “was its bluntly partisan character,” Oliver Stuenkel and Adrian Feinberg wrote in Foreign Policy. “Trump has used the imprimatur of the U.S. presidency … to support the interests of his right-wing partisans at the expense of diplomatic norms and democratic principles.”

The Milei administration appears to be readying itself to repay the favor. Last week, Milei named a new foreign minister, Pablo Quirno, who is closely tied to Argentina’s economy minister and “deeply versed in the negotiations and stakeholders steering Argentina’s foreign policy in lockstep with Washington,” analyst Mariano Machado of Verisk Maplecroft said.