Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.
The highlights this week: Peru’s president is impeached amid anti-government protests, Chinese auto giant BYD opens a mega-plant in Brazil, and an “anti-Hamilton” musical captivates Mexico.
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Peru’s Congress impeached President Dina Boluarte by a unanimous vote last Friday, marking the second time that the legislature has removed a leader since the 2021 presidential election.
Boluarte previously served as vice president to Pedro Castillo, who was booted from office in December 2022 after an attempt to rule by decree. Her ouster is unsurprising. She weathered several scandals, including an accusation that she received Rolex watches as bribes, and limped along for months with an approval rating of less than 5 percent.
Just after midnight on Oct. 10, Peru’s Congress took action and removed Boluarte for the vague offense of “moral incapacity” to govern. The immediate trigger was a shooting in Lima two days earlier, which lawmakers argued underscored her government’s inability to contain crime.
Peru now has its seventh president in less than 10 years: José Jerí, who was the leader of Congress and thus next in the line of succession. He is set to govern for less than a year, as the next election is scheduled for April.
Jerí is a conservative who pledged a hard-line anti-crime stance. Under his leadership this year, the legislature echoed the United States’ aggressive anti-gang stance, voting to declare Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles as a terrorist organization. Only a handful of Latin American countries have done so; Cartel de los Soles is a loose network of cells within the Venezuelan military, according to InSight Crime.
The U.S. Embassy in Lima signaled readiness to cooperate with Jerí, congratulating him in on social media.
Although Jerí has made few pronouncements about foreign policy, he has not immediately suggested that he will turn Peru away from another important partner: China. Last year, Peru inaugurated one of China’s biggest infrastructure projects in Latin America, a port in the Pacific coastal city of Chancay.
Jerí is also expected to continue Boluarte’s macroeconomic policy. Peru’s currency and bonds barely moved after her impeachment last week, despite the turbulence that often accompanies sudden changes in governments. Peru’s central bank has had the same leader for almost 20 years, and its economy is on track to grow more than 3 percent this year, according to government estimates.
Peru’s economy may appear healthy, but it was a sense of personal insecurity among many citizens that led to Boluarte’s ouster.
Although some of Peru’s anti-government protesters adopted a similar character to recent Generation Z-led demonstrations across Asia and Africa, the movement was more than just a youth whim. The driving force was simmering discontent over a spate of extortions. Bus drivers had protested the attacks for months.
With elections approaching, Peruvian political parties wanted to appear to be taking action—but politicians failed inspired confidence, El Comerico’s editorial board wrote. The late-night impeachment only furthered “short-termism” in Peruvian politics, opening the door to “apathy; resentment; or, in general, a vote [in the next election] that seeks to kick away the whole playing board,” the board argued.
On Wednesday, Peruvian activists—including youth, unions, and Indigenous groups—gathered for continued protests in multiple cities. Many demonstrators denounced insecurity, while some feminist groups sought to draw attention to a probe into a sexual assault accusation made against Jerí in January that the attorney general shut down in August.
In Lima, police fired tear gas at demonstrators, and by the end of the evening, one person was reported dead and more than 100 were wounded. Boluarte’s impeachment has not immediately put Peru on a path toward pacification.
Sunday, Oct. 19: Bolivia holds a presidential election runoff.
Thursday, Oct. 23, to Tuesday, Oct. 28: Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva travels to Indonesia and Malaysia.
Sunday, Oct. 26: Argentina holds midterm elections.
Delegations from Argentina and the United States sit on opposite sides of a long, brown oval table in discussion. Before each is a microphone. In the middle of the table are bouquets of flowers; a portrait of Abraham Lincoln sitting in a chair during a meeting hangs on the far wall above a mantle.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Argentine President Javier Milei hold a meeting at the White House in Washington on Oct. 14. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Mixed messages toward Milei. Argentina’s currency and bonds fluctuated this week after U.S. officials sent mixed signals about their plans to prop up the peso. As Argentine President Javier Milei visited the White House on Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump suggested that he was conditioning billions of dollars in U.S. support on a favorable outcome for Milei’s far-right coalition in Argentina’s midterms on Oct. 26. “If he doesn’t win, we’re gone,” Trump said.
Then, on Wednesday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a press conference that U.S. aid for Argentina was even bigger than the previously announced $20 billion swap line—and that it included an additional $20 billion in loans from private and sovereign financial institutions that Washington was helping to facilitate.
Trump endorsed Milei for reelection at a meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York last month. Argentina’s next presidential vote is in 2027.
BYD in Brazil. Last week, Chinese auto giant BYD held an opening ceremony for a factory in the Brazilian city of Camaçari—the largest such facility outside of Asia. In attendance were the company’s president and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who said the $1 billion plant could eventually produce 600,000 cars per year.
Although a forced labor probe temporarily delayed progress on the Camaçari plant last year, BYD’s operations in Brazil are expanding rapidly. The company now accounts for 5.6 percent of passenger vehicles sold in Brazil.
The Brazilian government granted BYD tax exemptions to get the plant up and running, prompting pushback from Brazil’s auto industry association, which argued that the support for BYD was unfairly hurting rivals. Brasília said the financial perks aim to boost industrialization and renewable transportation.
In July, the government moved forward a planned tariff that will affect BYD and other importers of partially assembled cars. The tariff, which will go into effect in January 2027, incentivizes plants to use locally made parts, which BYD currently mostly avoids. The company says it will include 70 percent Brazilian-made parts by 2028.
Singing Mexico’s story. A colonial history-inspired musical has extended its Mexico City run through at least November. Spanish rocker Nacho Cano created Malinche: The Musical, which focuses on the life of the Indigenous Aztec woman who was a translator and romantic partner to conquistador Hernán Cortes.
The popular show has stirred up fresh debate about Spain’s colonial conquests. Antonio De Loera-Brust wrote last month in Foreign Policy that the musical’s uncritical depiction of colonization made it an “anti-Hamilton.” Cano has argued that Malinche is a love story that reconnects Mexicans with their history.
Meanwhile, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum wrapped up a separate project this month designed to change the political undertones of some music about Mexico. Her administration conceived the contest “Mexico Sings” as an antidote to popular songs about drug violence. Participants were encouraged to riff on the theme “for peace and against addiction.”
“Mexico Sings” was broadcast on state television, with record contracts going to winners in multiple categories. It intended to inspire “new narratives,” Sheinbaum said.
The United States celebrated Columbus Day on Oct. 13. In some jurisdictions, the holiday is known instead as Indigenous Peoples Day.
In what Latin American country was a similar holiday to mark the Italian explorer’s arrival renamed from “Race Day” to “Day of the Original People and Intercultural Dialogue”?
Ecuador
Colombia
The Dominican Republic
Peru
The change was made in the 2000s.
Maria Corina Machado stands in front of an out-of-focus crowd with her right hand over her heart as she looks up at the sky, smiling slightly.
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado gestures during an anti-government protest in Caracas on Jan. 9.Photo by Jesus Vargas/Getty Images
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last Friday. The Norwegian Nobel Committee recognized Machado’s personal courage and the strategic, logistic, and emotional perseverance of the country’s opposition alliance in presidential elections last year.
After authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro’s administration barred Machado from running, Machado threw her support behind a replacement candidate, Edmundo González. She helped organize an effort to collect poll receipts showing that González won the vote. Maduro declared victory and cracked down further on dissent, after which dozens of people were killed by security forces and hundreds jailed.
The actions that won Machado the prize aimed for a peaceful return to democracy in Venezuela. But in recent months, she has voiced support for Trump’s military buildup in the Caribbean. Machado declined to tell NPR in an interview last week whether she is comfortable with U.S. strikes on Venezuelan soil. On Wednesday, Trump suggested that land attacks could come soon.
The White House says its Caribbean strikes are targeting drug traffickers, while Maduro says the attacks are an attempt to topple him—an interpretation that Machado shares. A full-on attempt at a U.S. military coup in Venezuela would be bloody, Christopher Sabatini wrote in Foreign Policy on Wednesday.
Fearful of government repression, few Venezuelans have celebrated Machado’s Nobel in the streets. “Self-censorship has become, for many, the only option to protect themselves,” Leila Quintero wrote this week in Caracas Chronicles.
