Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.
The highlights this week: Cuban officials gird for possible U.S. intervention, the EU-Mercosur trade deal moves a step closer to ratification, and Brazil bags two Golden Globes.
After Venezuela, Is Cuba Next?
As Latin America grapples with the fallout from the U.S. ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro earlier this month, the government with the most immediate worries about its own stability is Cuba. That’s due to ties between Caracas and Havana as well as signaling from top U.S. officials.
“If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in the hours after the Jan. 3 U.S. attack on Venezuela. Rubio, who is Cuban American, has voiced hope for regime change in Cuba throughout his entire political career. “Cuba looks like it’s ready to fall,” U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters on Jan. 4.
In the following days, Trump said that the United States—which is directing policy in Venezuela via pressure from a naval buildup and tanker seizures—would not allow any Venezuelan oil to go to Cuba.
The ban removes a key pillar of financial support for Cuba’s government during an already-dire economic crisis. The country’s GDP has shrunk 11 percent since 2020 amid a long-standing U.S. trade embargo and local mismanagement. Venezuela supplied Cuba with an estimated third of its oil demand.
On Jan. 11, Trump wrote on social media that Cuba should “make a deal” before it was too late. While he did not specify potential consequences, Maduro’s removal has revealed the scope of military actions that Trump appears willing to take against U.S. adversaries.
Altogether, the new economic pressure and verbal threats from Washington may suggest that Cuba could soon become a target of a U.S. military operation. But there are also multiple factors working against that possibility, at least in the short term.
First, the Cuban government’s control over political life on the island extends far more deeply than did Maduro’s. Cuba has been an authoritarian state for much longer than Venezuela and has less political pluralism. This makes it more difficult to imagine significant changes in the regime.
Second, Cuba has no major natural resource sector that could be quickly taken over by U.S. firms in the way that Trump is trying to do with Venezuela’s oil sector.
Third, surveys suggest that Americans are broadly skeptical of foreign military interventions—and of the Venezuela strike in particular.
A Reuters-Ipsos poll from shortly after the attack found that only one in three Americans supported it, while 72 percent were worried the United States would get bogged down in Venezuela. According to an Associated Press-NORC poll published this week, 56 percent of Americans said that Trump had gone too far in using the U.S. military to intervene abroad.
For now, the Trump administration appears comfortable continuing to bleed Cuba economically without forcing its collapse. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CBS News this week that the United States would allow Mexico, another of Cuba’s key oil suppliers, to continue selling fuel to the island.
Trump told reporters on Jan. 11 that Washington was talking to Cuba about unspecified demands. But Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel denied any such negotiations were taking place. “No one dictates what we do,” he wrote on social media.
In the meantime, the more than 9 million Cubans on the island are bracing for even more acute economic pain. They already suffered multiple large-scale blackouts last year. Economic experts have said that removing Venezuelan oil supplies could be catastrophic for the country and push it into a subsistence zone.
While the Cuban government has survived extreme economic hardship before, Cuban-born businessman Hugo Cancio wrote last week that Trump’s foreign-policy posture meant “times have changed.” Cuba could engage with the United States and adapt, Cancio wrote, or face change imposed on it from the outside.
Upcoming Events
Sunday, Jan. 17: A trade deal between the European Union and South American customs union Mercosur is expected to be signed in Paraguay.
Wednesday, Jan. 21: The United Nations Security Council discusses Haiti.
Friday, Jan. 23: The U.N. Security Council discusses Colombia.
What We’re Following
Trump on speed dial. Colombian President Gustavo Petro and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum each held calls with Trump in recent days as part of efforts to de-escalate tensions after he threatened to use military force against their countries.
Petro spoke to Trump on Jan. 7. Colombian diplomats worked to set up the call as an alternate channel of communication from social media, where Petro and Trump have sparred previously. Petro described the call as a first step toward a better understanding between the two sides. Trump invited Petro to the White House.
But the talks did not prevent Colombia from being included this week on a list of countries facing new U.S. immigrant visa bans. The restriction also hit two other left-leaning governments in South America: Brazil and Uruguay.
Sheinbaum spoke to Trump, who has threatened to launch military strikes against drug cartels in Mexico, on Jan. 12. During the call, Trump said that he understood Mexico’s opposition to such strikes, according to Sheinbaum.
Still, the New York Times reported that Washington is continuing to press for joint anti-drug operations in Mexico, which would significantly expand the U.S. presence in the country.
Prisoner releases. Venezuela has released more than 70 detainees since Maduro’s ouster, according to rights group Foro Penal. Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez said on Jan. 14 that the releases would continue as part of “a new political moment” in the country that allows for “ideological diversity.”
Opposition leader María Corina Machado has still not returned to Venezuela from exile, though she recently met with Trump.
Venezuela was not the only Latin American country to release political prisoners in recent days. Nicaragua’s government also freed between 20 and 30 people from jail amid pressure from the United States, human rights groups and Nicaraguan media in exile reported over the weekend.
Wagner Moura poses at the 83rd annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, on Jan. 11.Brianna Bryson/Getty Images
Globes on Globes. Brazilian dictatorship-era drama The Secret Agent won two Golden Globes on Jan. 11, one for best foreign language film and another for best actor. In the film, Wagner Moura plays a former professor being pursued by state agents. Its “languid, painterly style” allows for “a series of canny observations on life under, and after, authoritarianism,” Lucas Iberico Lozada wrote in Foreign Policy last December.
Last year, another Brazilian film depicting life during the military dictatorship, I’m Still Here, won a Golden Globe award and an Oscar. Also last year, the Berlin International Film Festival honored the Haitian-Cuban-Brazilian drama Anba dlo and Brazil’s The Blue Trail.
The recent acclaim for Brazilian film was enough for the Golden Globes organization itself to schedule a March ceremony in Rio de Janeiro “celebrating Brazilian film and television talent.”
Question of the Week
Brazil’s Moura also played what crime boss on Netflix?
Moura starred in Netflix’s Narcos.
FP’s Most Read This Week
- The ‘Donroe Doctrine’ Makes No Sense by Stephen M. Walt
- Iran’s Currency Crisis Could Be the Regime’s Downfall by Alireza Nader and Nik Kowsar
- The World-Minus-One Moment by Amitav Acharya
In Focus: The EU-Mercosur Deal
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen speaks during a press conference at the EU headquarters in Brussels on Jan. 14.Nicolas Tucat/AFP via Getty Images
On Jan. 9, the European Council voted to approve the EU’s draft trade agreement with Mercosur, bringing the deal a key step closer to conclusion.
EU leaders reached an agreement in principle with the South American trade bloc in December 2024. But countries such as France and Italy were worried about exposing their agriculture sectors so openly to competition.
Then came Trump’s tariffs. In recent months, top EU officials tweaked the deal to include more robust quotas on duty-free imports of certain agricultural products and pledged more financial support to farmers in countries such as Italy, which then lifted its veto.
The deal still needs approval from the European Parliament, which “is going to be a close vote,” said Chatham House’s Bruno Binetti. That decision could be months away, he said.
Still, officials in both Europe and South America are celebrating the latest progress as proof of their ability to shape their own economic destinies—and international norms—in a world rocked by Trump’s levies and China’s flood of exports.
“Europe charts its own course and stands as a reliable partner,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called last Friday “a historic day for multilateralism.”
If the deal becomes reality, it will not only boost trade between the two continents, but it will also introduce a key innovation on environmental protection. It is one of the first trade agreements in the world to require members to adhere to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, Brazilian environmental scientist Raoni Rajão told FP.
Perhaps as a result, Argentine President Javier Milei, who backs the trade deal, has moved away from campaign-era promises to withdraw his country from the Paris Agreement.