Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.
The highlights this week: Washington designates two Haitian gangs as foreign terrorist organizations, a new Argentine Netflix show ascends global rankings, and the conclave elects a pope with ties to Peru.
The United States expanded its use of terrorist designations against Latin American crime groups last Friday, labeling two Haitian gangs as foreign terrorist organizations, or FTOs.
Viv Ansanm controls large parts of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, while Gran Grif massacred dozens of people in an agricultural town last year. According to the United Nations, around one-tenth of Haiti’s population was displaced due to violence as of March, a 48 percent increase since last September.
The Trump administration has used the FTO label liberally since taking office, applying it to 10 Latin American groups. In addition to the Haitian gangs, the other new designees are based mainly in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Venezuela.
The White House argues that the FTO designations are about being tough on drug trafficking. “The age of impunity for those supporting violence in Haiti is over,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week. U.S. officials have also pointed to the “terrorist” label to argue that migrants accused of links to the groups in question should be deported.
Latin American security experts, however, have warned that using the label may be overblown in some cases—and bring undeserved consequences to civilians living under gang rule. Entities that transact with FTOs can be sanctioned by the United States.
In Haiti, the FTO designation “created a shock” in the humanitarian sector, said Romain Le Cour, a senior expert at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. Some engagement with gangs is required to reach needy populations in Haiti.
Beyond that, Le Cour said, governments usually seek to avoid FTO designations because the “banking system, among other structures, finds itself under enormous pressure.”
During the Biden administration, the U.S. government published rules exempting humanitarian aid from sanctions. But Trump administration officials did not mention the exemption when announcing the Haiti listings. The U.S. State and Treasury departments did not respond on the record to Foreign Policy’s question about whether the exemption applied.
Issuing an FTO listing without guidance on exemptions underscored the lack of a unified international security strategy in Haiti, Le Cour said.
Following the July 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse and the subsequent power dispute, gangs have expanded their control over Haitian cities. A Kenyan-led multinational security mission that deployed last June to help Haitian police wrest back control has little to show for so far.
Although the U.N. Security Council endorsed the Kenyan-led effort, it is not an official U.N. mission—meaning that it does not depend on U.N. funds. Many countries that pledged concrete support have lagged on providing money and security forces. The United States is the biggest donor to the mission by far.
Now, without urgent support, the security mission “is on the verge of becoming a missed opportunity and a waste of time, money, and resources,” Le Cour said.
Though Latin American countries have regularly mentioned the need to support Haiti in regional summit declarations over the past year, few have invested major political capital in the issue. Renata Segura, the Latin America and Caribbean program director at the International Crisis Group, said the way the region has “washed its hands of the Haiti crisis” is “shameful.”
Segura said one of the few ways to ensure the necessary funding for a robust security force would be to transform it into an official U.N. mission. But politicking at the U.N. makes that unlikely, she said. Security agreements are getting mixed up in “the whole fight over tariffs and other things.”
Segura noted one potential bright spot for political momentum on Haiti: the Organization of American States. The body recently elected a new secretary-general from Suriname—another Caribbean country—and a Colombian assistant secretary-general who notched diplomatic victories in her previous post.
Friday, May 9: Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
Monday, May 12, to Tuesday, May 13: Lula travels to China.
Newly elected Pope Leo XIV is seen for the first time from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City on May 8.Antonio Masiello/Getty Images
New pope’s Peru ties. On Thursday, Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected as the next pope. He will henceforth be known as Pope Leo XIV. Leo was born in Chicago and spent decades in Peru, where he became a naturalized citizen. Although he is the first American pope, he also continues Pope Francis’s Latin American influence inside the Vatican.
Leo was close to Francis. And if what appears to be his personal X account is any indication, he seems to share Francis’s concern for migrant rights—and comfort criticizing politicians.
Posts from the account this year include critiques of U.S.-El Salvador cooperation on deportations and pushback against U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance’s claim that Christianity stipulates that you should love your family more than you love others. Leo’s first words to the masses gathered at St. Peter’s Square were in Italian, as is tradition, but he soon switched to Spanish.
Caracas embassy evacuation. A monthslong drama involving Venezuelan opposition members who were sheltering in the Argentine Embassy in Caracas came to a dramatic end this week. The five activists entered the embassy last March to apply for asylum after Venezuelan authorities issued warrants for their arrest amid a preelection crackdown.
Although Argentina granted the opposition members asylum, Venezuela soon cut off relations with Argentina and blocked the opposition members from leaving the country. Brazil was put in charge of the embassy, but it could not secure their release.
Then, on Tuesday, Rubio said the five people had arrived in the United States following a “precise operation.” Brazil’s statement about the departure did not detail its role in the events. Venezuela said negotiations rather than an extraction operation led to the opposition members’ exit.
Bolivian election update. For months, the dynamics of Bolivia’s August presidential election have appeared predictable. There was a long-standing battle for influence between two politicians in the leftist Movement for Socialism party and a divided field of right-wing contenders.
But in recent days, new players on both sides signaled that they aimed to shake up the race. On the left, 36-year-old Senate President Andrónico Rodríguez said he would run—posing a fresh-faced challenge to incumbent President Luis Arce and former President Evo Morales.
On the right, billionaire Marcelo Claure announced that he would throw money and his own negotiating skills behind uniting the right and boosting a yet-to-be-determined unity candidate’s campaign.
Argentina’s sci-fi sensation. The new Netflix series The Eternaut quickly became the platform’s most streamed non-English-language show after it debuted on April 30. It is based on a beloved Argentine comic strip from the late 1950s about how ordinary people respond to a series of extraordinary events that unfold in Buenos Aires, starting with a blanket of toxic snow.
The Eternaut’s drama and delights are rooted in its careful pacing, interpersonal dynamics, and place-specific details of life in Buenos Aires. The Netflix show is set in the present day, with nods to Argentine card games, forms of political protest, and memories of the war over the Falkland Islands, known as the Malvinas in Argentina.
Netflix invested heavily in the production, and Argentines enjoyed watching a familiar cityscape portrayed with a high-quality cinematographic touch. “I’ve never seen something like that made here,” Argentine director Sebastián de Caro said in a podcast interview.
Audiences elsewhere find the show refreshing too, with Japanese viewers even experimenting with the card game truco, which is popular in Argentina, elDiarioAR reported.
Which Argentine president was the subject of an Eternaut internet meme?
Néstor Kirchner
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner
Alberto Fernández
Javier Milei
A fan of the left-wing politician created a design of Kirchner wearing the comic book hero’s suit, which became known as “The Nestornaut.”
Paddy Cosgrave, the CEO and co-founder of Web Summit, speaks during the opening ceremony of Web Summit Rio 2025 in Rio de Janeiro on April 27.Pablo Porciuncula/AFP via Getty Images
Last week, the mayor of Rio de Janeiro announced plans to build Latin America’s largest cluster of data centers in the city. The announcement came as Brazil’s federal government is preparing to roll out tax incentives for the facilities.
Boosters of the data centers plan argue that they will help vault Brazil into an artificial intelligence-dominated future, as AI often requires high levels of data processing ability. They also say Brazil’s relatively clean electricity grid could help attract investors concerned with sustainability.
But data centers’ heavy usage of water and electricity has drawn criticism from communities where they are located elsewhere in the world. In neighboring Chile, Google began redrawing previous plans for a data center last year after an environmental lawsuit.
Even as Brazilian officials move forward with their plans, some local critics are raising their voices. The Intercept Brasil reported last week that Brazil’s federal government did not actively consult the Environment Ministry while developing plans to incentivize data centers.
Clauber Leite of the E+ Energy Transition Institute argued in Eixos that Brazil’s green energy grid might be better used to power activities that lead to more employment than sparsely staffed data centers.
Brazilian government plans regarding AI are more complex than touting data centers alone. They also include state funding for several projects across the health, education, and agriculture sectors. Brazil announced last month that it would join a Chilean-led project to create a Latin American large language model trained on local knowledge.
The Inter-American Development Bank said in a recent report that more than 130 million jobs in the region will be exposed to AI technologies in the next decade. “Proactive workforce planning” is needed, the bank said.
