Donald Trump will welcome leaders from at least 10 Latin American countries to a palm-fringed golf course in Miami on Saturday as the president continues his quest to transform the United States’ position in the region and overtake China.
Since returning to power last year, Trump has launched a dramatic – and sometimes deadly – crusade to, as Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth put it, “take back our backyard.”
Promises to “take back” the Panama Canal were followed by airstrikes against suspected drug vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific, open meddling in Brazil’s judicial system, threats of military intervention in Mexico and Colombia, and, most shockingly, the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the use of Predator drones to help kill one of the world’s most wanted drug kingpins, El Mencho, in Mexico.
Trump also bailed out the president of Argentina, the radical libertarian Javier Milei, with a multimillion-dollar ransom, and interfered in the recent Honduran elections in support of the eventual right-wing winner. He recently suggested a “friendly takeover” of Cuba, as his administration seeks to strangle the country’s struggling communist regime by cutting off its oil supplies, despite UN warnings of a humanitarian “collapse.”
“As a critic of him, I am the first to admit that there has not been a presidency since perhaps Kennedy that has had such a profound effect on Latin America, in so many spheres of activity. The effects are real,” said a former US ambassador to Panama, John Feeley, who has compared Trump’s behavior to that of the ruthless fictional mafia boss Tony Soprano.
Trump officials describe his “Don-roe Doctrine” – a renewal of the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine through which President James Monroe sought to keep European powers out of the Americas – as an attempt to reduce Beijing’s regional footprint and impose Washington’s will through economic and military pressure.
On Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Saturday’s invitation-only Americas Shield summit was designed “to promote freedom, security and prosperity in our region.”
Trump’s guest list includes the right-wing presidents of Argentina, Bolivia, El Salvador and Paraguay, but excludes the left-wing leaders of three of Latin America’s largest economies: Brazil, Mexico and Colombia.
“This is the VIP level of the Trump Club of Latin America, and this meeting really seems designed as a way to add a clear benefit to membership at that level,” said Brian Winter, editor in chief of Americas Quarterly magazine.
Winter said the conclave would be attended by “ideological fellow travelers with whom Trump likes to take photos.” “There doesn’t seem to be anything really momentous or momentous on the agenda (although) it will surely include security, migration (and) the Venezuela and Cuba issues.”
Trump’s Latin American fans have been celebrating his trip to Florida. “Paraguay will be present at this important meeting that will strengthen cooperation and joint work in favor of the security and stability of our nations,” its president, Santiago Peña, wrote on Instagram, along with an image of his invitation.
Chile’s ultraconservative president-elect, José Antonio Kast, who has promised a Trump-style immigration offensive after he takes power next week, will also attend, as will Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, who this week touted joint anti-drug operations with the United States.
On Thursday, one of Trump’s most powerful officials, Stephen Miller, hinted at further such collaboration, saying that the region’s drug traffickers could only be defeated with military force.
“Not a single one of your nations should tolerate the existence of a single square kilometer of territory that is under the control of any entity other than the sovereign governments of your country,” Miller told Latin American military chiefs, calling the drug cartels “the Islamic State and Al Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere.”
Winter said rubbing shoulders with Trump made sense for right-wing politicians eager to show voters they are tough on crime. “Security is the number one issue in Latin America today and the Trump administration is in a unique position to help in a way that produces domestic political benefits for these leaders. No one has the intelligence, much less the firepower, that the United States has… Virtually every government in the region is eager to have access to the intelligence that only Washington can provide.”” he said, pointing out how Mexico’s leftist president, Claudia Sheinbaum, accepted the CIA’s help in locating El Mencho.
But Trump’s Latin America strategy has also caused alarm and outrage in capitals such as Brasilia and Bogotá, where officials view Maduro’s capture and the United States’ attempts to suffocate Cuba as a flagrant violation of international law.
“Cuba is not going hungry because it doesn’t know how to produce (food)… Cuba is going hungry because they don’t want it to have access to the things that everyone is entitled to,” Brazil’s leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said this week.
For now, however, that criticism – like Europe’s response to Trump’s attacks on Iran – has been cautious, with politicians reluctant to offend the American president. Even Colombia’s outspoken leftist president, Gustavo Petro, has toned down his anti-Trump rhetoric and held a friendly meeting with the US president at the White House last month.
“What’s interesting – and somewhat surprising – is that, at least so far, many countries are going along with this, whether out of convenience or fear,” Winter said. “Even some of the governments that are deeply uncomfortable with the Don-roe Doctrine are keeping their protests to themselves (and) seeking constructive relations with Trump while quietly striving to diversify their relationships so that they are less dependent on the United States.”
Benjamin Gedan, director of the Stimson Center’s Latin America program, said the summit’s “ideological guest list” exposed the failure of Trump’s “theatrical” doctrine and the White House’s inability to work with key Latin American countries.
“Brazil and Mexico together comprise more than half of the region’s population (and) more than half of all economic activity… If we add Colombia to this, we have the two largest countries in South America.. All (all of them) completely outside the hemispheric policy of the United States, and this is the hemisphere that the United States supposedly dominates and (where) it demands preeminence,” Gedan said.
