The Latin American presidents will hold an emergency summit Thursday to respond to the deportations of migrants from President Donald Trump while they deleted his aggressive tactics to two of the traditional Washington regional allies.
Trump tightened 25% trade in trade with Colombia And imposed a visa and other sanctions Sunday after the leftist president, Gustavo Petro, put back the US military flights expelling migrants. THE The confrontation ended A few hours after Bogotá was sold to Washington’s requests.
The dramatic confrontation, largely carried out on social networks, of the Latin American nations disturbed already frightened by the threats of military force of Trump to restore control of the United States on the canal of Panama and steep prices on Mexico , the largest trading partner in the United States.
“There is a lot of alarm among the Latin American embassies in Washington,” said a principal regional diplomat in Washington. “We seem to have returned to 1897 and to the president’s era [William] McKinley, who invaded Cuba and the Philippines. »»
The emerging market currencies were shaken by the dispute on Sunday, the Mexican peso and the South African rand both falling around 2% compared to the US dollar. Colombia’s peso dropped 1.5% compared to the dollar on Monday morning before recovering a small land.
Panama, a nation of only 4.5 million people without an army and a strong dependence on trade and American investments, is considered to be particularly vulnerable Trump requests So that Washington regained control of the canal, it built more than a century ago. The American president said that China is now operating the channel and that American navigation is “torn off” by the charges to use the navigable track.
Honduran President Xiomara Castro called an emergency summit for the regional leaders as head of the Latin American and Caribbean Community (Ceuc), after a request for Petro. The meeting will discuss migration, the environment and the regional unit, she said on X.
Michael Shifter, a senior member of the Inter-American Dialogue Reflection Group in Washington, said that Latin American leaders were unlikely to postpone Trump.
“They will try to find a balance,” he said, “grateful that on the one hand, they must be pragmatic because Trump is in fact capable of imposing sanctions, which would be very painful for these countries .
The Russian allies Cuba and Venezuela gave rapid support to Petro, a former guerrilla warfare with a long diatribes assessment against American policy On social media on questions ranging from Gaza to war against drugs. But the greatest powers in the region, Brazil and Mexico have not commented on publicly.
The diplomats said they wanted to coordinate the positions discreetly and let the dust settle before taking a public position.
“Petro gave a lesson in how not to deal with Trump,” said a second regional diplomat. “He went to combat on social networks without having a way to maintain his fight.”
Several commentators have stressed that the Colombian chief had undermined his own position by previously accepting to take American military flights expelling migrants, which go back to years under Democratic and Republican administrations.
Colombia, traditionally the American ally closest to South America, depends strongly on the American market for its exports of oil, coffee and cut flowers, and has little lever with Washington.
The timing was also embarrassing, the Colombian Minister of Foreign Affairs Luis Gilberto Murillo – a pragmatic English speaker and ex -ambassador in Washington – should be replaced on February 1 by Laura Sarabia, the Chief of Staff of Petro, 30, who does not have an experienced diplomat.
According to Sunday, with Petro, a crisis team made up of Sarabia, Murillo and other officials met in the presidential palace and the headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The main interlocutor on the American side, said diplomats, was Mauricio Claver-Carone, Trump’s special envoy to Latin America in the State Department. “Petro was in constant communication, listened and always replied,” said a person with direct knowledge of talks.
Bruce Mac Master, president of the main commercial association of Colombia, spent the day putting pressure on the diplomatic team of Petro and spoke several times with Sarabia.
“I think Petro had no idea of the dimensions and the impact of American relations,” said Mac Master. “He quickly realized that the effects would be felt everywhere, starting with the exchange rate. I think he learned more about the economy of this than he had done in the rest of his life. »»
On the other hand, the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, is considered in the region as having better managed Trump. She made her disagreement with clear American policy in the comments of the measured public, while accepting deprived of many Trump requests to bring migrants back and suppress the treaty of fentanyl.
China has enormously widened its trade and investments in Latin America this century, and Beijing is likely to consider Trump’s unpredictable movements as an ideal opportunity to present itself as a more reliable partner, diplomats and analysts said.
Shifter, of the inter-American dialogue, said: “Ceuc is the China platform in Latin America, so Thursday’s summit is a kind of proxy to show [Washington] that if [it is] will really punish us, so China is willing to fill the gap and come even more than it has already done. »»
Additional Tommy Stubbington report in London
