Rubio goes on LatAm road show, earning praise but few real wins

Rubio goes on LatAm road show, earning praise but few real wins

This week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio traveled to Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, where he pledged increased security assistance, signed critical minerals deals and warned the three countries’ recently-elected, ideologically-aligned leaders — two of them U.S. citizens — about China’s presence in the region. The tour, Rubio’s fourth to Latin America and the Caribbean since becoming secretary of state last year, comes as the Trump administration increasingly pivots U.S. foreign policy toward the Western Hemisphere, where it has expanded military operations on land and at sea to degrade “narco-terrorist” groups, including the ten designated foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) operating in the three Andean countries Rubio visited. Rubio’s trip, however, transpired amid increased scrutiny, including from his traditional base of support in South Florida, over a controversial oil deal in nearby Venezuela, where Trump officials have touted Washington’s newfound leverage over interim Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez through its control over the country’s oil revenues following the bombing of the country and abduction of its embattled leader, Nicolas Maduro, in January. For America’s top diplomat, whose potential run for president in 2028 is caught between defending his boss’ “historic” deal and reassuring supporters of his commitment to democracy in Venezuela, the South American tour with like-minded conservative leaders offered an opportunity to shore up his image across the hemisphere as other administration officials tout the deal in Dallas and say the country is “not yet ready” for elections. Rubio met on Tuesday with newly-inaugurated Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella in his coastal stronghold of Barranquilla, where the U.S. and Colombia signed a deal to “jointly identify and finance mining and processing projects within six months” — the country boasts large reserves of gold, nickel, coltan, platinum, tungsten and other rare earths — as well as to “establish a bilateral for strategic civil nuclear cooperation.” Rubio’s visit came on the heels of a devastating 7.4 magnitude earthquake last month that killed at least 330 and injured thousands more. The State Department responded by delivering nearly $27 million in aid. De la Espriella, who was endorsed by Trump before winning a razor-thin runoff election against the leftwing candidate backed by outgoing President Gustavo Petro, has, in turn, sought U.S. relief from 12.5% tariffs affecting the country’s flower industry and other U.S. exports, yet no announcement was made Tuesday. Answering questions from the press about much-anticipated joint military operations, Rubio stated that the new Colombian administration had not formally requested the deployment of U.S. troops to fight the country's crime syndicates, adding that it has, in the interim, agreed to launch in Medellín the regional headquarters of the administration’s counter-cartel coalition known as the Shield of Americas. Leading up to Rubio’s visit, the Colombian president has come under fire for holding press conferences surrounded by body bags of supposed “narco-terrorists,” announcing new and likely unconstitutional open carry laws, justifying the death of minors in bombing campaigns against irregular armed actors, and eliminating nearly a dozen regulations on mining, which stands to benefit gold companies like the one formerly led by Colombia’s new ambassador to Washington, Maria Consuelo Araújo. On Wednesday, Rubio met with President Daniel Noboa in Ecuador, which in recent years has become one of the world’s most violent countries and has emerged as a major trafficking hub for the world’s cocaine, produced mostly in neighboring Colombia and Peru. While in Quito, Rubio announced Washington was placing terrorist designations on Los Tiguerones, an Ecuadorian gang that infamously took over a live TV broadcast in 2024; sanctioned seven former public officials over alleged ties to criminal groups; hailed Ecuador as an “aggressive partner” in the administration’s counterdrug push; and said he would seek $45 million in U.S. funding toward these ends. He was, in turn, awarded Ecuador's National Order of Merit, the Grand Cross. The secretary’s second visit to Quito coincided with joint U.S. military operations targeting armed groups along Ecuador’s border with Colombia, launched earlier this year, even as U.S. lawmakers and experts continue to raise concerns about democratic backsliding, growing insecurity, deteriorating rule of law and alleged official ties to drug trafficking in the country. Since Noboa won a special election in 2023 before getting re-elected early last year, his government has lobbied the Biden and Trump administrations for increased weapons sales, an elusive free-trade deal and the return of a U.S. air base in Manta that was closed down by former leftwing President Rafael Correa in 2009. Some of these requests have materialized, aided by Noboa’s eager support for Trump’s aggressive counternarcotics and immigration objectives in the hemisphere. Others have been constrained by a popular referendum last year rejecting the presence of foreign military bases. Sweeping changes to U.S. trade policy have also pushed one of Trump’s closest South American allies to deepen commercial ties with China. A similar dynamic has transpired in Peru, where on Thursday Rubio met with recently-inaugurated president Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of former authoritarian dictator Alberto Fujimori, who clinched a razor-thin victory in the country’s June runoff elections after three previous failed attempts at the presidency. While Rubio was there, Peru formalized its membership in the Shield of Americas, through which it seeks to bolster joint actions against transnational criminal groups, and requested U.S. support in the face of the weather phenomenon known as El Niño, expected to affect over a million Peruvians in the coming months. Rubio, whose visit triggered sizable protests in the capital, Lima, was awarded with the country’s highest civilian honor, the Order of the Sun. Named a non-NATO ally earlier this year, Peru purchased $3.5 billion in Lockheed Martin F-16s just months later in part due to pressure from U.S. Ambassador Bernie Navarro, a longtime Rubio confidant. But its conservative government has nonetheless withstood U.S. calls to decouple economically from China, which buys the country’s copper and iron and is heavily invested in its mining, energy and infrastructure sectors, most notably the multibillion mega-port of Chancay. Last year, the Peruvian government hired Rubio-aligned D.C. lobbying firm Continental Strategy in part to reverse 50% tariffs on its U.S. copper exports and to boost bilateral ties amid the bicentennial of the countries’ diplomatic relationship. Sources told Reuters that Fujimori is now, like De la Espriella, seeking relief from the more recent 12.5% U.S. tariffs affecting its agricultural trade with the U.S. Despite its relative economic prosperity and fiscal stability for the region, Peru has faced growing insecurity in ports and prisons, extortion of business owners by criminal groups, and high levels of coca production in rural areas. To these ends, the country’s foreign minister, a longtime employee of the U.S. Embassy in Lima, said before Rubio’s arrival that he hopes to strengthen cooperation on issues of “security and defense and the fight against transnational organized crime, which is so damaging to our country.” For an administration wielding all the coercive tools it has in its playbook to secure cooperation with its militarized anti-drug agenda in South America, striking security agreements with like-minded regional leaders is a walk in the park for Rubio. But receiving symbolic accolades in Quito and Lima and offering lofty platitudes about China’s threat ignore the even greater challenges the region faces — from authoritarian drift to low productivity, steep inequality and state capture. On these points, the administration’s “Donroe Doctrine” has thus far provided relatively little.