Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.
The highlights this week: Venezuela’s government struggles to respond to deadly earthquakes, Mercosur launches trade talks with Japan, and Ecuador and Paraguay declare national holidays after defeating Germany at the World Cup.
Venezuela is still reeling from twin earthquakes that hit the country last week. The government said on Wednesday that at least 2,295 people had died in the 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude tremors, while citizen-compiled registries say tens of thousands of people are still missing—a sign they could be lying dead under rubble.
A United Nations official on Monday said the organization planned to send 10,000 body bags to the country. The U.N. Development Program estimated that the earthquakes caused $6.7 billion in direct physical damages alone, with the broader costs of economic disruption likely to be much higher.
As experts continue to crunch the numbers on disaster response, one thing is clear: The earthquakes have laid bare many Venezuelans’ dissatisfaction with their government.
Government response teams have been slow to reach some of the worst-hit areas and even blocked would-be rescuers from accessing disaster zones, Tony Frangie-Mawad reported for Foreign Policy on Wednesday. Multiple videos circulating on social media show Venezuelans lambasting government officials. Residents of one neighborhood booed acting President Delcy Rodríguez when she toured the destruction there.
Rodríguez assumed power after the United States ousted President Nicolás Maduro in January. Since then, Caracas and Washington have overseen what they call an economic recovery program for Venezuela. But those efforts have focused overwhelmingly on the country’s oil sector, not its public health or emergency response systems, which were run down by years of economic crisis.
Venezuela’s armed forces are “prepared to respond to riots but not the main threat of natural disasters,” Ángel Rangel Sánchez, a former head of Venezuela’s civil defense agency, told local journalists on Saturday.
Even before the quakes, Rodríguez’s popularity was low, with most Venezuelans telling pollsters that they want elections to be able to choose their own leader. History suggests their desire for change may now grow.
Citizen dissatisfaction following earthquakes in both Nicaragua in 1972 and Mexico in 1985 planted the seeds for the downfall of authoritarian governments in both countries. In Mexico, a civil society search-and-rescue group, Los Topos, was part of a post-quake wave of citizen organizing that later formed part of a successful opposition presidential campaign. Los Topos still exists today, and members of the group traveled to Venezuela this week.
Global research points to a similar conclusion. A 2025 paper by researchers from Swedish and Norwegian universities that looked at natural disasters around the world since 1960 found that affected countries generally experienced short-term upticks in civil society participation and some aspects of political competition. The authors concluded that “disasters open a window of opportunity for democratization, but societies need to react to secure this trend.”
Venezuela’s most popular opposition figure, María Corina Machado, has been outside the country since last December. She attempted to return in recent days in order to help with earthquake response efforts, but multiple news outlets reported that she paused those plans after the Trump and Rodríguez administrations told her that they did not support them. Machado’s Venezuelan passport is reportedly expired, complicating her ability to reenter the country.
Machado’s attempts to return to Venezuela are driving U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio “crazy,” an unnamed administration official told Axios. Meanwhile, the top U.S. diplomat in Caracas said Washington had a “great deal of confidence” in the Rodríguez administration. The United States has mobilized some 2,000 military personnel to help with the aid effort and pledged $100 million in new assistance to aid groups—a departure from President Donald Trump’s general step back from foreign aid.
Rubio has said he envisions free elections occurring in Venezuela eventually, after an initial period of stabilization. But the quake showed that “without genuine democratization and a real technification of Venezuelan institutions—the boring, unglamorous machinery of a state that actually functions—there will be no reconstructed Venezuela,” Frangie-Mawad wrote.
Tuesday, July 7: The U.N. General Assembly discusses the U.S. oil embargo on Cuba.
Monday, July 13, to Friday, July 24: The International Seabed Authority convenes in Kingston, Jamaica, to negotiate rules for deep-sea mining.
Tuesday, July 28: Keiko Fujimori is inaugurated as president of Peru.
More USMCA limbo. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer announced on Wednesday that Washington would trigger annual reviews of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade pact, known as USMCA, rather than agreeing to adjustments that would stay in place for longer. Mexico City and Ottawa had favored a 16-year extension, which could have calmed fluctuations in U.S. tariff levels. Now, more changes appear in store.
Washington stopped short of announcing a withdrawal from the deal. But its move is a step in that direction, starting the clock on a 10-year period after which the treaty will sunset. Greer said this week that Washington believes there are “substantial issues” with USMCA. The United States is expected to try to raise the U.S. content requirement for cars manufactured in the bloc to qualify for lower tariffs, FP’s Alexandra Sharp wrote.
The prolonged uncertainty could continue to push Canada and Mexico toward new trading partners. The countries are so intertwined with the U.S. economy that their economic growth last year fell below the International Monetary Fund’s projections after Trump hit both with tariffs.
Bolivia’s currency shift. Bolivia’s government last week abandoned a fixed peg of the local currency to the dollar, saying the change was part of President Rodrigo Paz’s pro-market reforms. The boliviano had been tied to the dollar for 15 years.
The government did not remove all currency controls, however. Under the new policy, the central bank will publish the next day’s official exchange rate each evening. The move is meant to reduce the confusion caused by the country’s two exchange rates: the official one, pegged to the dollar, and the black market rate, where the boliviano is worth less.
The first day of the new currency regime saw a devaluation of the boliviano, with the official exchange rate dropping from around 7 to around 10 bolivianos per dollar. Paz says he hopes moving toward a unified exchange rate will increase the confidence of foreign firms that are considering investing in Bolivia.
Bolivia’s Socialist government first pegged the currency to the dollar in 2011, also in hopes of increasing trust in the country’s economy. For many years, it prospered. Amid a gas export boom, dollars flowed into Bolivia’s economy and strengthened its international reserves. In more recent years, however, that gas has dried up and so have the country’s dollar reserves.
Gustavo Gómez (center) of Paraguay celebrates after José Canale scored the game-winning penalty kick against Germany during the FIFA World Cup at Boston Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, on June 29.Robert Cianflone/Getty Images
