Rubio’s Latin America Tour Triggers Backlash

LIMA, PERU — Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s three-stop trip to Latin America this week had all the hallmarks of a triumphant tour.

But the visit has also stoked tensions within the countries — where many of those who voted in Trump-friendly leaders aren’t on board with the U.S. agenda in the region.

Over three days, Rubio visited Colombia, Ecuador and Peru: all led by right-wing presidents — two of them recently elected — who came to power promising to combat crime and work closely with the United States.

The enmeshment is clear. Two of the three presidents — Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa and Colombia’s Abelardo de la Espriella — are also U.S. nationals. In Peru, U.S. Ambassador Bernie Navarro is a longtime friend and fundraiser of Rubio’s, and the Peruvian foreign minister is a former spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy in Lima.

But in some of the countries, influential government critics and commentators argued that Rubio was pressuring them to go against their own domestic interests to keep in the good graces of the U.S.

The divide was particularly clear over China — a major trading economic force in the region — and the Trump administration’s Shield of the Americas initiative, a U.S.-led military alliance that aims to fight narcotrafficking but which critics argue gives the U.S. a blank check to police their countries.

“Cooperation with the United States, however extensive and important it may be, should not mean replacing its national interests with those of another nation,” Manuel Rodriguez Cuadros, a former Peruvian foreign minister and U.N. diplomat, wrote Tuesday in Peru’s center-left paper La República.

China is a crucial economic pillar for both Ecuador and Colombia, and Peru’s main trading partner.

The State Department declined to comment on the criticism of the U.S. approach in the region.

The Trump administration used the trip to showcase its success advancing its influence in Latin America even as it continues to struggle to dictate its terms in the wars in Iran and Ukraine.

“One of our priorities is strengthening our presence in the Western Hemisphere, and I think this trip and these meetings, as much as anything else, is continuing to further that goal,” Rubio said Tuesday before departing.

A day later, in Colombia, he spoke of a “golden era” between the two countries and compared Barranquilla to Miami.

Colombian Foreign Minister Omar Bula reciprocated, saying the relationship went beyond security and trade to encompass the “defense of shared values.”

But those shared values extend only so far.

According to the AmericasBarometer survey released this week — conducted jointly by the Kellogg Institute and Vanderbilt University’s Center for Global Democracy — citizens in all three countries, as across Latin America more broadly, have greater trust in the Chinese government than in the U.S. administration.

“The election of pro-Trump leaders is clearly not enough to move the needle in U.S.-China competition,” said Benjamin Gedan, a former official in the State and Treasury departments under former President Barack Obama.

“China built Peru’s largest port, it is constructing the Bogotá subway, and it is the top market for Ecuadorian shrimp,” added Gedan, who now heads the Stimson Center’s Latin America program in Washington.

A case in point: In the run-up to Rubio’s trip, Ecuador’s president, Chile’s foreign minister and the president of El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly — all conservatives — traveled to Beijing.

Rubio’s announcement ahead of his visit to Peru that the country would become the latest to join the Shield of the Americas also brought criticism. The U.S. has used the alliance to justify strikes on fishing vessels suspected of being used by drug smugglers, and curbing Chinese “malign” foreign influence.

Rubio used the moment to lash out at China, saying Chinese-backed projects “circumvent Peru’s legal frameworks” and “threaten transparency.”

Peru’s recently installed government and its supporters hailed joining the alliance as an important step in fighting crime.

But that initiative is, in part, directed at countering the influence of Beijing in the region. Some detractors also argue the Shield initiative opens member countries up to becoming an instrument in promoting Washington’s, rather than their own, foreign policy.

“Peru needs to have a relationship with the U.S. but also with other powers, like China,” Mirtha Vásquez, a left-wing Peruvian senator and former prime minister, said in the country’s Congress on Wednesday.

“What we can’t accept is subordination or being tied to a mechanism whose ultimate purpose is unclear and where it’s unclear what obligations it imposes on us as a state.”

On his way to Lima’s Government Palace to meet with Peruvian President Keiko Fujimori, Rubio will have passed numerous chifa, or Chinese-Peruvian, restaurants, a legacy of a wave of Chinese immigration to the country in the late 19th century.

More irksome to the Trump administration, China also operates a megaport, Chancay, on the city’s edge.

Still, issues of trafficking and cartels are a uniting force across the region.

"There's an interesting movement happening right now that hasn't happened in years, if not decades,” said Jana Nelson, who served as deputy assistant secretary of Defense for the Western Hemisphere in the Biden administration.

She said that the Andean countries were aligned politically, providing a unique opportunity for cooperation in tackling drug-related crime.

But she added that it doesn't automatically translate to pro-Trump or pro-American sentiment because of what she calls the "lack of consistency” within Trump’s approach.

"At the same time that they are talking about what is, in fact, the No. 1 priority for both leaders and the population in the region, which is combating narcotrafficking, he is also going on about trade wars," which inflict "across-the-board economic pain,” she said.

Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine” of mass deportations and boat strikes in the Pacific is also undermining the United States’ reputation in the region.

“No one is welcome who comes to impose the politics of the big stick,” a Peruvian trade union collective, La Asamblea Nacional de los Pueblos de Perú, wrote in a letter protesting Rubio’s visit that was widely circulated by the local press.

The AmericasBarometer poll also suggests that the electoral shift to the right in countries such as Peru and Colombia reflects anti-incumbent dissatisfaction rather than a deeper ideological realignment around right-wing values.

So while the leaders Rubio met with are clearly aligned with Trump, their public mandate to follow Washington’s path is less solid.

In Colombia, de la Espriella won the June vote by less than a percentage point (despite Trump saying he “won handily” thanks to his endorsement).

In deeply polarized Peru, it took Fujimori four attempts to clinch victory by some 50,000 votes, making her the country’s ninth president in 10 years.

In both countries, concern over safety was a top issue for voters — but it isn’t clear that citizens there see the U.S. proposals as the only option to solve it.

Crime “has gotten really bad,” said Juan Garfias, who runs a newsstand in the upscale neighborhood of Las Gardenias in southeastern Lima.

“The moment you own anything, a shop or more than one car, the extortionists come for you,” he said.

The left-wing political opposition, who argue they represent roughly half the population, have sharply different ideas about fighting crime and U.S. cooperation.

They say that cooperating on crime with the U.S., such as by intelligence sharing, is possible without becoming part of the Shield of the Americas alliance, and in effect surrendering control to Washington, or imperiling their relationship with China.

In a video posted on social media Tuesday, Ivan Cepeda, the defeated left-wing candidate in the recent Colombian presidential vote, described Rubio’s visit as reflecting “an act of surrender of strategic aspects of our sovereignty,” and criticized the Shield of the Americas, saying its “scope is in no way clear.”

A U.S. military presence in the region is also a sensitive issue.

"Those who remember the dictatorship period, those who remember the missteps of our government in the '60s and '70s [in supporting military coups in Latin America], don't take kindly upon the idea of the militarization of U.S. foreign policy either,” said Nelson, the former Biden official.

Rubio, seemingly wanting to address concerns about weakened sovereignty, this week dismissed suggestions that U.S. support would entail boots on the ground.

“The Colombians have never asked for American soldiers to come into Colombia and take on drug cartels; they've asked for our help and training,” he told reporters Tuesday in Colombia.

Asked by a reporter on Thursday whether the United States would consider acting unilaterally if a Shield of the Americas member refused to act against a group Washington considered a terrorist threat, Rubio said: “We’re not — if we were interested in acting unilaterally, we have the capacity to act unilaterally.”

The timing of Rubio’s visit has worked against him, coming shortly after the announcement of a controversial deal with Venezuela that gives the United States control of more than a fifth of the country’s oil reserves. Trump hailed the agreement as “historic,” but it has been widely criticized across the region as gunboat diplomacy.

“Only a dramatic increase in U.S. trade, investment and assistance would allow the United States to recover the influence it has lost in the region,” said Gedan, the former U.S. official.

China has already been quick to seize on underlying tensions.

Ahead of Rubio’s arrival in Peru, the Chinese embassy in Lima published a series of pointed social media posts, highlighting its own investments and criticizing a “certain country’s” strict visa rules for Peruvians, without naming the United States directly.

“China has never acted on the basis of geopolitical calculations, never interfered in the internal affairs of other countries, and never demanded that other countries take sides or choose a camp,” one post read.

“The Western Hemisphere is no one’s ‘backyard,’” Beijing said.

Hartog is a reporter with the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, of which POLITICO is a member.