Latin America’s Bid for Sovereignty in a Multipolar World
One of the results of the Pink Tide, the wave of left-wing governments that swept Latin America in the 2000s, was to strengthen ties with China and other Global South nations. Donald Trump rightly sees this emerging order as a challenge to US hegemony.
President of Chile Gabriel Boric and president of Colombia Gustavo Petro greet the press on July 21, 2025, in Santiago, Chile. (Sebastián Vivallo Oñate / Agencia Makro via Getty Images)
In a recent ministerial gathering of the CELAC-China Forum, several Latin American and Caribbean delegations, most prominently those led by Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, Brazil’s Lula da Silva, and Chile’s Gabriel Boric, convened in Beijing to renew cooperation commitments. This was the forum’s fourth meeting since it launched a decade ago with the aim of accelerating interregional integration between China, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
These relations are far less developed than those between China and other regions and major economies. Brazil and Mexico, for instance, are yet to officially sign on to the Belt and Road Initiative. But the direction of travel is toward greater integration, much to the dismay of politicians and pundits across the Western world.
Dialogue, Not Competition
Western media outlets such as the New York Times framed the summit as China’s attempt to “woo” Latin America away from the United States, helped along by Donald Trump’s tariffs war. One report in the BBC went as far as to describe Latin America as the US’s “backyard” and suggested that its abandonment of the region had opened the door to Chinese influence. Little attention is paid in these narratives to the political agency of Latin American and Caribbean nations, whose intentions and motivations are far more complex than these accounts make out.
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