Neil Woodyer was on top of the world heading into 2026. The company he runs, Vancouver-based Aris Mining Corp., operates two gold mines in Colombia, and over the past year its share price more than quadrupled thanks to the trifecta of record gold prices, an inclusion in the S&P/TSX Composite Index, which exposed Aris to a wider range of investors, and settling a long-running arbitration case with the Colombian government. By year end, Aris was worth $4.5-billion.
But over the course of 48 hours last weekend, the geopolitical picture grew complicated. After U.S. President Donald Trump captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, asserting Mr. Trump’s control over the country and its vast oil reserves, he quickly pivoted to Colombia and called its President, Gustavo Petro, “a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States.”
“He’s not going to be doing it for very long,” Mr. Trump said, suggesting Mr. Petro was on borrowed time. He even floated the idea of a military operation against Colombia, which has yet to shed its reputation as the cocaine capital of the world.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro holds a demonstration against the Trump administration and in defence of his country’s sovereignty.Andres Rot/Getty Images
The U.S. President has a history of making threats, only to get distracted by a shiny new object. (Mr. Trump and Mr. Petro have already had a phone call and both men have dialled down their rhetoric since.) Latin Americans also have thick skin after decades of coups and dictatorships, so daily life hasn’t ground to a halt.
Yet Mr. Trump also can’t be ignored, considering he is creating uncertainty for the more than 650 million people who live in Latin America and the Caribbean. It’s a puzzle for Canadian resource companies that have poured tens of billions of dollars into the region over the past three decades. Miners, in particular, have significant skin in the game. Teck Resources Ltd., First Quantum Minerals Ltd., Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd., Sherritt International Corp., Pan American Silver Corp. and Aris are all heavily invested across the region.
As foreign companies put money in Latin America over those decades, the hope was that the erratic policies and nationalist campaigns that had plagued the region were a thing of the past. Thanks to sudden new aggression from Mr. Trump, that instability is now roaring back.
Canadian miners’ heavy exposure to Latin America
Uncertainty rises as Trump threatens stability of region
Key Latin American assets
Pueblo Viejo (Dominican
Republic)
Carmen de Andacollo (Chile),
Jacobina (Brazil)
john sopinski/the globe and mail, Source: the companies
Canadian miners’ heavy exposure to Latin America
Uncertainty rises as Trump threatens stability of region
Key Latin American assets
Pueblo Viejo (Dominican
Republic)
Carmen de Andacollo (Chile),
Jacobina (Brazil)
john sopinski/the globe and mail, Source: the companies
Canadian miners’ heavy exposure to Latin America
Uncertainty rises as Trump threatens stability of region
Key Latin American assets
Pueblo Viejo (Dominican
Republic)
Carmen de Andacollo (Chile),
Jacobina (Brazil),
john sopinski/the globe and mail, Source: the companies
There isn’t any evidence yet of panic. If anything, some chief executive officers and investors see opportunity. “There are some countries that are too excessively involved in narcotics. People are very suspicious of them when it comes to investment,” Mr. Woodyer said. “If that could be removed, then I think investment would be much easier.”
He also doubts that the U.S. will force a regime change in Colombia. “Trump plays an unusual game. I think people understand that,” he said. “They also understand that there is actually an elected government in the country.”
Bank of Nova Scotia chief executive officer Scott Thomson echoed that sentiment at an investor conference this week. “Longer-term, this is a good thing for the Western Hemisphere. It’s a good thing for the U.S. It’s a good thing for the Bank of Nova Scotia,” he said, referring to the U.S. reasserting its influence. Scotiabank is a major lender in Latin America, with sizable operations and investments in Mexico, Chile, Peru and Colombia. The bank has also seen the region’s nasty side and was forced to cut and run from Argentina in the early 2000s, booking a big loss along the way.
But it’s still early days and sustained U.S. pressure for regime change across multiple countries could destabilize the region for years, rather than produce calm.
The Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy lays out the president’s desire for much more influence in Latin America.Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
In a sense, nobody should be surprised that Mr. Trump is suddenly acting with wanton aggression. In fact, it was hiding in plain sight for months. In November, the U.S. released a new National Security Strategy, and it lays out the President’s desire for much more influence in Latin America.
“After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region,” the strategy states. The doctrine was then-president James Monroe’s vision in 1823 to keep Europe out of Latin America, while agreeing to stay out of European affairs across the Atlantic Ocean.
Mr. Trump has essentially reworked that ethos for the present day, and it is being dubbed the “Donroe Doctrine.” But this time, the focus isn’t so much about keeping Europe at bay as it is about China. Restoring American pre-eminence in Latin America puts Mr. Trump on a collision course with the U.S.’s rival superpower, which has invested around US$240-billion in Latin America in energy, mining, manufacturing and technology. China has built and acquired critical infrastructure assets, including a brand new billion-dollar megaport in Peru.
The newly-built Chancay “megaport” north of Lima, Peru, in September, 2025. The massive US$3.5-billion port was payed for and built by China, which has heavily invested in Latin American energy, mining, manufacturing and technology sectors.
CONNIE FRANCE/Getty Images
It’s possible the two countries will fight for control by using cheques as carrots, but lately Mr. Trump and his homeland security adviser, Stephen Miller, have shown a proclivity for aggressive tactics.
The U.S. may demand, for instance, that more Latin American infrastructure assets fall out of China’s hands, in the same way it already forced a sale of port facilities in the Panama Canal. But the rival superpower isn’t going to roll over. “Ousting China won’t be easy for the U.S.,” said Rafael Ch, a senior analyst for Latin America at Signum Global Advisors, a geopolitical consultancy.
Mr. Trump also wants to diminish the influence of other hostile foreign actors such as Hezbollah and Russia, which exert influence in Venezuela and Cuba. And he views Mexican drug cartels as direct threats to the U.S., and his security strategy involves flexing military might to defeat them, “including where necessary the use of lethal force.”
Because Latin America is so vast, spanning Central America, the Caribbean and South America, it is impossible to paint the entire region with the same level of risk. Venezuela, for instance, was unique before Mr. Maduro was captured, and the potential for civil instability in his wake makes it even more of an outlier.
In the wake of Maduro’s capture, Venezuelans have reported an increase in the number of security forces on the streets, including a militia of armed civilians known as ‘Colectivos.’THE NEW YORK TIMES/The New York Times
“I don’t think you can overestimate how much of a ticking time bomb the situation is right now,” said Rebecca Hanson, a professor with the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Florida, who has spent years studying Venezuela’s rival gangs, armed groups and military leaders, who are all now vying for power.
There is also an open question of whether Mr. Trump will want anything in return for his influence, and how open he is to sharing Latin America’s riches with the region’s own people. In Ukraine, he tried to force President Volodymyr Zelensky to sign away rights to the country’s critical minerals in return for a security guarantee. In Venezuela, he’s already taking oil to the U.S. that was trapped by a naval blockade.
Oddly enough, the newfound uncertainty is a reminder of why many Latin American countries opened their borders to foreign investment in the first place. Until the 1990s, the region was full of strongmen who favoured nationalist policies. But after some brutal economic downturns, countries such as Mexico, Brazil, Peru and Chile started privatizing state assets and opened their borders to outside investment, giving foreigners the same investment protections as locals.
It hasn’t always been a smooth transition. During Venezuela’s Apertura Petrolera, or oil opening, in the 1990s, foreign producers such as Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil Corp. poured money in, but then Hugo Chávez was elected president in 1999 and he eventually seized control over most of those operations. ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil ultimately fled, among others. Mr. Chávez also implemented “21st-century socialism,” which emphasized state-run companies. The country’s downfall continued under Mr. Maduro, who narrowly won election in 2013, and shored up his support over time by using state assets to enrich military generals and political allies.
But there has been real progress elsewhere, and Canadian companies are in on it. Beyond the miners, Saputo Inc. bought one of Argentina’s major dairy processors in 2003 and is now a major dairy products exporter in the region; Brookfield Corp. owns power generation and transmission assets in Brazil and Colombia; and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board has owned a major natural gas pipeline in Peru.
Aris Mining’s Segovia Operations in Antioquia, Colombia, one of two gold mines it operates in the country.Aris Mining/Supplied
As Latin American countries developed, their standards of living soared. Since 1990, poverty rates have slumped in many countries, and life expectancy has jumped – in Chile it is now 81 years, just shy of 82 years in Canada.
Despite this progress, foreign investors have been realistic. Miners know, for instance, that Peru, which has had six different presidents since 2020, it isn’t the same as Canada or Australia. Assets in less stable jurisdictions “typically trade at lower valuations because of the risks associated with the change of government,” said Onno Rutten, a resource portfolio manager with Mackenzie Investments.
A similar logic applies to Cuba, another country on Mr. Trump’s hit list. (On Sunday, the President said the communist island “looks like it’s ready to fall.”) Sherritt has mined nickel and cobalt there for decades, and the political uncertainty and U.S. sanctions have clouded its fortunes the entire time.
An oil tanker leaves Havana on Thursday. Cubans are bracing for worsening fuel shortages after the U.S, seized Venezuela-linked tankers, cutting a vital energy lifeline to the island.Ramon Espinosa/The Associated Press
For Mr. Rutten, the Trump factor is simply another ingredient to be added to the risk soup of international investment. “It’s not as if we today decide that Mexico is not investable,” he said.
But even in a positive long-term scenario, the transition period could be messy. In Venezuela, there is the risk of lawlessness in the void Mr. Maduro left behind. For all his power, he didn’t run the whole country, said Prof. Hanson at the University of Florida. “There are lots of territories the government did not have a handle on,” she said, and there’s no telling what the armed groups who run them are going to do now.
Mr. Maduro, she added, also shored up his support by giving military heads and political allies private contracts. They’re not going to simply give these up and lose out on their riches without a fight.
And even though the U.S. is a superpower, any intervention won’t be taken lying down. Christopher Ecclestone is a mining strategist at Hallgarten & Co. in London, but he previously lived in Buenos Aires and is extremely skeptical of the idea that Mr. Trump could effectively use military force in Mexico to solve the drug problem.
“If Trump thinks he’s going to do anything about cartels, there will be rows of American heads on flyovers over freeways in Mexico,” he said.
If there is more chaos in Latin America, the private sector support Mr. Trump boasts of may not materialize. “Oil companies are going to be very wary,” Mr. Ecclestone said. “They operate at the international level in all sorts of places that are dodgy, but they’re used to doing it on a low-profile basis.”
“Trump is pushing them out into the middle of the stage and saying, ‘Okay, you guys are going to be our representatives on the ground,’” he added. “But these big companies are just looking around saying, ‘No, that’s not how we operate. … We’re not going to be the battering ram.’”
Democratic senators hold a news conference on the Venezuela War Powers on Jan. 8. The U.S. Senate passed the bipartisan resolution 52-47 which will block President Trump’s further use of U.S. military force Venezuela without Congressional authorization.Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Like everything with Mr. Trump, plans could change. The U.S. Senate has already advanced a motion that would block the President from more military action in Venezuela without congressional approval, and without some sort of military force on the ground, his dream of controlling Venezuelan oil may never come true.
But one thing is very clear: The uncertainty he sows is now spreading across Latin America, and anyone with business ties to the region has to add a new risk premium and more flexibility to their financial models. It’s the cost of doing business under the Donroe Doctrine.
“If you can find the right way to operate in the country, as we did in some of the West African countries, then you could go a long way,” Mr. Woodyer said, referencing his past experiences managing operations in Mali and Burkina Faso. ”But you have to adapt to the country, that’s the important thing.”