Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.
The highlights this week: The United States announces a stake in Venezuela’s oil, four South American countries agree to cooperate on critical minerals, and Argentine soccer star Lionel Messi retires from international competition.
After the U.S. military intervention in Venezuela on Jan. 3, officials from both countries promised major oil sector investments. Several of those deals finally materialized this week.
On Wednesday, U.S. firm Chevron and Italian firm Eni announced new plans for oil production in Venezuela. Chevron aims to increase its production by more than 300,000 barrels per day, or around a quarter of the country’s current output, over the next five years.
But the deal that really turned heads was a recent one announced by the U.S. and interim Venezuelan administrations. The U.S. government will take a partial stake in production at 17 Venezuelan oilfields “at zero cost to the United States” and benefit by buying some of that oil at a discount, the White House said on Monday.
U.S. President Donald Trump said the agreement would last a century, while interim Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez said that its term would be 25 years.
The details were not immediately made public, but the deal drew criticism from across Venezuela’s political spectrum.
“It’s the same opacity that has characterized the country’s oil revenues so far in 2026,” opposition figure Henrique Capriles wrote on social media. Rafael Ramírez, who ran Venezuela’s state oil company under former President Hugo Chávez, called the deal “new colonialism.”
Critics seized on the fact that there had been no public bidding process for permission to drill in the 17 oil fields. Such a process would have allowed potential partners to compete for the best deal with the Venezuelan government.
Rodríguez said that under the U.S. deal, around $19 from each barrel of oil—based on an assumption of a $65 price for the full barrel—will flow “directly to our country.”
Venezuelan economist Francisco Rodríguez of the Center for Economic and Policy Research said the number is comparable to the government’s cut in neighboring Guyana and “not absurdly low.” But, he added, there is no way for Caracas to know if it is being dealt an unfair hand. “This is the first time since the Russian oil privatizations [of the 1990s] that I’ve heard about contracts of this magnitude being given out without a public bidding process,” he said.
Over the past week, news of the U.S.-Venezuela oil deal ricocheted around the region. An editorial in La Jornada, a left-leaning Mexican newspaper, called it “robbery.” Some policymakers in the region viewed the murky nature of the deal with concern.
“Venezuela’s sovereignty has been under threat since January 3,” said a senior Latin American diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. This agreement “was not made between equals.”
While a White House spokesperson said on Wednesday that oil from the new partnership could reach U.S. reserves by November, the deal’s full execution still appears distant. Some of the 17 blocks being opened to drilling will need to effectively start operations from zero, FP’s Keith Johnson reported this week. Others produced oil in the past but will need lots of new cash to function.
The private company partnering with the U.S. government, North American Blue Energy Partners, said it envisions investing $100 billion as part of the arrangement, but it still needs to raise that money. It only reported investing $1 billion in Venezuela in the past two years.
What’s more, the deal is at risk of being repealed by any future democratic Venezuelan government, analyst Jimena Zuniga said at a virtual Bloomberg event on Wednesday.
Some analysts and opposition figures have argued that the desire to keep the deal alive could make Washington less open to a democratic transition. While U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly said that eventual democratization is part of the U.S. plan for Venezuela, Trump said on Wednesday that the country was not ready yet for elections.
Rodríguez, the Venezuelan economist, said that when thinking about potential democratization in Venezuela, the comparison to Russia was again apt. “In Russia during the 1990s, some people became immensely wealthy with the privatizations of state-owned enterprises. Those ended up being the same oligarchs that blocked democratic reforms,” he said.
“[I]f your wealth has been obtained through opaque dealings … you aren’t going to want a democratic system that will review those contracts,” Rodríguez said.
Sunday, Sept. 6: Jamaican officials visit the United Kingdom to lodge a complaint calling for reparations for slavery.
Monday, Sept. 7, to Thursday, Sept. 10: The International Court of Justice holds hearings in a Nicaragua-led case against Germany over its support for Israel’s war in Gaza.
Friday, Sept. 12 to Saturday, Sept. 13: Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira attends the BRICS summit in India.
Critical minerals cooperation. Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Peru last week signed a pledge to step up their cooperation on critical minerals such as copper and lithium. Mining ministries from the countries said that they planned to coordinate training for their mining workforces, align regulatory standards for the minerals, and seek funding from multilateral financiers.
While the joint declaration did not contain specific deadlines, Peru’s mining minister characterized it as a step toward creating more processed mineral products in South America rather than simply selling the raw materials abroad. Chile plans to increase its exports of mining technologies to its neighbors, officials said.
The pact is the latest sign that regional cooperation on industrialization is not only the purview of the South American left. These four countries all have right-wing presidents.
A coming battery boom? One processed mineral product that the region generally imports is large-scale batteries to store the energy generated by solar panels and wind turbines. It will need more such batteries soon.
Last week, consultancy Wood Mackenzie upped its forecast for how much energy storage will be deployed in Latin America over the next decade. It expects that total installed capacity in 2035 will be 34 gigawatts, which is more than 13 times what was last year.
This change partly reflects the rollout of renewable energy. Unlike coal-fired power plants, solar and wind plants can’t produce energy at all hours, so battery storage is needed to hold the energy before injecting it into the grid when the wind isn’t blowing and at nighttime.
Furthermore, some old electricity grids in the region lack the capacity to handle the high amount of renewable energy being generated. That’s the case in Brazil, which has been blocking some solar energy generators from supplying the grid in recent years in order to prevent it from being overwhelmed. Without more batteries, Brazil cannot use all the renewable energy that it generates.
Multiple people touch the windows of a black hearse while others use their phones to take photos of the car.
People pay their respects during the funeral procession of Uruguayan singer and songwriter Rubén Rada in Montevideo on Aug. 28. Eitam Abramovich/AFP via Getty Images
Afro-Uruguayan star. Iconic Uruguayan musician Rubén “El Negro” Rada passed away on Aug. 26 at the age of 83. He was honored by lying in state in the country’s legislature in Montevideo, where a line of Uruguayans waiting for their turn to pay respects snaked around several city blocks. Many of them were dancing, as Rada had requested fans to do when he died.
Rada’s 2000 hit “Who will sing?” echoed through Montevideo. It asks “who will sing and dream and play the melody of love” if all the world cares about is work.
Over decades, Rada shone not only as a star of the Afro-Uruguayan music genre candombe but also fused its sound with other music traditions, like jazz, funk, and rock. Born to a Brazilian mother and a Uruguayan father, he was also beloved across the River Plate in Argentina. Rada’s 1985 song “Candombe for Gardel” crosses candombe with Argentine tango.
What is the name of the Montevideo neighborhood home to Uruguay’s legislature, where Rada’s funeral was held?
Aguada
Parque Rodó
Pocitos
Ciudad Vieja
It means “the watering place.” Historically, it was the site of wells that supplied the city with drinking water.
A mural on a tall building depicts Argentine soccer star Lionel Messi.
A mural depicts Argentine soccer star Lionel Messi in his hometown of Rosario, Argentina, on Aug. 8. Luis Robayo/AFP via Getty Images
Argentine soccer phenom Lionel Messi announced on Monday that he will no longer compete for the country’s national team. “The time has come,” Messi wrote in a letter he shared on social media. Messi competed in six World Cups for Argentina, with some critics writing that 2026 arguably saw Messi’s best World Cup performance at the age of 39.
Despite that, Argentina lost this year’s World Cup final to Spain. Around the same time, Messi’s father fell ill; he passed away on Aug. 8. Messi wrote in his announcement that his father’s death made him more convinced of his decision to retire from the national team.
Messi, who is widely considered to be the greatest soccer player of the 21st century, still plays for the club Inter Miami, where his contract extends to 2028. But in the eyes of Argentines, his international career is what mattered most. Starting Wednesday night, every soccer game across Argentina is being paused at the 10-minute mark for a stadium applause for Messi. (He wore the number 10 jersey.)
In his decades-long career, Messi was not just a star athlete. He mobilized the soft power of soccer itself in international relations. Saudi Arabia in 2022 appointed him as a tourism ambassador for the country; U.S. presidents from Barack Obama to Trump have sought meetings with him.
In the wake of Messi’s announcement, Argentines have argued that he stood for the best of their country on the world stage: perseverance, devotion, and a bit of inexplicable magic. “He was the symbol of the country we wanted to be and see,” wrote Osvaldo Pepe in Clarín, and he “gave happiness to a country that is used to suffering.”
Messi once had a more complicated relationship with Argentine fans. For years, some argued that he appeared to be trying harder when he played for his European club team, FC Barcelona, than when he wore the Argentina shirt. A statue of Messi in Buenos Aires was vandalized after a 2017 national team loss. But Argentina’s 2022 World Cup victory silenced those doubters.
“I swear I gave it my all, not only in the last few years when we were winning everything, but before, too,” Messi wrote in his retirement note. “I thank God for making me Argentine.”