Latin America is in the early days of a historic demographic transformation, one that seems destined to reshape politics, businesses, communities, and lifestyles for decades to come.
Statistics only begin to capture the impact. According to UN data, the fertility rate in Latin America is now 1.8 births per woman: down from six in 1950, and below the replacement level of 2.1. By 2100, if current trends hold, national populations will decline by a third in Chile and Uruguay, a quarter in Brazil, and a fifth in Argentina.
This has sent policymakers scrambling to gauge the impact on everything from taxes and pensions to future economic growth. Will the region adapt?
AQ’s latest special report on the demographic transformation is out today. Read it in full through the link in our bio.
@adita_ferrer won the Pulitzer Prize four years ago for her sweeping history of Cuba and its complex ties to the United States.
Now she's turned her masterful historian's eye to her own family's story with "Keeper of My Kin: Memoir of an Immigrant Daughter," weaving a multigenerational tale that reaches into Cuba and her family's past to understand the circumstances and choices that led to the present.
Join us at Americas Society in New York on Tuesday, May 26, as Ferrer talks with AS/COA's @brazilbrian about this story of migration, separation, and family.
The global biofuel boom is gathering speed. War in the Middle East, oil price volatility, and fears of supply disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz have strengthened the case for alternatives to petroleum, particularly in import-dependent Asian economies. The Middle East war is projected to push energy prices up 24% this year alone, while disruptions around the strait have produced what analysts call the largest oil supply shock in history.
That geopolitical impulse is reinforcing a longer transition already underway. Global biofuel demand is nearing 200 billion liters a year, and could reach 310 billion liters a year by 2030. Growth is being driven by road-fuel policies, higher blending mandates, aviation and maritime demand, and emerging low-carbon fuel standards. Biofuels are attractive because they can be blended into existing engines, depots, and distribution systems while electrification advances unevenly across aviation, agriculture, shipping, and heavy freight.
Read the full analysis through the link in our bio.
Days ago, Russia’s Federation Council ratified a military cooperation agreement with Nicaragua, formalizing a wide-ranging security framework initially signed in Moscow in September. The accord considerably expands military cooperation through joint training and intelligence exchanges between the two countries, extending Nicaragua a possible lifeline at a time when its ideological allies Cuba and Venezuela are under huge pressure from the United States.
For Moscow and embattled President Vladimir Putin, it signals continued geopolitical reach in the Western Hemisphere. For Nicaragua’s co-Presidents Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, it reinforces a broader authoritarian survival strategy built on external alliances.
Russian and Nicaraguan official channels describe the accord primarily as a framework for expanded military cooperation rather than permanent basing or strategic weapons deployment. This is not a replay of the Cuban missile crisis, nor is Nicaragua suddenly a Russian military base.
However, the new agreement deserves attention not because it signals some grave new threat, but because it signals continuity. It is a reminder that the international community has failed to prevent the Ortega-Murillo regime from dismantling Nicaragua’s democracy, and that this regime will continue to try to hollow out the country. It comes in a moment when Latin America is going through a post-Nicolás Maduro moment, and Cuba faces renewed Washington scrutiny
Read the full analysis through the link in our bio.
The USMCA agreement is no longer simply a framework for managing North American trade: It’s the primary institutional vehicle through which three governments must decide whether to build a genuine security-economic union for the 21st century, or allow the continent to fragment under the weaponization of interdependence, the drag of bilateral deals, asymmetric dependencies, and the absence of trilateral will and strategic foresight.
Further complicating this picture is the narrative of annexation toward the north and the threat of the unilateral use of force toward the south emanating today from the White House.
Nonetheless, what is also new—and consequential—is the extent to which economic security is forcing a reconsideration of this regional architecture. In the area of critical minerals, and across North America, the three countries hold complementary but distinct critical mineral endowments, writes our expert.
Read the full analysis through the link in our bio.
Colombia goes to the polls on May 31 amid some of the worst violence the country has seen in two decades. FARC dissidents have carried out dozens of attacks in recent weeks, prompting an appeal for peace from Pope Leo XIV. In a way, the campaign has been shadowed since last year by the assassination of senator Miguel Uribe Turbay.
Yet, paradoxically, President Gustavo Petro’s approval rating has risen 10 points this year. Now three candidates are vying to succeed him: Iván Cepeda, Petro’s preferred successor on the left; Paloma Valencia, a conservative senator from Álvaro Uribe’s party; and Abelardo de la Espriella, a right-wing outsider who echoes both Javier Milei and Nayib Bukele.
This week on the podcast, we want to understand the outlook for Colombia. Who is most likely to make it to the second round? And what would each of the three candidates mean for the country? Our guest is Sergio Guzmán, director of Colombia Risk Analysis, speaking from Bogotá.
Listen to the full episode through the link in our bio.
Tensions are running high across the conservative political spectrum in Colombia. With less than a month to go before the first round of elections on May 31, Cepeda, with the support of President Gustavo Petro and his political machinery, leads in every major poll. Support from conservative voters is split between De La Espriella and Valencia, and the other 10 candidates are far behind.
The outcome of this first round is crucial because the odds of Cepeda securing more than 50% of the vote, which is needed to avoid a runoff on June 21, are low. Four polls put him below 40%, and only one places him at 44%.
Read the full analysis through the link in our bio.
Call it Latin America’s perennial challenge: Low productivity.
Measured as output per worker or per hour, productivity in most of the region remains a fraction of that in advanced economies and has hardly improved over the past 75 years. The result is a development constraint that scholars and observers use to explain why Latin America and the Caribbean are currently immersed in a “low growth trap” that limits wages and political stability alike.
Early last year, the UN Development Program concluded in a report that low productivity is one of the “biggest obstacles” to regional growth and issued an urgent message to highlight the relevance of that constraint: “The region has struggled to take advantage of past technological revolutions and risks missing out on the benefits of digitalization and AI.”
Recent data puts this structural challenge into perspective: Between 1950 and today, the region’s productivity relative to the U.S. barely moved, and a Latin American worker produces, on average, about one-fifth of what a U.S. worker produces, according to the World Bank. While East Asia used productivity gains to fuel its convergence with advanced economies, Latin America largely stagnated, and from 2005 to 2019, the region’s average productivity growth was negative. Growth spurts—such as the commodity exports boom of the early 2010s—came and went without translating into sustained efficiency or development gains.
To make things worse, in 2017 the region reached a “milestone” in the decline of its productivity, even as average global productivity grew. That year, it was the first year in which “the region’s productivity fell below the global average, since when it has continued to drop further behind,” according to ECLAC.
A growing body of research has identified the persistent culprits, but also the solutions that we urgently need. Low productivity limits the region’s ability to capitalize on new global opportunities—including those emerging from today’s rapidly shifting trade environment.
Read the full analysis through the link in our bio.
Latin America is aging faster than any other region in the world. Are we are the point where we need to start rethinking forecasts for economic growth?
Listen to the full episode through the link in our bio.
When President Rodrigo Paz declared an “economic, financial, energy, and social emergency” in December, there was little doubt about his diagnosis of Bolivia’s problems. After nearly two decades of economic mismanagement, the country’s international reserves were depleted, and the fiscal deficit was rising. The country faced not just a downturn, but a full-fledged debt crisis and balance-of-payments crisis that merited exceptional measures.
Five months later, however, the response has fallen short, write our experts. Read the full analysis through the link in our bio.
As recently as the 1960s, the average woman in Latin America had six children. Today that number is 1.8. In Chile, it has fallen to 1.1, lower than Japan. Combined with rising life expectancy, the result is a region aging faster than any other in the world. If current trends hold, national populations could decline by a third in Chile and Uruguay, a quarter in Brazil, and a fifth in Argentina by 2100. The consequences are already visible: pension crises and census counts that have come in millions lower than governments expected.
This week on the podcast, we dive deeper into AQ’s latest cover story to understand what this demographic transformation means for Latin America’s economies and politics specifically. Is there a silver lining? And can the region adapt? Our guests are Laurence Blair, author of AQ’s cover story on The Gray Tide, and Ernesto Revilla, Chief Economist for Latin America at Citigroup.
Listen to the full episode through the link in our bio.
Four months after January 3, Venezuela’s political process is beginning to take clearer shape. The country is not moving through a democratic transition. Instead, it is moving toward economic normalization without meaningful political conditions—a strategy the government of Delcy Rodríguez is pursuing with notable tactical discipline.
The sequence of recent events suggests a coherent plan rather than improvisation: a new agreement with Chevron in the Orinoco Belt; OFAC General Licenses 56 and 57; Rodríguez’s registration under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) as a presidential candidate; the unilateral termination of the Amnesty Law while 473 political prisoners remain detained; and the capture of the so-called Citizen Power branch through the appointment of her allies Larry Devoe as attorney general and Eglée González Lobato as ombudsman. These moves point to an effort not merely to govern, but to consolidate power under new terms.
There has been some pushback. María Corina Machado’s European gatherings—which included meetings in France, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain—confirmed that the opposition still retains key international support. The April 22 reception in Washington of Dinorah Figuera, head of the 2015 National Assembly, by Michael Kozak, the U.S. acting assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs, shows that the Trump administration also continues to receive opposition figures despite its positive relationship with Rodríguez. Figuera was a key legislative figure who helped interim president Juan Guaidó to try to dislodge the former dictator Nicolás Maduro from power.
But neither of these efforts changes the central variable: whether economic normalization will be tied to meaningful political conditions.
So far, it has not been.
Read the full analysis through the link in our bio.
