In Latin America, the road to Trump's heart goes through Israel

In the early months following Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, Latin American leaders emerged as some of the world’s sharpest critics of the military campaign.

Then-Colombian President Gustavo Petro was among the first world leaders to call Israel’s actions a “genocide.” Chile and Honduras recalled their ambassadors from Tel Aviv, and Belize and Bolivia severed diplomatic ties with Israel.

But just two years later, across the region, governments that had distanced themselves from Israel are now moving quickly to repair ties. Not surprisingly they are the same leaders who have rushed to ingratiate themselves with the Donald Trump administration in Washington.

Venezuela’s foreign minister announced Monday that it would restore consular services with Israel for the first time since 2009, marking a sharp foreign policy shift in the wake of Trump’s military ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January.

Colombia’s new right-wing president, Abelardo de la Espriella, declared just days after his inauguration that the country would recognize Israel’s claim of sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights. Colombia is one of two nations in the world to offer such a recognition, following the United States, which did so during President Trump’s first term. Then, earlier this month, Chile and Honduras restored their ambassadors to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, respectively, for the first time since November 2023.

Latin America analysts tell Responsible Statecraft that while there may be ideological, economic, or security motivations peculiar to each nation, this pivot functions primarily as a way for regional leaders to curry favor with theTrump administration. It “In the end, the main interest for all of these countries is the United States,” Marta Tawil Kuri, a professor at College of Mexico who researches the foreign policy of Latin American countries towards the Middle East, told Responsible Statecraft.

“There is a new generation of the right [in Latin America] (...) using rapprochement with Israel as a way of signaling alignment with Washington,” she said, adding that each government filters this relationship through their domestic political factors.

One cannot count Israel’s own deliberate diplomatic push to shore up ties with friendly governments at a moment when global public opinion is turning against it. For some of these countries, this isn’t a stretch.

Colombia, for example, had a long-standing security relationship with Israel until the left-wing Petro took office in 2022. The former president was able to mostly end that relationship, says Tawil Kuri, but did so under opposition from the military.

Israel helped train Colombian armed forces during their fight against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and later against transnational drug traffickers.

Now de la Espriella has spoken about ramping up efforts to combat “narcoterrorists” and will likely seek out Israeli, and especially American, backing for it. “I think you have to show that you're aligned with the broader security agenda of your patron in order to secure that support,” Mike LaSusa, a journalist who writes about organized crime in Latin America, told RS.

Meanwhile, while de la Espriella’s recognition of the Golan Heights was significant, she says, it marked “more a return to a decades long baseline” of support than a departure.

For states like Colombia, Chile, or Argentina — which in 2023 elected the self-proclaimed “most Zionist president in the world” — the shift toward Israel is largely a function of right-wing governments taking over. Venezuela’s shift, meanwhile, is more surprising on its face.

“The Israel-Palestine conflict is a central theme in anti-imperialist movements. If there's anything that has lasted in Chavismo through the years it’s anti-imperialism,” said David Smilde, a professor at Tulane University, referring to the political ideology of Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president from 1999 to 2013. “And so, it’s quite significant that Venezuela would re-establish consular relations with Israel, precisely at the time that Israel is more deeply questioned across the world than it's ever been in its history.”

Smilde pointed to Israel's assistance following a recent earthquake as the immediate catalyst, calling it a case of "disaster diplomacy," in which humanitarian aid opens space to strengthen or repair a damaged relationship.

But experts agreed that the more important driver is Caracas’ overwhelming dependence on Washington since Maduro’s removal. “This is a very different leadership which operates under constant tension of collaboration with Washington, of course, but inwardly, (feels) the need to sustain this Chavista narrative,” said Tawil Kuri.

LaSusa called the move a “low-cost, high-reward situation,” in which interim President Delcy Rodríguez can reestablish relations with Israel and “in return you smooth your relationship with the United States when it comes to all the other issues that are more important to you,” including strengthening its negotiating position with domestic political opposition.

The rise of evangelical Christianity across Latin America is another factor. In Central American countries Honduras and Guatemala, Evangelical Christians — many of whom embrace Christian Zionism — make up roughly 40% of the population. Both nations moved their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in the past decade.

Christian Zionist discourse has also become increasingly common in Latin American political rhetoric, particularly among the conservative leaders that have emerged over the past decade in countries such as Argentinian President Javier Milei or Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil. One of the largest voting blocs in the Brazilian National Congress is the Evangelical Parliamentary Front, which largely supported Bolsonaro and opposed his successor’s decision to join the case in front of International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide.

Many of the sources who spoke with RS attributed the speed and depth of the region's ideological swings to Latin America's strong presidential systems. Unlike in the United States, where support for Israel has remained largely stable across administrations, foreign policy in much of Latin America shifts sharply from one election to the next.

“When you have a presidential system and at the same time you have very weak institutions or you don't have a bureaucratic diplomatic body, it's very easy for personal or individual preferences (...) to be confused for national interests,” said Tawil Kuri.

But Lee Schlenker, a research associate with the Global South program at the Quincy Institute who focuses on Latin America, cautioned against reading this trend as simply a byproduct of individual leaders’ desires.

“I think it's a more robust and multi-faceted,” he said, pointing to coordinated, organized advocacy by pro-Israel groups that has helped establish pro-Israel caucuses in national legislatures across the region. Beyond legislatures, Schlenker adds “it's a lot of public diplomacy work. They're working with influencers, journalists, the health sector, innovation, those sorts of things.”

That organizing work shows how Israel, increasingly isolated by international opinion, has identified Latin America as fertile ground to rebuild diplomatic standing. Regional governments, in turn, have pinpointed Israel as a good route to Trump's Washington.

But some warn that this gambit could backfire, leading only to increased demands from the U.S. in the future with little tangible benefits.

“It is a very wrongheaded bet,” Jorge Heine, a Chilean former cabinet minister and ambassador, told RS. “Because the way it works in international politics, the moment you align yourself with one of the great powers in competition you become a subordinate. And then you are treated as such.”