Costa Rica’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Manuel Tovar, was dismissed from his post last week by the country’s president Laura Fernández. Tovar was considered one of the “heavyweights” of the country’s dominant political faction, having previously served as Minister of Commerce under President Rodrigo Chávez.
The decision was made by Fernández on September 24, because, according to a statement, her foreign minister failed to inform her of an invitation to a meeting held in New York City aimed at strengthening the so-called Shield of the Americas.
Shield of the Americas is a political-military alliance led by Donald Trump that seeks to secure Washington’s geopolitical leadership in the region, and which right-wing and far-right Latin American governments have joined enthusiastically.
Right-wing President Fernández said that failing to report such an important meeting constituted an act of negligence on Tovar’s part. The Costa Rican president also said that Shield of the Americas is a “fundamental platform in the fight against drug trafficking and organized crime.”
The president did not travel to the United States to deliver her speech at the UN General Assembly because she was on an official visit to Colombia with her counterpart, the far-right Abelardo de la Espriella.
The Costa Rican presidency reported that the invitation – which was not extended to her – came from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio himself. Several heads of state from Shield of the Americas member states participated, including Javier Milei of Argentina, José Antonio Kast of Chile, Rodrigo Paz of Bolivia, Daniel Noboa of Ecuador, Irfaan Ali of Guyana, Nasry Asfura of Honduras, Santiago Peña of Paraguay, Luis Abinader of the Dominican Republic, and Keiko Fujimori of Peru, among others.
In this regard, Fernández publicly apologized to the US ambassador to the Central American country, Melinda Hildebrand: “I reiterate to your country my firm and resolute commitment to continue supporting the Shield of the Americas alliance… I regret my absence… The failure to forward that invitation from your government to me did not go unnoticed, and today the foreign minister of the Republic was dismissed,” which clearly demonstrates the enormous importance San José attaches to an invitation from Washington.
Tovar’s dismissal comes on the heels of a series of dismissals of key ministers in Fernández’s government, a development the opposition has used to highlight a certain instability in the very young administration.
“We are concerned about serious foreign policy mistakes that need to be corrected… Second, we are concerned about the stability of the cabinet: in less than five months, five senior officials – including ministers and deputy ministers – have already been dismissed. That instability is not in her best interest, nor in that of her government or Costa Rica,” said the leader of the National Liberation Party caucus.
For his part, the former foreign minister did not explain the reasons behind his decision not to inform Fernández about the invitation. In a post on X, he said briefly: “I thank Laura Fernández for the opportunity to serve the Costa Rican people from the Casa Amarilla, and I wish her every success as President of the Republic for the good of the country. Finally, I would like to commend the team at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the passion and dedication with which they undertake every mission on behalf of the country. To them, I offer my eternal gratitude. I accept this moment with great peace of mind. I will always stand by the just causes of the Costa Rican people and the international community.”
The reasons behind Tovar’s decision remain unknown, although several sectors of the opposition have raised suspicions about an alleged ulterior motive on Fernández’s part for not attending the Shield of the Americas meeting – which, if true, could reveal political and diplomatic contradictions deeper than they might appear at first glance.
Right-wing and far-right governments in Latin America have adopted a very similar discourse regarding insecurity. The leaders share a narrative that describes how in the 1980s and 1990s, a sort of neoliberal panacea reigned supreme, but then, as if speaking of a biblical plague, the progressive governments of the early 21st century arrived. Then, their story goes, through rampant corruption, they destroyed paradise on earth and brought about various evils such as insecurity, migration, and the destruction of traditional values.
Thus, several of these new – and not-so-new – right-wing governments have won the presidency, almost always in elections where they prevailed by a narrow margin, asserting that the solution to the “disaster” is to return to radical neoliberalism and implement a security policy that restores an order which, they claim, existed before the “original sin.” This “salvation,” no doubt, will come hand in hand with military, intelligence, and operational oversight from Washington – an ally that, they say, was alienated by regional center-left governments. The most serious consequence of this distance was the infiltration of drug trafficking into all strata of society.
It matters little or not at all to these new governments that during the era of progressivism, the region enjoyed a certain positive level of security, as argued by critics of the far right. In the case of Ecuador, this supposedly only happened due to an alleged peace pact between the center-left governments and criminal groups. So that peace was, in reality, merely the prelude to what would later erupt.
In light of this, the region’s security policy appears to be nearly identical across all countries governed by the Latin American right and far right:
However, with the exception of El Salvador and, to some extent, Chile, the results these governments promise – to reduce organized crime and insecurity in the region through the quasi-militarization of daily life and security agreements with Washington (which many accuse of undermining sovereignty) – have not materialized.
Ecuador, which is facing the most serious security crisis in its history, has failed to reduce violence as promised by the executive branch, even though the country is currently under a nearly permanent state of emergency and foreign military operations are underway. According to some experts, 2026 could become the second most violent year in the country’s history, with nearly 5,000 homicides in just six months. The Noboa administration says that positive results take time and that better days are ahead. The local elections at the end of the year will surely provide a better gauge of the government’s credibility than any speculation.
In Chile, Kast managed to rally support to win the election by focusing on his security policy, which asserts that the rise in insecurity in Chile is largely due to migration from other South American countries. In response, he promised to build various infrastructure projects that would prevent new migrants from entering the country, similar to the US border wall. For now, the government is celebrating a reduction in certain crime rates, although several polls indicate that the public still feels concerned.
In Colombia, the recently inaugurated government of Abelardo de la Espriella has declared that the time for peace talks with certain insurgent groups is over and has resumed the country’s long-standing policy of waging war against insurgent and drug-trafficking groups. So far, there have already been several dozen deaths, with the bodies displayed as war trophies that the president showcases in his addresses to the nation. It is still too early to tell whether De la Espriella’s war will have a direct impact on reducing insecurity, which, according to the executive branch, spiked during Petro’s administration – a claim that Petro categorically denies.
For now, Washington has expressed its support both verbally and by providing funds to many of these countries to bolster their security, while also carrying out actions in the region, such as those already mentioned in Ecuador or operations in the Caribbean Sea. Furthermore, during a recent visit by Rubio to Peru, the secretary of state stated that US forces will act wherever invited by local governments, which foreshadows new military operations in South America.
Without a doubt, the growth of US influence and presence in South America is undeniable. But it would be a mistake to think that this is something new. The history of Latin America in the 20th century has shown how Washington has managed to steadily increase its military presence in the region by invoking various justifications that have proven very effective in winning public support, especially those concerning the security of the population.
During World War II, the United States significantly increased its military presence in the region under the pretext of defense against potential military actions by the Axis powers, specifically Japan and Germany. Thus, the United States and its powerful fleet established several military bases in South America and succeeded in getting virtually all governments to align themselves with Washington’s geopolitical interests.
Shortly thereafter, Washington justified increasing its military presence in the region to halt the dangerous “communism” that, they claimed, would sweep through the region and had become a cause for concern not only for US security but also for the internal security of each country, where “dangerous” revolutionaries would destroy the social foundations of each nation. Thus, the United States and a large portion of the Latin American militaries carried out joint intelligence and other operations to promote, by any means necessary, the destruction of leftist political movements in the region – which meant killing thousands of Latin American revolutionaries through various methods, such as the imposition of bloody military dictatorships (such as those in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, etc.) and/or boycott and conspiracy operations against anti-imperialist governments, such as Castro’s Cuba, Allende’s Chile, or so many other political movements violently aborted through the active participation of US and local forces.
However, the socialist bloc collapsed in the 1990s and brought on a crisis within the revolutionary left. Right-wing governments, incidentally, took advantage of these events to promote ultraliberal economic policies, but began to lack a new justification for expanding military and police forces, and the US presence in the region.
One exception to this was Colombia, where the internal war served as a justification for the establishment of several US bases during the 21st century.
Now that drug trafficking has become the region’s primary security threat, Latin American right-wing forces, alongside Washington, have once again raised the alarm about the threat of insecurity to promote securitist policies and an increased US military presence. Nazis, communists, and now narco-terrorists seem to be the lineage of a political strategy designed not only to promote a greater military presence in social life but also to advance neoliberal policies that are often accompanied by the aggressive influx of international capital, which typically appropriates the economic resources of this part of the Third World.
For we must not forget that every cycle of increased security-oriented policies has been followed by lucrative and substantial profits for the wealthiest in Latin America and around the world.
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