Peru

Rightward shift in Latin America comes as Washington pledges to grow influence, take militaristic approach to cartels.

United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio is travelling to three South American countries whose recently elected leaders have closely aligned with President Donald Trump’s administration.

Rubio will travel to Colombia on Tuesday to meet with newly elected President Abelardo de la Espriella. He will then visit Ecuador to meet with President Daniel Noboa before going to Peru, where he will meet with another newly elected leader, Keiko Fujimori.

The State Department has not yet released a more in-depth agenda for the trip, saying only that Rubio will discuss “US support for Colombia’s earthquake response; enhanced cooperation in the shared fight against narcoterrorism, which threatens our hemisphere; and the benefits of deeper commercial relationships between our countries”.

The trip comes amid a rightward shift in Latin America that has seen several Trump-aligned leaders take office. Beyond the three countries, Trump also backed Honduran President Nasry Asfura, who won the presidency in November, and Bolivia’s Rodrigo Paz, who won in October.

Beyond the new leaders, Trump has also closely aligned with Argentina’s Javier Milei, who took office in 2023, and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, who became the leader in 2019.

US influence over Western Hemisphere

Rubio’s visit comes as the Trump administration has pledged to assert more influence over the Western Hemisphere in what Trump has referred to as the “Donroe Doctrine”, a reference to the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine that opposed European interference in the Americas.

It has shifted to a militaristic approach to security in Latin American countries, while broadly reframing efforts to combat drug trafficking as a war against “narco-terrorists”.

In August, Colombia’s de la Espriella upped cooperation with the US by joining the Trump administration’s so-called “Shield of the Americas”.

The 19 members of the group have jointly pledged a “commitment to using lethal military force to destroy the sinister cartels and terrorist networks”.

Unlike his predecessor, leftist Gustavo Petro, de la Espriella has also praised US military strikes on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. At least 227 people have been killed in those strikes, in what rights groups have condemned as extrajudicial killings.

Family members of those killed have charged that the targets were fishermen, not drug smugglers.

The US has proven a major supporter for de la Espriella in the wake of a devastating earthquake in Colombia last month in which at least 330 people were killed and thousands left homeless.

In March, the US military announced it was collaborating with Ecuador, under Noboa’s leadership, to target drug trafficking groups in the country.

Ecuador’s Interior Minister John Reimberg defended the US strikes on vessels allegedly carrying drugs in an interview with broadcaster Teleamazonas last week.

Peru’s Fujimori, the daughter of former leader Alberto Fujimori, who notoriously dissolved the country’s Congress and Supreme Court to consolidate power during his government from 1990 to 2000, has also pledged closer ties with the US and a military crackdown on criminal groups.

Conservative shift

Rubio’s visit comes after the US announced a controversial agreement with Venezuela’s interim leader, Delcy Rodriguez. The deal, struck in the wake of the January 3 US abduction of Venezuela’s ex-President Nicolas Maduro, grants US companies access to 65 billion barrels of crude oil reserves over the next 100 years.

It also comes as Washington has continued to up its pressure campaign against Cuba, with Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez on Monday rejecting any talks with the US despite its ongoing fuel blockade of the island.

Brazil and Mexico remain the only regional powers with leftist leaders. Rubio has called the region’s conservative lurch an “extraordinary achievement”.

The shift has accompanied the strengthening of ties between Israel and several Latin American countries since Trump took office.

Brazilians will go to the polls in October, when Flavio Bolsonaro, a son of former right-wing leader Jair Bolsonaro, seeks to unseat Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Trump has remained a staunch ally of the elder Bolsonaro, who has been sentenced to 27 years in prison for leading a conspiracy to hold onto power.

The US president has also shown strong support for the younger Bolsonaro, including inviting him to the White House in May.

This river was thought to be the stuff of legends – but it is very real

In a remote part of the Amazonian rainforest, there is a river so mired in myth that many thought it didn’t exist. However, thanks to the research and work of a celebrated geothermal scientist, the existence of the river has now been proven – and he’s fighting to protect it.

The Shanay-timpishka, commonly known as the ‘Boiling River of the Amazon’ is a tributary of the Pachitea River which flows towards the Amazon River. The river has been known to indigenous Peruvians who live in the Amazon, and it has been used for spiritual and healing rituals for centuries. They called it ‘Shanay-timpishka’ which translates to ‘boiled by the heat of the sun’.

The local Asháninka and Shipibo peoples believe the river is birthed by Yacumama, a gigantic mythical serpent thought to live in the Amazon. “a mythical enormous serpent believed to inhabit the Amazon Rainforest.”

Local shamans teach that Yacumama is the “Mother of the Waters”

Geothermal scientist Adrés Ruzo first heard of the scalding river from his grandfather who told him a legend about the Spanish conquistadors who ventured into the jungle and came back with tales of a river which boiled.

He was the first scientist permitted by the local shamans to map, study and legally help to protect the river. He travelled through the jungle in 2011, guided by his aunt and confirmed the existence of the river.

Ruzo worked to study the river, and also helped the local indigenous people secure their rights to it. The area is in massive danger from deforestation which destroys the forest and surrounding ecosystems.

Ruzo became an advocate for the ancestral people living in the region, and helped secure the legal titles to the land. He also founded the Boiling River Project – a non-profit organisation which advocates for the permanent protection of the river.

One of the most fascinating things about this river is that it is an anomaly.

Usually, geothermal rivers and springs are heated by volcanic currents but in the case of Shanay-timpishka, the closest volcano is 700 kilometres away. Instead, the water is heated by the core of the Earth.

Rainwater seeps into the earth’s crust through fault lines where it is heated to boiling and then pushed back up into the river. At its hottest points, the river can reach close to 100°C, and boils anything which is unfortunate enough to fall in.

The river is littered with animal bones and bodies which have been cooked inside.

Tragically, it’s not only animals which have been killed by the boiling water. A Toronto woman died in 2025 after she fell into the river whilst meditating on a rock nearby.

Although Maya Moreno managed to escape from the water alive, she tragically died later in hospital after suffering burns to 70% of her body.

According to a GoFundMe for Maya, she had travelled to the river as part of a spiritual journey, and fainted beside the river which caused her to fall in.

Aug. 28 (UPI) — After Wednesday’s devastating glacier collapse in the Himalayas, scientists and geologists are warning that unstable conditions and the accelerating retreat of Andean ice sheets are exposing Chile, Argentina and Peru to the risk of catastrophic floods and mudslides.

The retreat of Andean glaciers has accelerated the formation of unstable lakes and exposed large slopes of loose rock that can collapse more easily as global temperatures rise, experts say.

Fast-moving floods and mudslides through mountain valleys could directly threaten drinking water supplies, energy projects and the lives of thousands of people living in vulnerable areas of the three countries.

The Himalayan disaster, which has left almost 600 people dead and more than 1,900 others missing, experts say that although monitoring and early-warning technologies exist, the speed and scale of glacial lake outburst floods, or GLOFs, such as the one in Nepal can make responding difficult.

“What happened in Nepal has already happened in Argentina,” Juan Pablo Milana, a researcher with Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council, told Infobae.

In November 2005, Laguna de los Erizos in San Juan province suddenly burst, releasing more than 1.1 billion cubic feet of water in just 67 minutes, Milana said. The flood traveled more than 155 miles, destroying crops and roads and isolating communities. No deaths were reported because the area was sparsely populated.

In Argentina, the areas at greatest risk are concentrated in Patagonia. One of the most critical sites currently under observation is the tourist town of El Chaltén, where instability on the slopes of Cerro Solo directly threatens Laguna Torre.

Lakes formed by the retreat of large ice masses, such as the Upsala Glacier, also pose a potential threat. In 2013, a collapse in the glacier’s channel generated a destructive wave in Onelli Bay.

Argentina’s Geological and Mining Survey and research teams from the University of Buenos Aires are responsible for monitoring the threats.

They combine satellite imagery used to update the National Glacier Inventory with projects to establish ground-based early-warning systems. Those systems are designed to use weather stations and hydrological sensors to detect changes in water levels and unusual slope movements in real time.

With more than 26,000 glaciers, Chile is among the countries most exposed to GLOFs worldwide, with risks divided between two distinct geographic areas.

The largest high-risk zone is concentrated in remote Chilean Patagonia, particularly the Aysén and Magallanes regions, where the rapid retreat of the Northern and Southern Patagonian Ice Fields has increased the formation of unstable lakes held back by fragile natural dams, although the region has a low population density.

Geographer Simón Inzunza told Chilean broadcaster T13 that the country has recorded GLOFs, particularly in Patagonia, as well as other emergencies associated with glacier melting and ice collapses.

In central Chile, watersheds are smaller but the risk is significant because of the high concentration of infrastructure, including hydroelectric plants, mining operations and drinking water systems serving millions of people.

Darío Ormeño, a geologist and professor at Andrés Bello University’s School of Earth Sciences, told BioBioChile radio that a mudslide is a real risk in Chile, although an event on the scale of the Nepal disaster is unlikely.

“Our glaciers are much smaller and do not have such an extreme elevation difference,” Ormeño said.

Chilean government agencies monitor glaciers using a national inventory updated with satellite imagery and radar. The tools allow authorities to measure the growth of glacial lakes and detect cracks in Andean slopes in an effort to issue early warnings before a disaster occurs.

Peru faces the highest risk in South America of disasters caused by GLOFs, with a history of deadly events and significant geographic vulnerability.

Paola Moschella, director of glacier research at Peru’s National Institute for Research on Glaciers and Mountain Ecosystems, or INAIGEM, told Exitosa radio that Peru has 528 lakes at risk of overflowing, including 58 considered high risk.

Unlike Patagonia and some high-altitude areas of Chile and Argentina, where glaciers are in remote valleys, entire cities and critical infrastructure in the Peruvian Andes, particularly in the Áncash region, lie directly along potential flood and mudslide routes.

Lake Palcacocha, in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca mountain range, is considered by scientists to be one of the world’s most critical cases because of its instability and proximity to the city of Huaraz, which has more than 120,000 residents.

The lake holds more than 599 million cubic feet of water and is fed by hanging glaciers that are susceptible to large avalanches as global temperatures rise.

If a large block of ice were to collapse into the lake, it could generate a massive wave capable of breaching its natural barriers and triggering a destructive flood that could reach urban areas in less than an hour.

The threat has a deadly historical precedent. In 1941, a similar outburst from the same lake destroyed about one-third of Huaraz and killed thousands of people.

Scientific monitoring in Peru has advanced significantly through the deployment of permanent personnel in high-altitude areas and the use of satellite surveillance systems.

Experts warn, however, that physical mitigation infrastructure installed in previous decades is outdated or insufficient to contain current water volumes.

US Southern Command says that Sunday’s strike targeted a vessel operating along established narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific.

The United States military said it struck a suspected drug-trafficking boat in the Pacific Ocean, killing two people.

In a Monday post on X, US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) said Sunday’s strike targeted a vessel operating along established narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific.

“Confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel’s active involvement in narco-trafficking,” SOUTHCOM added.

“This operation is a clear and decisive reminder that SOUTHCOM is taking the fight directly to the cartels.”

Grainy, black-and-white video accompanying the post appeared to show a boat moving through the water immediately before a large explosion.

The post stated that under the direction of SOUTHCOM Commander General Francis L. Donovan, the Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere executed a lethal kinetic strike on the low-profile vessel.

“We are committed to imposing total systemic friction on narco-terrorists — disrupting their operations, dismantling their leadership and eliminating cartel terror across the region,” Donovan was quoted as saying.

“Let me be clear, we will not permit narco-terrorists to operate with impunity in the Western Hemisphere, nor will we allow their deadly poison to reach American communities. This operation is a powerful demonstration of our lethal precision, overwhelming capability, and absolute resolve to protect the U.S. homeland.”

The US military launched Operation Southern Spear in early September, with President Donald Trump arguing that Washington is effectively at war with Latin American drug cartels.

Since then, more than 200 people have been killed in strikes across the Eastern Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, according to a tally by the AFP news agency.

However, the Trump administration has not provided definitive evidence that the targeted vessels were involved in drug trafficking.

Legal experts and rights groups warn that the attacks could amount to extrajudicial killings.

The Pentagon’s inspector general said in May that it would review whether the military followed standard targeting procedures, though the evaluation will not examine the legal authority behind the strikes.