Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado returns home, Flávio Bolsonaro flees Brazil after losing the presidential runoff, and Latin American diplomats back their candidates in the race for United Nations secretary-general.

Machado’s Venezuelan Homecoming

On Sunday, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado announced that she had returned to the country. Tens of thousands of supporters greeted her in the capital, Caracas. In a social media post, she pledged to work “for each family to be reunited, for freedom for every political prisoner, and for freedom for Venezuela.”

Machado was most recently staying in Panama after leaving Venezuela around a year ago to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. In the last few months, the Trump administration instructed neighboring governments to block her return to Venezuela, according to multiple media outlets.

Machado is an influential opponent of acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez. The United States is working with Rodríguez to revive the oil sector in Venezuela after forcibly removing President Nicolás Maduro in January. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the U.S. plans for Venezuela eventually include free elections, but no date has been set.

Though U.S. maneuvers have prompted some investments in the country’s oil sector, working-class Venezuelans are still grappling with poor economic conditions, including annual inflation exceeding 400 percent and daily, hourslong blackouts in some parts of the country.

The Trump administration says a no-bid deal it reached in August to take a partial stake in production at 17 Venezuelan oil fields will financially benefit Venezuelans. But a copy of the agreement viewed by ProPublica showed “the potential benefits to [Venezuelan] people are largely absent from the text,” whose terms “favor U.S. interests at every turn.”

Machado has called for presidential elections by mid-2027. Her team, as well as many Venezuelan analysts, argues that companies considering investing in the country will feel more secure about its regulatory environment after a vote. Elections would also allow Venezuela’s government more legitimacy to tackle macroeconomic problems.

In recent weeks, the United States acted to ease Machado’s reentry into Venezuela by telling the Rodríguez administration that it should permit the move, Rubio told journalists on Monday. The same day, the U.S. State Department announced its most detailed plans yet for when and how elections might occur.

Nominating committees chosen as part of a U.S.-backed dialogue between the Venezuelan government and opposition figures will select new judges for the top court and a separate electoral court by around the end of this year, an unnamed State Department official told reporters in a briefing.

At that point, Rodríguez is expected to declare the presidency formally vacant, triggering a six-month deadline for elections.

In a separate press briefing, Rubio responded to a question about whether Rodríguez might try to delay that timeline. He said: “I clearly intend to see this thing well in advance of the time I leave this position,” referring to the U.S. presidential transition in January 2029.

To many observers in Venezuela, the timing of Machado’s return and the State Department’s new statements on an electoral timeline was no coincidence. “María Corina’s arrival forced the United States to define a road map” toward a vote, economist Asdrúbal Oliveros said in a Wednesday radio appearance.

The U.S. plan to move toward elections is “the only game in town,” Rubio argued in his comments to the press, saying that Washington stands ready to use tools such as sanctions as leverage on the Rodríguez administration. “We have total control of Venezuela,” Trump said on Sunday.

Upcoming Events

Friday, Oct. 30, to Wednesday, Nov. 4: The United Kingdom’s King Charles III and Queen Camilla visit Guyana and Antigua and Barbuda.

Wednesday, Nov. 4, to Thursday, Nov. 5: Spain hosts Latin American leaders at the Ibero-American Summit.

Friday, Nov. 6, to Tuesday, Nov. 17: Pope Leo XIV visits Uruguay, Argentina, and Peru.

What We’re Following

U.N. sec-gen race expands. Top diplomats from Latin American and Caribbean countries gathered at the United Nations this week to make public appeals that the next secretary-general come from the region. A group of former foreign ministers published an open letter defending the same position.

Informal U.N. tradition dictates that it’s Latin America’s turn for the role, but after weeks of candidates from Costa Rica and Guyana leading straw polls, a candidate from the United Arab Emirates entered the race last week—raising the possibility that the region could lose its chance to hold the top job.

In recent days, reports suggested that Turkey was considering nominating a former foreign minister and that the Trump administration was floating the idea of backing former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Devex’s Colum Lynch wrote on social media last week that many in diplomatic circles thought the Emirati candidate would prevail, though China still appeared to support a candidate from Latin America or the Caribbean. Latin American countries have not announced a consensus about their own top candidate.

Supporters of former Ecuadorian presidential candidate Luisa González hold campaign banners and chant slogans demanding her release outside the Modelo Police Headquarters in Guayaquil, Ecuador, on Oct. 23.Marcos Pin/AFP via Getty Images

Opposition figure detained in Ecuador. Last week, Ecuadorian authorities arrested former presidential candidate Luisa González as she faces an investigation for violating campaign finance rules. González is now in pretrial detention; she denies wrongdoing. The arrest triggered fresh criticism that Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa is targeting political opponents.

This year, Ecuadorian authorities have blocked multiple opposition parties from competing in local elections scheduled for November. They include González’s left-wing Citizen Revolution Movement; the Amigo movement, which Citizen Revolution members hoped to use to run for office following that ban; the left-wing Unión Popular; and the centrist Construye.

In August, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued a public statement of concern about the mounting legal challenges for opposition actors in Ecuador, calling on the government to “ensure pluralist political participation” ahead of the November vote.

González’s detention “deepens worries about the state of Ecuadorian democracy,” the editorial board of Ecuadorian newspaper El Mercurio wrote last week.

Tacos at the top. Restaurants that receive coveted Michelin ratings often suffer from pressure to maintain them. It was no different for a Mexico City taco stand. El Califa de León was Mexico City’s first taco stand to earn the distinction in 2024. But growing pains and a dispute over who most deserved the credit led the top grillmaster to leave within months, the Washington Post reported. The taco stand lost its star this year.

The affair triggered debates in Mexico City not only about what makes a good taco stand but also why Michelin took so long to honor one after awarding street food in other parts of the world. Those curious to try the Michelin star tacos can now sample them at El Califa de León as well as at its former chef’s new restaurant, Tacos Versalles.

Question of the Week

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In Focus: Flávio Bolsonaro Flees Brazil

Brazilian Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro and his daughters arrive at Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport in Miami on Oct. 28. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Enjoy our recent coverage of Brazil’s election: All FP links below are free to read.

A little over a day after Machado returned to Venezuela, another Latin American politician fled his country: Brazilian Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, who lost Sunday’s presidential election to incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro is the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who also left Brazil after losing to Lula in 2022. He was later convicted of plotting a coup.

Brazil’s Supreme Court is investigating the younger Bolsonaro in multiple probes into alleged financial irregularities and money laundering. A Brazilian Supreme Court judge ordered Bolsonaro to hand over his passport on Monday after being briefed by police that he might try to run.

Though he said in a video posted that day that he would never flee Brazil, Bolsonaro and his family carried out a secret journey through Argentina and Ecuador to the United States between Tuesday and Wednesday. Trump advisor Jason Miller helped with the arrangements, the Wall Street Journal reported.

On Wednesday, Bolsonaro baffled observers with a public letter proclaiming himself the rightful president-elect of Brazil, then quickly editing it to simply call himself Brazil’s “leader.” Multiple Brazilian news organizations reported Thursday that the Trump administration communicated to Bolsonaro that it did not support him declaring himself president-elect.

The letter suggested that Bolsonaro was seeking to rally international backing for his claim of election fraud. But that support would have likely been limited: Leaders around the world—including right-wing Latin American presidents—overwhelmingly recognized Lula’s victory, and Bolsonaro’s campaign coordinator said he saw no evidence of fraud.

The United States had not yet recognized Lula’s win as of Thursday, when Trump said he did not want to comment on the election, calling it a “disgrace.” On Wednesday, he said he wouldn’t “get involved” in the controversy over Bolsonaro.

Meanwhile, one of Bolsonaro’s competitors for leadership of Brazil’s right, São Paulo Gov. Tarcísio de Freitas, posted a video on Tuesday saying the “election is over” and suggesting that Brazil move on. Though Flávio Bolsonaro’s trip to the United States may have allowed him to avoid prosecution, he may have also ceded leadership of the political field.