When Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was meeting with Pedro Castillo in Lima, the Peruvian president was facing impeachment for a litany of charges — and not for the first time.
More than 2,500 miles to the north on the same day, in Mexico City, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, arguably the United States’ most important regional ally, was railing publicly against U.S. policies.
And in the “Northern Triangle” of Central America — El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — initially chosen by the Biden administration as a major focus of U.S. attention, plans have crashed harder than churning waves breaking on the Pacific coast.
From Mexico and Central America, all the way through the Andes, U.S. officials have struggled to find partners to work with and policies that will stick as they attempt to reassert U.S. influence, once dominant in the region but now in stiff competition with other powers, most notably China.