Scalded by Colombia row, Latin America treads carefully with Trump

Latin American leaders have cancelled a summit to discuss Donald Trump's migrant crackdown, as the region weighs the risks of openly confronting the firebrand US president.

Honduras had called an urgent meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) to discuss migration after the blazing row between Trump and Colombian President Gustavo Petro over the weekend.

But Honduras was forced to cancel the meeting after no prominent regional leaders apart from Petro confirmed their attendance.

The dispute saw Trump rapidly move to enact tariffs and other sanctions on Colombia after Petro blocked the arrival of US military aircraft carrying deported migrants. Within hours, the White House said Bogotá had folded to its demands.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum denied Wednesday that she and other leaders were afraid of invoking Trump's ire. "Our link with Latin America exists, and will continue to exist," she insisted.

Yet the fate suffered by Petro appears to have given other leaders cause for reflection.

Sandra Borda, professor of political science at the University of the Andes in Bogotá, blamed what she described as Petro's ham-fisted diplomacy for the lack of regional unity.

"The way President Petro launched the conversation with Washington destroyed any possibility of consensus," she said. "Everyone is scared because Washington has bared its teeth and we know what happens when we do not follow the diktats."

In a sign of the shift, Honduran President Xiomara Castro, who had threatened to close US military bases if Trump carried out mass deportations, struck a less defiant tone this week.

Castro said she was considering chartering flights to bring home Honduran migrants in an "orderly" fashion and called for "dialogue."

In Brazil, meanwhile, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was silent on the treatment meted out to a group of migrants who arrived home by plane to his country in handcuffs.

Brazil's government summoned the top US envoy to Latin America's biggest economy to explain the "flagrant disregard" for the migrants' rights but crucially did not lay down any condition for accepting more deportation flights.

Michael Shifter, senior fellow at the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue think tank, said Latin American leaders were walking a tightrope in the Trump 2.0 era. "On the one hand leaders feel they have to accommodate Trump to some extent. But complete capitulation... without at least taking a stand and drawing some lines is also not good [domestic] politics."

Petro's swashbuckling approach to Trump – in a rambling late-night post on X the former left-wing guerrilla vowed not to bow to "slave drivers" – contrasted sharply with the measured tone taken by Sheinbaum.

Mexico's first female leader has refused to be rattled by months of threats of steep tariffs from Trump, pointing to her predecessor's close relationship with Trump during his first mandate as proof the neighbours can collaborate. 

Her pragmatic approach has seen her defend Mexicans as the backbone of the US economy while acting to curb illegal migration and drug-trafficking. Sheinbaum had managed to straddle the line between "dignity and realism," political analyst Jorge Zepeda Patterson wrote in Milenio newspaper. 

In a sign of how their tactics have played with voters, Sheinbaum's ratings have soared while Petro was roasted in Colombia, a longtime US ally in the war on drugs, for his rumble with Trump.

Colombia's right-wing former president Iván Duque accused his 64-year-old predecessor of "an act of tremendous irresponsibility."

Shifter however rejected Trump's claim of an unconditional Colombian surrender, noting that "there was some give and take," including a stay, at least for now, on US military deportations to the country.

Welcoming home migrants repatriated by the Colombian Air Force on Tuesday, Petro said they were "in their homeland, where they are loved."