标签： South America

SAO PAULO — One of the world’s most respected climate advocates, Brazil’s Environment Minister Marina Silva, announced Wednesday that she will depart her cabinet post in President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s administration to compete in Brazil’s upcoming national congressional election this fall.

Per Brazil’s strict election regulations, any cabinet official seeking elected office must resign from their government position no later than six months before the October 4 vote, clearing the way for her transition. João Paulo Ribeiro Capobianco, a career environmentalist who has served as executive secretary of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, will step into the role to succeed Silva.

In a public statement shared to her Instagram account, Silva framed her departure as the completion of a core mandate: “I fulfilled the tasks assigned to me, which involved rebuilding and moving forward Brazil’s environmental policy following years of decline.” A veteran legislator who first won a congressional seat in 1994 and was re-elected most recently in 2022, Silva added that she will return to her legislative mandate and actively campaign for Lula’s re-election bid this year.

This departure marks the end of Silva’s second tenure leading Brazil’s environmental policy under Lula, and for the second time in her career, she leaves behind a historic drop in Amazon deforestation. When she retook the ministerial post in 2023, the country was grappling with a near-doubling of forest loss that occurred during the four-year administration of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who held office from 2019 to 2022. After taking office, Silva pledged to eliminate all illegal deforestation in Brazil by 2030, and data from her tenure shows policies rolled out under her leadership have already cut Amazon forest loss by more than 50%.

Marcio Astrini, executive director of the Climate Observatory, a leading coalition of Brazilian environmental nonprofits, called Silva’s progress transformative. “If nothing exceptionally negative happens, we should have, if not the lowest, one of the lowest deforestation rates in the Amazon’s recorded history,” Astrini said. He added that Silva’s administration also delivered robust protections for the Cerrado savanna biome and implemented sustained, effective policies to curb the severe forest fires that ravaged the region in 2023 and 2024 amid extreme drought conditions.

Bolsonaro, who is currently serving a 27-year prison sentence for his role in the 2022 coup attempt, centered his environmental policy on advancing agribusiness interests that opposed the creation of protected Indigenous and conservation territories and pushed for the legalization of illegally grabbed public forest land. His administration froze all new designated protected areas, gutted the budget and authority of federal environmental enforcement agencies, and transferred oversight of forest management to the agriculture ministry, which is historically aligned with agribusiness. By the year ending July 2021, Amazon deforestation under Bolsonaro hit a 15-year peak, with only a minor slowdown in destruction recorded in the following 12 months.

Astrini noted that Silva moved quickly to reverse these changes upon her return to office: she reorganized the structure of the Environment Ministry and federal protection agencies, and restructured the Amazon Fund — the world’s largest dedicated rainforest conservation initiative, which she originally helped design during her first tenure as minister. The restructured fund secured record new international contributions, funding expanded on-the-ground enforcement operations that had been halted under Bolsonaro.

“The environmental sector started working again in Brazil,” Astrini said. “That was the first major achievement: She put the house in order.”

Silva was also the key driving force behind Brazil’s successful bid to host the 2025 UN Climate Change Conference (COP30) in the Amazon city of Belém, and remains the most authoritative voice on Brazil’s national climate agenda. Still, Astrini acknowledged that even with Silva’s leadership, the Lula administration has faced major pushback on environmental protection from congressional factions. Last year, lawmakers passed a bill to streamline environmental licensing for large strategic infrastructure projects, cutting a process that previously took six to seven years and required multiple layers of approval down to just 12 months. Lula has also pushed forward with plans to approve exploratory offshore oil drilling at the mouth of the Amazon River, an ecologically critical region that scientists warn is highly vulnerable to oil spill damage. Silva was publicly critical of both measures, but lacked the political capital to block them.

Born in the Amazon region and a former rubber tapper in her youth, Silva has a decades-long track record of environmental leadership. During her first tenure as environment minister under Lula’s initial two presidential terms from 2003 to 2008, she oversaw the creation of dozens of new protected conservation areas, built the country’s world-leading satellite deforestation monitoring system, and launched large-scale crackdowns on illegal environmental crime. She also helped design and launch the original Amazon Fund during that first term.

Silva resigned from her first ministerial post in 2008 after high-profile clashes with Lula, who was shifting policy to court agribusiness interests during his second term. The two political figures reconciled years later, and Silva threw her support behind Lula’s successful 2022 election campaign that ousted Bolsonaro, clearing the way for her return to the environment ministry.

This reporting on climate and the environment from The Associated Press receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP retains full editorial control over all content. More information on AP’s philanthropic partnership standards, a list of supporters, and funded coverage areas is available at AP.org.

When Chile’s newly inaugurated President José Antonio Kast took office on March 11, he cemented the latest chapter of a growing rightward political shift across Latin America — and brought open, devout religious conservatism to the forefront of the region’s most secular major nation.

The 60-year-old former lawmaker, a father of nine and practicing Catholic deeply embedded in the international Schoenstatt apostolic movement, has built his political brand around unapologetic conservative values that have put progressive advocacy groups on high alert. Kast, who first ran for president in 2021 and lost to Gabriel Boric, secured a 58% majority in his 2025 campaign by centering pledges to crack down on rising crime and deport undocumented immigrants. But his long-held positions on social issues — opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage, and even the sale of emergency contraception dating back to 2009 — have defined concerns about what his presidency will mean for marginalized groups and social progress in Chile.

Kast’s ascent dovetails with a broader regional trend that has brought conservative leaders including El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele and Argentina’s Javier Milei to power in recent years, each riding popular discontent with established left-leaning governance to advance agendas focused on security and economic restructuring. Kast’s policy alignment also overlaps in key areas with that of former U.S. President Donald Trump, whose administration openly welcomed his electoral victory.

To understand how Kast’s faith intersects with his politics, it is necessary to first contextualize Chile’s shifting religious landscape. Across Latin America, Catholic affiliation has plummeted over the past three decades: a 2024 Latinobarómetro report found the regional share of Catholics fell from 80% in 1995 to just 54% in 2024. In Chile, the shift is even starker: only 45% of the population identifies as Catholic today, while 37% claim no religious affiliation and 12% identify as Protestant.

Luis Bahamondes, a religion scholar at the University of Chile, explained that the Catholic Church, once one of Chile’s most trusted institutions in the 1990s, saw public confidence collapse amid widespread social transformation and a string of high-profile sexual abuse scandals. “It became one of the most questioned institutions and one of the least trusted,” Bahamondes noted. Still, he added, conservative social values rooted in religious tradition remain deeply embedded in Chilean culture. Chile was the last Latin American nation to legalize divorce, doing so only in 2004, and resistance to comprehensive school sex education persists today. “There are still concepts that resonate strongly in Chilean society — such as family and marriage — which carry a strong religious weight,” Bahamondes said. “There is often talk of a crisis of Catholicism, but what is in crisis is the institution, not the belief itself.”

That disconnect between institutional Catholicism and persistent personal belief is exactly where Kast’s connection to the Schoenstatt movement resonates. Founded in Germany in 1914 at the outbreak of World War I, Schoenstatt is a Catholic apostolic movement centered on devotion to the Virgin Mary, which first arrived in Chile’s coastal city of Valparaíso in 1947. The movement has since expanded across the country, building more than 20 shrines and counting roughly 10,000 followers, including Kast and his wife.

Rev. Gonzalo Illanes, director of the Schoenstatt movement in Chile, emphasized that the group is not a political organization, but rather a faith formation community built on three core pillars: personal spiritual development, the integration of faith into daily life, and devotion to the Virgin Mary. While the movement shares Kast’s position that life must be protected from conception to natural death, it remains committed to open dialogue with those who hold different views, Illanes said. “Schoenstatt, like the Catholic Church, is not a political movement but a space for formation, faith and transcendence,” he explained. “The challenge is how to move forward. Not to stop talking.”

For Kast’s supporters, his open faith is a key source of confidence, not a cause for concern. Jorge Herrera, a Schoenstatt member and Catholic who voted for Kast, called the new president a capable leader with a clear plan for Chile that the country desperately needed. “He’s a president who gives me a lot of confidence,” Herrera said. “I share his values.” He echoed Schoenstatt’s core belief that every person has a unique divine mission, and noted that while he aligns with Kast’s anti-abortion stance, it was the president’s broader economic and security vision that won his support.

Kast’s appeal even extends to conservative circles beyond Chile’s borders. In Mexico, where a left-leaning national government has overseen abortion decriminalization in more than half of the country’s states, conservative activists see Kast as a welcome model. “It gives me confidence that he publicly acknowledges being inspired by a Christian faith,” said Rodrigo Iván Cortés, president of a Mexican conservative advocacy group. “That does not mean that he wants to impose his faith on others, but simply that he professes it.”

But for progressive and rights advocacy groups, Kast’s inauguration brings well-founded fears of gradual erosion of hard-won social rights. Unlike Argentina’s Milei, who immediately implemented sweeping rollbacks such as a ban on gender-affirming care for minors, Kast is not expected to reverse existing policies overnight. But researchers warn that a slowdown in progress, weakening of supportive public policies, and growing legitimacy for anti-rights rhetoric could still cause lasting harm.

“There are valid reasons for concern, though not necessarily for an immediate rollback as seen with Milei,” said Cristian González Cabrera, an LGBTQ-rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The risk with Kast could be more gradual: slowing progress, weakening public policies and legitimizing anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric.”

For reproductive rights advocates, early signals from Kast’s administration are already worrying. One of his first actions in office was a 3% across-the-board budget cut, and his new cabinet includes openly religious leaders heading the women’s and health ministries. Catalina Calderón, chief advocacy officer at the Women’s Equality Center, pointed to recent cuts to social and reproductive rights programs under Milei in Argentina as a warning sign for Chile. “Across the region, we have seen that when leaders from the political wing to which Kast belongs take office, one of the first things that happens is a rollback of individual rights and women’s rights,” Calderón said. “How that [religious] vision could shape the administration is something that should be watched closely.”

BRASILIA, Brazil – In a move that resolves weeks of speculation over his 2026 election ticket, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced Tuesday that incumbent Vice President Geraldo Alckmin will once again join his ticket as the running mate for his October re-election campaign, sticking with his former political rival turned key governing partner despite pressure to shift to a more right-leaning pick.

The 80-year-old leftist incumbent faced mounting calls from some conservative-leaning coalition blocs to select a running mate from a larger right-wing party to broaden electoral appeal ahead of the general vote. But Lula’s longstanding commitment to Alckmin, a 73-year-old center-right politician who has become one of his most trusted cabinet allies, won out. Speaking during a regular Cabinet meeting in the federal capital Brasilia, Lula confirmed that Alckmin will step down from his concurrent role as Minister of Industry to comply with Brazil’s strict electoral regulations.

“Our partner Alckmin will have to leave the Industry Ministry. He will have to leave because he will be candidate for vice president once again,” Lula told attendees of the gathering.

Brazil’s electoral code mandates that all sitting cabinet ministers seeking elected office in the October general election must resign their government positions no later than April 6. Alckmin is not the only cabinet member departing to pursue a campaign: multiple other administration officials have already announced their plans to step down to run for seats in Congress and state governorships across the country.

The partnership between Lula and Alckmin is one of the most unusual cross-ideological alliances in modern Brazilian politics. The pair first faced off in the 2006 presidential election, when Alckmin ran as the main opposition candidate against Lula and ultimately lost the runoff by a comfortable margin. Before entering national government, Alckmin – a soft-spoken Catholic politician who is popularly known as “Dr. Alckmin” among Brazilian voters – built a decades-long political career as a three-term governor of São Paulo, Brazil’s most populous and economically powerful state.

Alckmin co-founded the center-right Brazilian Social Democracy Party three decades ago, but left the party in 2022 to run alongside Lula on a unified anti-Jair Bolsonaro ticket, joining the Brazilian Socialist Party to formalize the alliance. That cross-ideological pairing proved pivotal to Lula’s narrow 1-point victory over the far-right incumbent Bolsonaro that year, as Alckmin’s conservative and centrist roots helped win over swing voters uneasy with Bolsonaro’s polarizing leadership.

During Lula’s current term, Alckmin has emerged as a central behind-the-scenes figure in key policy and diplomatic wins for the administration. He led Brazilian trade negotiations on tariff adjustments with the United States, and played a key role in finalizing the long-stalled free trade agreement between Mercosur, South America’s leading trade bloc, and the European Union – a deal that has been more than 20 years in the making.

Looking ahead to October, Lula is widely expected to face a challenger from the Bolsonaro camp: Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, the eldest son of the former president, who has emerged as the likely standard-bearer for the far right in the upcoming contest.