What awaits Marco Rubio in Panama and environs? Consult our political tour guide to Central America

U.S. President Donald Trump claims he has big plans for Central America. This week and next, the region’s leaders might begin to discern what they really are.

Marco Rubio, Mr. Trump’s point man on foreign affairs, is scheduled to tour Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic from Feb. 1 to Feb. 6. The last time a Secretary of State took a maiden visit to Panama, it was 1912, and the zone around the then-unfinished canal was effectively a U.S. colony. Mr. Trump, angering the Panamanians who now own the canal, says he wants it in American hands. That is only one way his cabinet – full of Latin America and China hawks like Mr. Rubio – is promising to reshape the region on issues from migration and trade to crime and human rights.

Defying Washington on these issues has a price, as Colombia recently learned when, faced with the threat of a tariff war, it gave in to U.S. demands to accept deportation flights. But co-operating could be costly too, both for Central American governments and their peoples. Here’s an overview of the places Mr. Rubio is going and their often unhappy histories with the United States.

Panama

When José Raúl Mulino became Panama’s President in July, he was concerned with a much different corridor through his country: The Darién Gap, a jungle frontier with Colombia that he proposed to fence off against migrants bound for the United States. His policies, aided by funds from the Joe Biden administration, brought down crossings by 41 per cent, just as Mr. Trump – also a fan of border walls and deportation flights – won re-election.

Then, in December, Mr. Trump began to threaten he would reassert U.S. control over the Panama Canal, alleging that U.S. ships were being “ripped off” and China was actually in charge of the waterway. He reaffirmed that in his inauguration speech, giving no evidence to back up his claims. Mr. Mulino fought back, saying Panama has full sovereignty and the Chinese-owned companies that manage some of the canal’s ports are only contractors. Mr. Mulino ruled out any discussions about the canal’s fate with Mr. Rubio this week: ““I cannot negotiate and much less open a process of negotiation on the canal. That is sealed. The canal belongs to Panama.”

Mr. Rubio’s visit to Panama and environs is meant to signal how seriously the Trump White House takes Central American issues, the Secretary of State’s spokesperson, Tammy Bruce, said in announcing the tour.

Panamanians at a glance

Population: 4.4 million (all figures via World Bank, 2023)

Diaspora in U.S.: 240,000 (all figures via Pew Research Center, 2021)

History with U.S.: Panama won independence in 1903 thanks to threats of U.S. military force against Colombia, whose legislators balked at Washington’s terms for the canal project. As the waterway was built, Americans governed a segregated zone around it, phased out in the 1970s. U.S. troops invaded Panama in 1989 to oust a formerly U.S.-backed dictator. Panama took control of the canal in 1999.

On Dec. 31, Panamanians celebrated 25 years of control over the Panama Canal, and mourned the recent death of Jimmy Carter, the U.S. president who began the handover process. Anti-Trump protests flared up that day and on Martyrs’ Day, Jan. 9, which honours Panamanians killed in anti-U.S. riots in 1964. Arnulfo Franco/AFP via Getty Images

More than two-thirds of the cargo sent through the canal is coming from, or destined for, the United States. Two ports at either end are administered by the Panama Ports Company, whose ownership by a Hong Kong consortium is, in Mr. Trump’s view, Chinese influence. Panama denies this. Matias Delacroix/The Associated Press

Climate change is a threat to the canal’s future as drought depletes its reservoirs, such as Lake Alajuela, shown in 2023. Shipping restrictions and longer wait times have made the passage costlier than usual. Plans are afoot to build a new reservoir, which would flood the town where this family lives in Capira. Luis Acosta/AFP via Getty Images; Enea Lebrun/Reuters

Costa Rica

Costa Rica is sometimes called the “Switzerland of Central America” for its green mountain scenery, prosperity and relative neutrality, though the comparison falls apart in military terms: The Swiss army has conscription for all able-bodied men, but Costa Rica has had no army since 1948.

It’s an influential broker of Central American politics – ex-president Óscar Arias’s peace plan in the 1980s helped the region emerge from an era of strife – so support from Costa Rica could help Mr. Rubio build consensus among the countries he visits.

As Panama’s neighbour, the country also faces challenges with migration through its territory, which the Biden administration tried to address with an agreement on legal paths to U.S. citizenship for Venezuelans and Nicaraguans.

President Rodrigo Chaves, a centre-right economist, said ahead of Mr. Rubio’s visit that he hopes the countries will stay on friendly terms. He expects the new relationship will be more about quid pro quos than “more altruistic issues such as democracy,” the Tico Times quoted him as saying.

Costa Ricans at a glance

Population: 5.1 million

Diaspora in U.S.: 180,000

History with U.S.: In the 1850s, Costa Rica fought back an invasion by William Walker – an American mercenary who had taken over Nicaragua – and led a multinational coalition to liberate that country. Abolition of Costa Rica’s army in 1948 helped insulate it from Cold War intrigue, though in the 1980s Americans used one of its airstrips for clandestine activities in the Iran-Contra affair.

Sunny beaches and cultural festivals, like this one last December in Guanacaste, make Costa Rica a popular destination for mostly American tourists. Free of the political violence of many of its neighbours, Costa Rica reliably ranks as one of the happiest countries in the world. Ezequiel Becerra/AFP via Getty Images

Forests, such as this stretch of Manuel Antonio National Park, cover about 60 per cent of Costa Rica, and it took decades of reforestation to make it so. The country is considered an environmental leader: Costa Rican diplomacy paved the way for the Paris accords to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. IMAGO/robertharding via Reuters Connect

By UNHCR estimates, about 7 per cent of Costa Rica’s people are refugees or migrants from Nicaragua, whose regime has grown increasingly autocratic. Mr. Rubio told his confirmation hearings he sees the Sandinistas as ‘direct contributors to the migratory crisis we face.’ Inti Ocon/AFP/Getty Images

Costa Rica is home to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which last year ruled against Salvadoran abortion bans that led to the death of a woman, known as Beatriz, in 2013. GOP measures against abortion and foreign aid dimmed hopes for more progress on reproductive health in Latin America. Jessica Orellana/Reuters

Guatemala

Central America’s most populous country has done more than most to ensure a smooth transition with the Trump White House. Guatemalan officials anonymously told Reuters in late December that they might take deportees from other Central American nations with nowhere to go, harnessing their skills in construction and other trades. When Mr. Trump ordered military planes to deport migrants, Guatemala was the first country to accept them.

President Bernardo Arévalo, a centre-leftist crusader against corruption and for Indigenous rights, might seem an unlikely ally for Mr. Trump, but he cannot afford to make more enemies. Officials appointed by Mr. Arévalo’s predecessor tried unsuccessfully to block his inauguration last year, but intervention by the Biden administration and its allies helped avert a coup. Unable to fire his main prosecutorial adversary, María Consuelo Porras, Mr. Arévalo still faces obstructive tactics that Republicans – some of whom have close ties to Guatemala’s conservative old guard – could make worse if they wish.

Guatemalans at a glance

Population: 18.1 million

Diaspora in U.S.: 1.8 million

History with U.S.: The American United Fruit Company was a powerful landowner in Guatemala by the late 19th century, making Guatemala one of the original “banana republics.” Efforts to redistribute land resulted in a U.S.-backed coup in 1954. Through decades of civil war and a genocide against Maya people, successive regimes got U.S. help and training for their counterinsurgency efforts.

When Guatemalans celebrated their independence last fall, two other milestones loomed large in 2024: Eighty years since a democratic revolution that brought the current president’s father, Juan José Arévalo, into office, and 70 years since the U.S.-backed coup that ousted his successor, Jacobo Árbenz. Johan Ordonez/AFP via Getty Images

Guatemala is the homeland of Maya cultures that, in five centuries since colonization, have fused many older traditions with Christian ones. The art of making barriletes, giant kites to commune with ancestors on All Saints Day, was recognized as ‘intangible cultural heritage’ by UNESCO last year. Matias Delacroix/The Associated Press

Escaping to a better life in the north is a dream for many Guatemalans, and remittances from the people who succeed comprise about a fifth of national GDP. They financed this house in Comitancillo. Moises Castillo/The Associated Press

Migration holds many dangers for Guatemalans. This mural in Comitancillo commemorates 19 locals slain in 2021 by police in Camargo, Mexico, who discarded the charred bodies near the Texas border. Moises Castillo/The Associated Press

El Salvador

Nayib Bukele – a 43-year-old businessman who calls himself the “world’s coolest dictator” – belongs to a new breed of Latin American strongmen allied with Mr. Trump. The admiration is not always mutual: At last year’s GOP convention, Mr. Trump claimed, falsely, that Mr. Bukele brought down murder rates by sending “all of his criminals, his drug dealers, his people that are in jails” to the United States. In reality, Mr. Bukele’s policies have sent thousands of his citizens to Salvadoran prisons since 2022, when a state of emergency suspended many constitutional rights. Now, even more so than before, El Salvador has a higher incarceration rate than any other country.

After a landslide re-election last year – which constitutional term limits barred him from pursuing in the first place – Mr. Bukele has nearly no legislative opposition, and a free hand to pursue his agenda in concert with Mr. Trump’s. The countries have been exploring an asylum deal to allow non-Salvadorans to be deported there from the United States, CBS News reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.

Salvadorans at a glance

Population: 6.3 million

Diaspora in U.S.: 2.5 million

History with U.S.: American funding and weapons supported the Salvadoran government through a bloody civil war in the 1980s. Refugees from that conflict helped make Salvadorans the third-largest Hispanic diaspora in the United States, after Mexicans and Puerto Ricans.

At home in Jiquilisco, José Duval Mata Alvarado’s parents have erected a shrine to their son, detained in the maximum-security CECOT prison since 2022, despite judicial orders to let him go. El Salvador's ‘state of exception’ suspends many civil liberties, allowing police to detain anyone suspected of gang ties. AFP via Getty Images

The groups that fill CECOT owe much of their original success to another wave of U.S. deportations in the 1980s. Salvadoran gangs from Los Angeles, notably MS-13, returned to find a state in turmoil from years of civil war, and began asserting control in bloody power struggles with other gangs. Marvin Recinos/AFP/Getty Images

President Nayib Bukele’s enthusiasm for Bitcoin – which he made legal tender in El Salvador – earned him admiration in cryptocurrency circles that also increasingly favour Mr. Trump. But critics in El Salvador, and bodies such as the International Monetary Fund, see as a source of instability. Jose Cabezas/Reuters

Alarming environmentalists, Mr. Bukele’s party recently reversed a seven-year-old ban on metallic mining that had been the first of its kind in the world. The United States, El Salvador’s largest trading partner, could be a lucrative market for metals. Marvin Recinos/AFP/Getty Images

Dominican Republic

President Luis Abinader, elected to a second term last year, has taken a hard line with neighbouring Haiti, closing their shared land border on Hispaniola.FELIX LEON/AFP via Getty Images

The walled borders and harsh deportation policies that Mr. Trump wants in his country are already a reality in the Dominican Republic. President Luis Abinader, who came to power during the early pandemic, began taking a harder line on migrants from Haiti. Two years ago he completely closed air, sea and land traffic between the countries amid a dispute over water rights. Last year’s gang uprising in Haiti led to more crackdowns, and Mr. Abinader won a comfortable re-election with pledges to continue them.

The last Trump White House was on friendly terms with Mr. Abinader – secretary of state Mike Pompeo went to his inauguration – and the President and Mr. Rubio have signalled they are ready to continue that alliance. Both men are vocal critics of the autocratic Maduro regime in Venezuela, which the Dominican Republic has helped to keep in check on Washington’s behalf: Last year, for instance, Dominican authorities seized the Venezuelan President’s plane in Santo Domingo, acting to enforce U.S. sanctions.

Dominicans at a glance

Population: 11.3 million

Diaspora in U.S.: 2.4 million

History with U.S.: American troops have twice occupied the Dominican Republic: Once in response to a revolution and foreign-debt crisis in 1916, and again via a multinational force in 1965’s civil war. Washington was also a valuable ally to dictator Rafael Trujillo in the 1930s and 1940s.

Santo Domingo – where this family is prepping a girl for a quinceañera, or 15th birthday party – is the oldest European settlement in the Americas that’s still inhabited today. The city and eastern Hispaniola traded hands between Spanish, French and Haitian rulers until Dominican independence in 1844. Matias Delacroix/The Associated Press

Haitian boys in Ounaminthe peek over a then-unfinished stretch of border wall in 2023. Ounaminthe and the Dominican town of Dajabon lie on opposite sides of the Massacre River, which forms part of the 400-kilometre frontier between the countries. Melissa Tait/The Globe and Mail

Last December, the Dominican Republic made its largest-ever cocaine bust, and showed off 9,500 kilograms uncovered in a banana shipment from Guatemala. With traffickers increasingly turning to Caribbean routes, Dominican authorities are busy trying to counteract them. Erika Santelices/Reuters

Santo Domingo, drenched by Hurricane Beryl last summer, is one of the places where Washington’s foreign-aid arm, USAID, has worked to build climate resilience. The GOP’s freeze on foreign aid, and its aversion to climate policy, has cast doubt on efforts to prepare the Caribbean for super-storms. Erika Santelices/Reuters