The latin america, europe, and united states triangle. New ibero-american summit, new opportunities

For decades, Latin America and Europe spoke out of habit, not urgency. That has changed. In early November, Madrid hosts a new Ibero-American Summit, arriving at the worst—or perhaps best—moment: when the United States, the European Union, and China are openly competing for the same sphere of influence in Latin America, and when that competition is no longer merely diplomatic. It is geopolitics that has become a matter of balance sheets.

I’ve spent three decades working across these three shores—Buenos Aires, Lima, Bogotá, Mexico City, Miami, Madrid—and I’ve never seen geopolitics enter the boardroom so rapidly . It used to be a chapter on risks at the end of the annual report. Today, it dictates where you invest, who you trade with, and what regulations will be imposed on you next month.

Companies that continue to treat it as background noise are already making a decision, even if they don’t realize it.

In the last two years, Washington has shifted toward a more interventionist Latin American policy, straining sovereignties and borders that seemed settled. At the same time, fragmentation is growing within the subcontinent itself: diverging national strategies, accumulating ideological clashes, and electoral cycles producing increasingly unpredictable leadership. This is not just another moment on the international agenda.

It is a turning point, and companies that continue operating as usual will be late to the game.

Herein lies the paradox that truly matters, and it is the central issue of the summit: despite the EU-Mercosur trade agreement—ten years of negotiations to finalize— the relationship between Latin America and Europe remains more superficial than either side needs . It’s not a lack of shared history. It’s a lack of political time invested in cultivating it. And this neglect comes at a cost, paid in market share, not in press releases.

Because while Europe carefully manages its attention, the United States and China do not. Both are vying for influence and business in Latin America with an intensity that Spain and Portugal—the EU’s natural gateway to the region—have yet to match. And here is my conviction, not a neutral assessment: Latin America and Europe, with Spain and Portugal at the forefront, have an advantage that neither Washington nor Beijing can replicate . It is not just another alliance. It is a community of values with centuries of roots, and this community can coexist perfectly with each country’s other alliances. There’s no need to choose sides; we need to stop coming in second.

The path Latin American countries take, together with their partners, will largely determine the fate of their companies in the coming decade. And that means boards of directors on this side of the Atlantic need a different mindset:

to stop viewing Latin America as an occasional market of opportunity and start treating it as a platform for influence and leadership . The region has been asking for partners, not just investors, for some time now.

Therefore, at LLYC we have decided that the new edition of UNO—our platform for debating ideas—will be built entirely around this summit and its political, commercial, economic, and media ramifications. We have convened expert voices from the three continents to discuss, without corporate filtering, what challenges this meeting presents and what opportunities it should unlock for civil society and the economy of the great Atlantic triangle: the United States, Latin America, and Europe.

That triangle isn’t a concept we chose for editorial opportunism. It’s embedded in LLYC’s DNA. We’ve been operating in all three regions simultaneously for decades, forging relationships that aren’t improvised during an election cycle.

We want this issue of UNO to go beyond armchair debate. We aim to bring this dialogue to the political leaders who will be meeting in Madrid in a few weeks. We take this geographical and values-based space seriously because it is part of our history and our identity. And I am increasingly convinced that it should also be part of the business ecosystem that is deciding, right now, whether to build bridges or arrive late to the table where the future is already being decided.