The members of the Madrid Forum, an international alliance of conservative parties, leaders and organizations, right and far-right organizations of Spain and Ibero-America, said today that their goal is to win the seven general elections planned in Latin America for this year and next, as they proclaimed at the closing of the meeting held yesterday and today in Asunción.
Participants in the IV Regional Meeting of the Madrid Forum, inaugurated this Thursday by Paraguayan President Santiago Peña, assured that conservative and ultra-conservative options have a great opportunity to win the elections that will take place between now and the end of 2026.
“For the first time in many decades there is a real possibility of opening a new era of freedom and prosperity with the defeat of socialism in the region and throughout the West,” said the project coordinator of Foro Madrid, Edmaly Maucó, when reading the declaration approved at the end of the meeting held this Thursday and Friday in Asunción.
This year there will be general elections in August in Bolivia, and in Honduras and Chile in November, while in 2026 elections will be held in Costa Rica, Colombia, Peru and Brazil.
According to the final declaration of the meeting, the countries of the region have suffered “in their own flesh the ravages” of left-wing governments, and “have understood that socialism corrupts societies, destroys the economy, destroys freedoms.”
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“From Asunción we send to the entire region and the world a message of optimism and hope: the triumph of freedoms, democracy and the rule of law in Ibero-America is possible and is within the reach of all our peoples,” says the text.
They also announced that they will continue to “denounce and strengthen the political struggle” against what they considered “dictators of Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, as well as against all those who support them.”
The Madrid Forum is promoted by the Disenso Foundation, the laboratory of ideas of the Spanish far-right party Vox, whose leader, Santiago Abascal, participated yesterday, Thursday, in the opening of the meeting, together with the president of Paraguay, Santiago Peña.
The director of Foro Madrid, Eduardo Cader, said this Friday that the right-wing forces can return to power unless, according to him, “the left resorts to fraud” or the disqualifications of the adversary candidacies.
“Every choice will be a battle, and every victory will require courage, strategy and, above all, unity,” he emphasized.
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Cader charged against what he called “soft right”, to which he attributed the claim of “managing what the left built”, avoiding conflict and not offering resistance.
The forum praised the figures of Argentine President Javier Milei; Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
MEPs of the right-wing group ‘Patriots for Europe’ participating in the meeting questioned the role of the European Commission, chaired by Ursula von der Leyen, which they called a “mega-state” that makes decisions on issues such as immigration, placing itself, in their opinion, above the will of European countries.
Hungarian MEP Enikó Gyóri said that “there is clearly a turn to the right in Europe” and stressed that in the last elections to the European Parliament, held on June 9 last year, the far-right parties reached approximately 22% of the vote, which is equivalent to about forty million people.
Those voters are “those who think that the European Union would have to be as the founding fathers founded it, and not this new Europe that wants to exist above the nations, dictating things that perhaps they do not even want to do,” said the Hungarian MEP.
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Also MEP Jorge Martín Frías, director of the Dissenso foundation, said that everyone supports the European Union, but criticizes the role of the European Commission, he considered that “it has made a misrepresentation and has distanced itself from the initial European project”.
The members of the Madrid Forum, which has also been held in Bogotá (2022), Lima (2023) and Buenos Aires (2024), promised to intensify “political cooperation to achieve electoral victories,” with special emphasis on “the seven electoral appointments that are coming”, to – as they said – “reach a continent free of socialism.”
Trump and Putin end Alaska summit without Ukraine peace agreement
U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin wrapped up their summit in Alaska on Friday with a brief joint press conference, during which they announced no agreement on peace in Ukraine.
Trump described the more than three-hour meeting with Putin and his delegation at Elmendorf-Richardson base as “extremely productive,” but admitted, “we have not reached the goal.”
“Many points were agreed upon. Only a few remain unresolved. Some are not significant. One is probably the most significant, but we have a good chance of resolving them. We haven’t gotten there yet, but we have a good chance of achieving it,” Trump stated cryptically at the no-questions press conference.
According to White House officials, the summit began around 11:30 a.m. local time (7:30 p.m. GMT).
Trump was joined by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy for the Middle East and Kremlin mediator Steve Witkoff. On Putin’s side, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov were in attendance.
International tourism brings over $2.2 billion to El Salvador in 2025
International tourism has generated more than $2.2 billion in foreign exchange for the Salvadoran economy during the first seven months of 2025, according to the Ministry of Tourism (Mitur).
Tourism Minister Morena Valdez stated on Thursday that this figure reflects a favorable development of the tourism sector so far this year.
“Over $2.2 billion by July, and we estimate more than $3 billion in foreign exchange by December 2025. I believe we will perform quite well,” Valdez said in an interview with Frente a Frente.
These figures do not include the 91,000 international tourists received during the August holidays, who contributed $60 million to the local economy, according to the government.
The accumulated results by July represent 73.3% of Mitur’s estimates for foreign exchange generated by international tourism in 2025.
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During the same period, tourism authorities recorded 2.3 million international visitors, which is 57.5% of the more than 4 million visitors projected by the government by the end of 2025.
Authorities have recently adjusted the tourism target: at the beginning of the year, Mitur anticipated 4.2 million visitorsafter receiving 3.9 million in the previous year.
Tabasco ex-officials linked to drug trafficking spark Mexico-U.S. tensions
The scandal involving two former state officials from Tabasco, southeast Mexico, linked to drug trafficking and now fugitives, has added tension to Mexico-U.S. relations, which had already been strained by President Donald Trump’s threats to send troops across the border to target cartels.
At the center of the controversy is the current coordinator of the Mexican Senate, former governor of Tabasco, and former Secretary of the Interior, Adán Augusto López Hernández, a close ally of former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018–2024), along with his then-security secretary, Hernán Bermúdez Requena.
According to the Mexican weekly Proceso, published two weeks ago, the criminal ties of the former officials were reported in 2022 by Mexican intelligence services during López Obrador’s administration when López Hernández was Secretary of the Interior.
Bermúdez Requena, known as ‘El Comandante H’, was appointed Secretary of Security in Tabasco in 2019 by then-governor Adán Augusto López Hernández, from the ruling Morena party, and is accused of being a leader of the criminal group ‘La Barredora’, a cell linked to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).
On July 22, Mexico’s Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection, Omar García Harfuch, confirmed that a warrant and Interpol red notice had been issued against Bermúdez Requena, who had been under investigation since 2024 for his links to organized crime.
