Latin America and the Caribbean

We work to advance Open Society’s values in Latin America and the Caribbean through grant making, advocacy, network building, and collaboration with partners and stakeholders. Our strategy includes a focus on three priority countries: Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico.

Countries across Central and South America face enormous political pressure from deep-rooted financial, economic, and social challenges that have fueled the rise of authoritarian leaders willing to subvert democratic freedoms and rights to maintain power. Open Society is working with a range of local partners to develop policies and strategies that help democracies overcome these often-overlapping issues, which now include the intensifying impact of the climate crisis. This work seeks to connect democracies to people’s everyday needs. Our work includes funding groups that support political engagement by women, by communities of African descent, and by indigenous people that have been often left out of the democratic process.

In Latin America, the Open Society Foundations support efforts to protect journalists from threats and violence that they can face while doing their job. We also seek to sustain independent investigative reporting on issues that may be overlooked by the mainstream media for political or business reasons. Our efforts to combat disinformation include supporting fact-checking sites and efforts identify the sources.

Latin America’s cities have some of the world’s highest rates of violent crime, much of it linked to gang violence. We support groups that seek to improve public safety through a community-based approach that involves local youth groups and businesses, and goes beyond a reliance on punitive policing.

From drought in Central America to the extreme weather threats in the Caribbean, the climate crisis is wreaking havoc in the region and intensifying displacement of people who do not have resources to adapt to, prepare for, and recover from climate change.

Open Society is working to achieve transformational climate and economic policies centering the social dimensions of the transition and adapting to climate impacts that help bolster trust in democratic institutions and reduce inequality.

In Colombia, we have funded efforts to develop beneficial commercial uses for coca leaf that can benefit small-scale growers, as an alternative to crop eradication campaigns. In Bolivia, we advocate for a coca control model that allows farmers to legally grow a limited and regulated quantity of coca leaves—a mainstay of Andean life for 4,000 years. The model has reduced coca cultivation, decreased violence, and helped stabilize rural economies.

Open Society started supporting civil society groups in Latin America and the Caribbean in the 1990s. We have offices in Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, and Bogotá. In 2022, our Haiti foundation, FOKAL, founded in 1995, became a fully independent entity.

Highlights of Our Work in Latin America and the Caribbean