As a young man, Winston Churchill took part in the Cuban War of Independence as a military observer and foreign correspondent. But, in 1954, after the coup against Jacobo Arbenz in a land in Cuba’s vicinity, he remarked: “I’d never heard of this bloody place Guatemala until I was in my 79th year.” Boris Johnson, the outgoing British prime minister, is Churchill’s admirer and biographer, but his interest in Latin America has been keener than that of his hero.

In 2018, Johnson became the first British Foreign Secretary to visit Argentina and Chile in over two decades, and Peru in half a century. Latin America, in fact, had received scant attention from frontbench Tories since the Falklands War. Johnson, however, considered that “there are realms of gold on either side of the Atlantic,” a Keats reference that spoke to the potential for free trade between the United Kingdom, the world’s fifth largest economy, and the emerging markets of Latin America.

The potential is due, of course, to Brexit, which Johnson helped to bring about in the 2016 European Union referendum. In turn, Brexit eventually brought Johnson to power and gained him an 80-seat parliamentary majority in the 2019 general election. Once outside the EU customs union, Britain gained the ability to enter, in Johnson’s words, into “unhindered and uncomplicated” free trade deals with nations across the globe. EU membership, on the other hand, had implied layer upon layer of protectionism against the outside world.

For Latin America, Brexit means the prospect of gaining access to a major European market without the rent-seeking restrictions of, say, the EU’s dirigiste Common Agricultural Policy. Latin American leaders have been slow to realize the opportunity at hand. One notable exception has been Uruguay’s current president, Luis Lacalle Pou, who met with Johnson at 10 Downing Street last May as he sought a free trade deal with Britain.

Uruguay, which leads South America in terms of per capita GDP, is a small country of 3.5 million people. Nonetheless, Lacalle’s initiative is significant because Uruguay belongs to the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), South America’s own version of a high tariff customs union that prevents its members— which also include Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay— from trading freely with other nations on a bilateral basis.

Due to Lacalle’s insistence on liberalizing Mercosur, Argentina’s Peronist president, Alberto Fernández, suggested that Uruguay should exit the bloc. For his part, Lacalle said in 2021 that Uruguay no longer has time to wait for its Mercosur partners to trade with the rest of the world. Potentially, a UK-Uruguay trade deal— like the one Lacalle recently started to negotiate with China— could help break up Mercosur or lead to an improved version. This would provide a much-needed boost to free trade in Latin America, thus extending the Brexit dividend well beyond the Anglosphere.

Besides the British prime minister’s interest in trade with the region, he also has aimed his “Johnsonian wit” at Latin America’s despots and their first-world sympathizers. As Foreign Secretary in 2017, he said the following at the Conservative Party Conference about the then leader of the opposition, unabashed socialist Jeremy Corbyn:

…(his) response to the grisly events in Venezuela is to side with the regime simply because they are fellow leftists. He says he still admires Bolivarian revolutionary socialism. I say he’s Caracas.

In the House of Commons, Johnson mocked Corbyn’s refusal to agree to a general election in 2019 by referring to his adulation of Cuba’s late socialist gerontocrat:

(… ) maybe it’s because he’s been following the precepts of his intellectual mentor, Fidel Castro, whose adoring crowds used to serenade him, Mr. Speaker, with the cry of ‘¡revoluciones, sí, elecciones, no!’

As prime minister, Johnson betrayed many of his more libertarian instincts with lockdowns, furlough schemes, public spending hikes, and tax rises. None of this helped to prevent his recent demise at the hands of the parliamentary Conservative Party. But, as historian Andrew Roberts writes, Johnson was a transformative prime minister despite his brief term, especially for achieving Brexit and soundly defeating Corbyn.

A trained classicist, Johnson is well known for his love of Latin. As he leaves office, he also should be remembered for his open amicitia toward Latin America.