The highlights this week: Hurricane Melissa pummels the Caribbean, Argentine President Javier Milei prevails in midterm elections, and Mexicans honor deceased pets ahead of Day of the Dead.

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Hurricane Melissa pummels the Caribbean, Argentine President Javier Milei prevails in midterm elections, and Mexicans honor deceased pets ahead of Day of the Dead.

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Monster Melissa Hits Caribbean

This year’s United Nations climate conference is not due to start for more than a week, but Hurricane Melissa’s deadly path through the Caribbean has brought the costs of climate change into catastrophic focus for the region.

Early on Tuesday local time, Melissa became the strongest storm to ever hit Jamaica. It also blazed a path through Cuba, dumped life-threatening rain on Haiti, and had killed dozens of people by Thursday afternoon. Warm water temperatures have made Atlantic tropical storms more intense in recent years.

Melissa damaged countries that have both distinct political systems and differing relationships with the United States. The storm is testing how those models perform in a climate disaster, as well as how Washington will approach humanitarian aid after dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development this year.

Jamaica, where the storm hit first, is a U.S.-friendly country that the International Monetary Fund has trumpeted as a pro-market reform success story. Haiti also leans hard toward the United States, but it has little state capacity and is heavily dependent on international aid.