Author: americalatinanews.com

In 2025, Billboard’s Latin Artists on the Rise series followed 12 breakout voices across Latin America, from corridos to art-pop. Reported by Isabela Raygoza, their quotes capture ambition, class memory, and the new Latin sound reshaping global charts today.

Billboard’s Spotlight, Latin America’s Mirror

Like a cultural seismograph, the series catches tremors before the quake. It flagged Peso Pluma in March 2023 and Xavi in January 2024 ahead of their wider breakouts. In 2025, the selections read from the south as a map of opportunity and pressure: different accents, same marketplace, and a region determined to define itself on its own terms.

On January 30, Óscar Maydon rejects the cold math of virality. “My greatest achievement is that people sing my songs,” he said, calling charts “very nice” but not the point. In Latin America, where a chorus can become a neighborhood’s shared language, that measure of success feels both romantic and fiercely practical.

Hits Start on the Page

That insistence on craft turns into an economic strategy with Netón Vega, featured February 27. The regional Mexican singer-songwriter from Baja California Sur calls writing “the best first step,” explaining how hits from his pen made doors swing open until people “eventually find out you can also sing.” Billboard’s accounting shows what that leverage bought: new artist of the year at the 2025 Billboard Latin Music Awards, a debut album, Mi Vida Mi Muerte, released in February, and a second project, Delirium, released later in 2025, plus No. 1 on Billboard’s New Latin Artists of 2025 list.

By October 30, Esaú Ortiz makes the blueprint explicit: he wanted to “sneak in” as a songwriter, earn trust, then surface as an artist with collaborators already in his corner. The August 28 spotlight on Clave Especial grounds that hustle in home life, with Ahumada quoting his mom—“Mijo, me estas saliendo diario en mis redes”—and calling his roots a hard-working Mexican family. It is ambition narrated in a familiar regional dialect: gratitude first, ego second.

Fame Travels, Roots Stay

Scale, though, is where Latin stardom now gets audited. Featured April 30, Argentine duo CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso shot upward after an NPR Tiny Desk set and then proved stamina on a 60-date world tour, landing at Coachella in the U.S., Fuji Rock in Japan, Glastonbury in England, Roskilde in Denmark, and Lollapalooza dates in Berlin and Paris. They also won five Latin Grammys, spanning best alternative music album for Papota and trophies tied to “El Día Del Amigo” and “#Tetas.” Their origin story stays front and center: Paco Amoroso calls Argentine rock “a way of life,” remembering teenage fantasies of champagne, while admitting a longing for the violin of André Rieu. CA7RIEL answers with global idols—“I wanted to be Michael Jackson… Queen—the whole band.”

Not every rise is built for stadium lights. On March 27, Yailin La Más Viral asks to be remembered as a woman from a low-income background in the Dominican Republic who “made it,” who represented her country, and who became the best mother to Catta. On May 25, Beéle describes staring into a studio mirror and choosing a “musical and diverse explosion” because he wants the world to “feel what I feel.” Yami Safdie, featured June 26, remembers pretending she was Taylor Swift, turning teenage longing into songwriting “like a game.” Bebeshito, on July 31, refuses the industry’s simplest scoreboard: “The goal isn’t to sell out.” Luck Ra, featured September 30, says his supposed final attempt—“No Quiero Más”—became “the beginning of everything.” Paloma Morphy, on November 20, quit her job as a criminal lawyer and gave herself two years to see what happens. And Milo J, featured December 11, built La Vida Era Más Corta from overload, trying to “stop time and enjoy the present.”

Viewed together, the 2025 cohort suggests a region still writing its own contract with fame: authorship before spectacle, family before mythology, and vulnerability inside the buzz. In that sense, each profile doubles as a small social history told through music. Reporting credits Billboard and author Isabela Raygoza for the original list, interviews, and quotes.

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From Brazil’s booming Port of Santos to Peru’s rising Chancay, China is spending billions on ports that move soybeans and strategic minerals. With President Donald Trump escalating tariffs, these docks could harden new routes and sideline U.S. farmers for decades.

Santos and Chancay Make the Map

At the Port of Santos in Brazil, soybeans roll toward the sea through a 58-terminal complex described as the size of 1,500 American football fields. Less than 45 miles from São Paulo, the port moves nearly one-quarter of Brazil’s soybean exports, according to the Arkansas Advocate. For years, the docks were familiar terrain for Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, and Cargill—private giants that helped set the tempo of global grain, and, by extension, the tempo of rural economies on both sides of the equator.

The tempo is changing. The Arkansas Advocate reported that COFCO International, China’s state-owned food conglomerate, has invested about $285 million at Santos, expanding toward what is expected to become the port’s largest dry-bulk terminal. On the Pacific, COSCO Shipping is investing at least $3.5 billion to build the Port of Chancay on Peru’s central coast, including 15 berths and a 1.1-mile tunnel designed to move cargo straight to highways. Once fully operational around 2035, it is expected to rank as the region’s third-largest port and to redistribute exports—from soybeans to copper and lithium—across much of South America.

Tariffs Spark, Infrastructure Stays

From Latin America, the building feels like policy poured into concrete. The Arkansas Advocate linked the surge to China’s pivot away from U.S. farmers after Trump tariffs, a shift that began in 2018 and has intensified as President Donald Trump escalates again. “What are the signs that China’s here to stay [in Latin America]? Really, the infrastructure,” said Henry Ziemer of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. CSIS counts 23 ports in Latin America with some degree of Chinese investment.

Economist Daniel Munch of the American Farm Bureau Federation said that when ports make trade faster, cheaper, and more reliable, flows tend to “lock in.” He noted that none of the United States’ container ports rank among the world’s top 50. The Arkansas Advocate reported more than 270,000 farms grow soybeans, and in 2024 more than 40% of U.S. production was exported, about half to China. In 2025, Trump threatened a 157% tax on Chinese imports; China cut U.S. soybean buying to near zero for six months. A deal announced in November resumed purchases: 12 million metric tons in the final two months of 2025 and at least 25 million metric tons annually through 2028, according to Purdue University and farmdoc Daily.

Farmers and Dockworkers Count the Cost

ECLAC reported that from 2010 to 2022, Latin America supplied nearly one-third of China’s food imports, with Brazil at about 21%. José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs of ECLAC said transportation and telecommunications account for nearly 60% of Chinese-linked projects. In Brazil, Fernando Bastiani of ESALQ-LOG at the University of São Paulo said logistics can add 20% to 25% to the final soybean price—one reason China has backed infrastructure that also deepens COFCO’s control of storage and shipping.

In the United States, the reroute shows up in port ledgers. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics data cited by the Arkansas Advocate showed soybean exports rose less than 3% in the New Orleans District from September 2024 to September 2025, while the Los Angeles District fell nearly 15% and the Seattle District dropped 81%. At the Port of Los Angeles, executive director Gene Seroka said exports have been “very soft,” blaming retaliatory tariffs by China; before 2018, China accounted for about 60% of the port’s business, now closer to 40%. He said each four containers handled generates one job. For John Bartman of Marengo, Illinois, “It is very difficult to take a market [China] of over a billion people and replace that.” Brazil exported a record 79 million metric tons to China by October, and Caleb Ragland of the American Soybean Association warned U.S. farmers face a trade and financial precipice.

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