The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is expanding its footprint in Latin America, using economic enticements, propaganda, and infrastructure projects with hidden price tags to influence the governments and populations in the region, U.S. lawmakers and officials described at a March 31 Senate subcommittee hearing. Senator Marco Rubio (R.-Fla.) said that, contrary to CCP rhetoric, Beijing does not expand its presence in Latin America with a view to promoting stability and economic development, but to build Chinese influence and to foster dependence on the regime. “The CCP is taking advantage of its economic importance and political relationships to encourage governments across the region to make decisions that favor the CCP and undermine democracy and free markets,” Rubio said at a subcommittee hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Senator Tim Kaine (D-Va.) provided an account of a trip he took last year with a bipartisan group of fellow lawmakers to Mexico, Ecuador, …