Across continents and oceans, India is steadily building a new architecture of engagement, one founded on partnership, connectivity, shared prosperity and mutual respect. Whether in Latin America, the Caribbean, North America, Africa or the wider Global South, India’s diplomatic and economic outreach is increasingly defined by substance, scale and strategic purpose.

Nowhere is this more evident than in India’s expanding engagement with Latin America and the Caribbean. In other words, this is India’s LAC moment.

Recent months have witnessed a remarkable intensification of diplomatic activity. External Affairs Minister Dr S. Jaishankar’s visits to Jamaica, Suriname and Trinidad & Tobago reflected a relationship that is evolving beyond sentiment and historical affinity into structured cooperation across healthcare, education, digital public infrastructure, renewable energy, capacity building and innovation. Minister of State for External Affairs Pabitra Margherita’s engagements in Costa Rica, Honduras, Belize and Dominica further reinforced India’s commitment to strengthening partnerships across the region. Together, these visits signal a growing recognition that Latin America and the Caribbean occupy an increasingly important place in India’s global outlook.

India is expected to open a new diplomatic mission in Uruguay soon, further reflecting the depth and momentum of this engagement. Senior officials from the Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Commerce have also been making frequent visits across the LAC region, exploring new opportunities in trade, investment, energy and critical minerals.

The relationship itself is undergoing transformation. For decades, India and the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean were often viewed through the prism of distance. Today, technology, commerce, diplomacy and people-to-people exchanges are steadily reducing those distances. What was once seen as a faraway region is increasingly being recognised as a natural partner in trade, energy security, agriculture, critical minerals, innovation and sustainable development.

The deeper story, however, extends beyond economics.

More than a century ago, Rabindranath Tagore’s association with Argentine intellectual Victoria Ocampo reflected a cultural dialogue between India and Latin America that transcended geography. Long before trade agreements and strategic partnerships, ideas and literature had already begun building bridges across oceans.

Across the Caribbean, the descendants of the Girmitiyas continue to preserve traditions that travelled across oceans generations ago. In countries such as Trinidad & Tobago, Suriname and Guyana, those historical connections remain a living bridge between societies. At the same time, new bridges are emerging through business, education, technology, tourism and diplomacy. History and opportunity are converging in ways that would have been difficult to imagine only a few decades ago.

This edition also reflects a broader trend in India’s global engagement. Expanding diplomatic and commercial outreach across the Americas highlights India’s determination to strengthen partnerships, diversify economic relationships and create new opportunities for businesses and investors. In an increasingly uncertain global environment, trusted partnerships have become valuable strategic assets, and India is actively investing in those relationships.

The voices featured in these pages, ministers, ambassadors, high commissioners, diplomats, business leaders and policymakers, all point towards a common reality. The future will belong to nations and regions that collaborate, innovate and build resilient partnerships. The challenges confronting the world, whether economic, technological, environmental or geopolitical, cannot be addressed in isolation.

It is against this backdrop that India Empire is privileged to present the inaugural edition of LAC FIRST: The India-Latin America & Caribbean Business and Diplomatic Conference on June 24. LAC FIRST is not intended merely as a conference. It is conceived as a platform and envisioned as a corridor, enabling ideas, investments and institutions to move more freely between India and the Latin American and Caribbean region. Here, governments, businesses, academic institutions, investors and thought leaders can come together to explore possibilities, forge partnerships and convert goodwill into tangible outcomes. If relationships are built through dialogue, then dialogue requires institutions and platforms that can sustain it. LAC FIRST seeks to be one such platform.

India Empire has now completed more than twenty-one years of publication and produced over 260 editions. Throughout this journey, our mission has remained unchanged: to build bridges between nations, institutions and people. Through initiatives such as AFRICA FIRST and now LAC FIRST, we seek to contribute, in however modest a way, to a future shaped by cooperation rather than division, and by partnership rather than distance.

As the Chilean poet-diplomat Pablo Neruda once wrote, “You can cut all the flowers, but you cannot keep spring from coming.” In many ways, the growing engagement between India and the Latin American and Caribbean region reflects that same spirit of renewal and possibility.

The oceans that separate nations remain where they have always been. What is changing is the willingness to cross them. And in that willingness lies the promise of a more connected and prosperous future.

Sayantan Chakravarty
sayantanc@gmail.com