On August 16, 2023, the members of Congress boarded a flight for the Chilean capital of Santiago after spending two days exchanging ideas with Brazilian leftists. 

After a night of rest in their luxury hotel, which describes itself as the “ultimate luxury experience framed by breathtaking Andes mountains,” Ocasio-Cortez and company met with several left-wing Chileans. Among them was Iraci Hassler, mayor of Santiago and a member of the Communist Party of Chile. Hassler, who has stated that “communist management in a local government can transform people’s lives,” spoke with the members of Congress about how she has worked to “address food insecurity and discrimination against migrants.”

Lunch at a civic center followed, and the congressional delegation met with three more members of the Communist Party of Chile, a member of the Socialist Party of Chile, and a handful of individuals representing other left-wing political parties, all of whom hold positions in the country’s parliament, to discuss “grassroots organizing,” according to congressional filings.

The Communist Party of Chile has a violent recent past. 

After being outlawed by Augusto Pinochet’s military government in 1973, the party endorsed violent insurgency and established the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front, an armed guerrilla group that earned a terrorism designation from the State Department after orchestrating bombings, assassinations, sieges of media stations, and assaults on religious establishments. One such bombing at a seaside resort wounded three American sailors from the USS Abraham Lincoln in 1990. A declassified CIA report from 1986 asserted that the Communist Party of Chile was working at the behest of the Soviet Union.

Such history is not quite a relic of the past, as the Communist Party of Chile’s current president, Lautaro Carmona Soto, first became involved with the party in 1968. A document published by the Communist Party of Chile in early 2025, in fact, shows that many of the party’s current leaders were active in the organization while it was endorsing violent insurrection and allegedly cooperating with the Soviet Union. 

More meetings with communists followed later in the day at La Moneda, Chile’s presidential palace. The delegation met with Minister General Secretariat of Government Camila Vallejo, a member of the Communist Party of Chile, in the afternoon to learn about her role in campus organizing and “strategies for political communication in the age of disinformation.”

A day of rubbing shoulders with avowed Marxists came to an end around 8:00 p.m. with a dinner at Liguria Lastarria, a restaurant serving up small plates that look straight out of an upscale Brooklyn eatery and boasting posters of communist revolutionaries such as Che Guevara and Mao Zedong. Rumbo Colectivo, a left-wing Chilean nonprofit, hosted the congressional delegation.

Ocasio-Cortez and her congressional allies were given an ideological introduction to Chile by a Marxist college professor, before a day of meetings with communist party members. Over a dinner at the Mandarin Hotel’s swanky in-house Italian restaurant, which deals in steak and caviar, the delegation was lectured by José Miguel Ahumada, a professor and former government official who frequently praises Karl Marx and socialism on social media.

On August 18, the congressional delegation met with both a former Chilean president and the current president, Gabriel Boric. They met a second time with Santiago’s communist mayor, once with the country’s socialist undersecretary of foreign affairs, and gathered to mourn the death of former Chilean President Salvador Allende, a committed socialist and ally of the Soviet Union who was deposed by a military coup in 1973. 

LEADERS OF TERROR-LINKED CHARITY BANKROLL DEMOCRATS

Nonprofit organizations, such as the Foundation to Promote Open Society, often fund travel for members of Congress in the hope of influencing their perspective on a particular issue. Pro-Israel groups, for instance, regularly send members of Congress on trips to Israel to increase their sympathy for the Jewish state. Ocasio-Cortez, being one of the most influential Democrats in the party, is a prime target for such operations.

“The Foundation to Promote Open Society is interested in supporting this delegation as it aligns with the Foundation’s broader mission to foster greater interest from members of Congress on US-Latin America relations,” the philanthropy wrote in a congressional filing. “As Latin America confronts risks of democratic backsliding, the Foundation to Promote Open Society aims to support good governance and transparency initiatives throughout the region. A delegation connecting Latino members of Congress with their South American counterparts promises to strengthen the diplomatic ties between the U.S. and its partners in the region.”

Foundation for Open Society split the cost of funding the congressional trip with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal organization itself funded by the Soros family and other major players on the Left, such as eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Ford Foundation. The Foundation for Open Society disclosed that it provided the Center for Economic and Policy Research with a grant to help bankroll the trip. 

Ocasio-Cortez is reportedly eyeing a bid for the Senate or even the White House, reflecting her role as a leader within the institutional Democratic Party. The New York congresswoman has ample resources to mount such campaigns, being one of the strongest individual fundraisers in the House and possessing a dedicated base of followers. Some of her Democratic colleagues, however, worry that her left-wing bona fides could alienate moderate voters.  

Winding back the clock to August 13, 2023, the congressional delegation began its trip in Brazil with a visit to the Palácio do Planalto — the country’s equivalent of the White House — where they met with Celso Amorim, a top advisor to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and were given “an important primer … to learn more about the Lula Administration’s foreign policy priorities.”

Amorim has worked to strengthen ties between Brazil and the Chinese Communist Party, signaling that he is open to military cooperation with China and allowing Beijing to expand its economic influence in South America. 

After meeting with Amorim, a member of Brazil’s “Workers’ Party,” the congressional delegation was whisked away to Steak Bull Churrascaria, a pricey Brazilian steakhouse and sushi bar for lunch with U.S. Embassy officials. While dining on the prime cuts of beef, lamb, and seafood offered by the restaurant, the group discussed U.S.-Brazil relations and shared efforts to combat “racial and ethnic discrimination,” travel documents show. 

Once lunch wrapped up, the delegation moved on to discussions about “indigenous policy” with indigenous activists, labor rights with teacher union reps, and “land reform” with the Landless Workers’ Movement, an organization that the New York Times has described as machete-wielding “Marxists” who steal property from landowners to establish squatter villages.

Following their conversations with Marxist land appropriators, Ocasio-Cortez and friends headed to a lakeside country club for dinner with another senior adviser to Brazil’s president, where they discussed the country’s “de-radicalization” efforts. Since Lula took power in January 2023, Brazil has faced accusations of censorship and persecution aimed at conservative opponents of his administration under the auspices of de-radicalization. That night, the delegation also participated in a roundtable discussion to “foster connections” between them and Brazilian legislators belonging to the Communist Party of Brazil, the Brazilian Socialist Party, the Workers Party, and the Socialism and Liberty Party, travel documents show.

Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow members of Congress retired to the B Hotel, a four-star establishment designed by award-winning minimalist architect Isay Weinfeld, after their long day of meetings. 

The following day, the congressional delegation discussed the “defense of democracy,” climate change, housing, and racial justice. One such meeting was with Guilherme Boulos, a leading figure in Brazil’s Socialism and Liberty Party. 

Capping off the delegation’s final day in Brazil was a dinner at Fogo de Chão, another Brazilian steakhouse, with members of the Workers’ Party. 

The final stretch of the Soros-funded Latin America trip took the congressional delegation to Colombia, where they spent three days meeting with members of the “Historic Pact,” a coalition of parties that helped deliver power to Colombian President Gustavo Petro in 2022. Among the parties in the coalition were the Colombian Communist Party, the Maoist Labour Party of Colombia, and the socialist Patriotic Union. Petro, whom the delegation met with on August 21, was himself involved with a left-wing urban guerrilla movement during his youth.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research, Foundation to Promote Open Society, Ocasio-Cortez, Velázquez, Frost, and Castro did not return requests for comment.