(BSS/AFP) - The presidents of Chile and Uruguay huddled Wednesday to discuss how to fight organized crime, a problem that right-wing populists campaigned on in their sweep to power across Latin America.

President Jose Antonio Kast of Chile and Yamandu Orsi of Uruguay conferred for an hour a day after attending a summit of the regional trading bloc called Mercosur, in neighboring Paraguay.

Kast expressed hope that both Uruguay and Paraguay will soon join Chile in signing a crime-fighting agreement to tackle powerful drug trafficking cartels which send huge amounts of cocaine from South America to the United States and Europe.

"Organized crime can be removed from one country but it needs the same rules in all nations to be able to do away with this scourge," Kast said in a joint statement with Orsi.

Backed by President Donald Trump, Kast won a landslide victory in Chile in December on a platform to crack down hard on crime and illegal immigration, which he blamed for bringing cartels and gangs into Chile, one of the most prosperous countries of Latin America.

The homicide rate in Chile has doubled in the past decade to 5.4 per 100,000 inhabitants. Uruguay`s is almost twice that.