I’m not saying latin america has seized relations with US, just pointing out some of the reasons why China is growing its influence on the continent. Their friendly prices and big investments are much more appealing than empty US promises, as shown in the Summit of the Americas
To answer questions 1, 2, and 3:
Yes you can 👍
yep, do your rice. Maybe visit the Unixporn community.
For the most part (in MY experience) changing DEs only involves installing the desktop package, choosing your login manager, and then removing the old DE and its native apps (unless you want to keep them)