Why is Latin America Swinging to the Right?

Latin America The Western Hemisphere’s rightward turn has more to do with thermostatic politics than the demise of USAID. Photo by Miguel SCHINCARIOL / AFP via Getty Images With the apparently imminent triumph of Flávio Bolsonaro in the Brazilian presidential runoff, the Latin American right is reaching heights not seen for decades. One by one, the bulwarks of leftism in the region have fallen: the Peronists of Argentina to Javier Milei, Evo Morales’ Bolivian socialists to Rodrigo Paz, Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela to American special forces wielding deadly discombobulators, Gabriel Boric of Chile to José Antonio Kast, Colombia’s Gustavo Petro to Abelardo de la Espriella, and now, it seems, Lula da Silva to Bolsonaro. The last major bastion of the Latin American left is Mexico, where President Claudia Sheinbaum has shown little appetite for defying the United States. A smattering of minor powers rounds out the pathetic list of the region’s remaining left-wing governments: Nicaragua, Belize, Guatemala, Uruguay, and Cuba. What explains this rout of the Latin American left, which only a few years ago seemed almost invincible? Some commentators on the right have suggested that the Trump administration has facilitated the turn, pointing, for example, to the dismantling of USAID, which they say funneled American foreign aid to left-wing causes and organizations. The White House’s efforts to rein in foreign aid distribution, however, while useful in their own right, are probably not a significant contributor to the political wave sweeping Latin America. The real reasons for the shift are more structural in nature; as such, they are both more prosaic and more profound. This is far from the first time right-wing governments have swept the Western Hemisphere. In 2000, Latin America was governed predominantly by conservative parties. Vicente Fox’s National Action Party had broken the death grip of the Institutional Revolutionary Party in Mexico, bringing an end to the “perfect dictatorship”; Alberto Fujimori was blundering through his final days as president-turned-dictator-turned-president-again in Peru; Hugo Banzer, once the military dictator of Bolivia, had returned to govern the country again, this time as a democratically elected president; and Fernando Cardoso was enjoying his second term as president of Brazil, having been reelected two years prior to great popular acclaim (in the process crushing a much younger Lula da Silva, his principal rival). Even the minor Latin American countries, from Costa Rica to Uruguay, were nearly all controlled by some flavor of conservative. The George W. Bush administration hoped to capitalize on this to remake the hemisphere. “Should I become president, I will look south, not as an afterthought, but as a fundamental commitment of my presidency,” Bush pledged during the 2000 campaign season, and his administration poured billions into Colombia and Mexico in a mostly unsuccessful attempt to smash the cartels and end the flow of drugs into the United States. But the Latin American prosperity the Bush White House hoped would come from right-wingers liberalizing their economies and embracing democracy never really materialized. In fact, conservative dominance of Latin America at the turn of the century proved short-lived. Disillusioned voters turned back to the left, hoping that socialist economic policies might provide more concrete improvements to their quality of life. By 2008, the region had been swallowed up by the “pink tide,” a current that carried into power a generation of left-wing icons: Lula in Brazil, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, Michelle Bachelet in Chile, and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in Argentina. Like democratic systems everywhere, Latin American politics is largely thermostatic: Voters grow frustrated with the government in power as it generates grievances, accumulates failures, and becomes associated with the political irritants of the day. Eventually, the popular backlash becomes strong enough that no policy program or charismatic leader can overcome it, and voters throw out the incumbents. The alternative does not even need to be particularly attractive—opposition parties with poor track records in government are frequently the beneficiaries of this trend, because voters have short memories and prefer parties whose great offenses they have forgotten to those whose offenses, though lesser, are daily paraded in front of them. And Latin American political movements have plenty of opportunities to aggrieve their voters. The promised economic boom is always just around the corner, but never arrives; the politicians who yesterday denounced the graft of their predecessors are today outed for having secret mansions in Miami and hidden bank accounts in the Bahamas. Javier Milei was catapulted to an unanticipated victory in 2023 by savaging the Argentine political class for its corruption and self-dealing; now he is confronting his own corruption scandals. In other words, though it may be true that “the left hasn’t won a single presidential election in Latin America” since we gutted USAID, it would be foolish to expect the trend to last. Indeed, whether the Trump administration’s destruction of the agency has any relation to this shift remains an open question—political slush funds and patronage from the U.S. have frequently aided the global left, but elections can be surprisingly hard to buy. Apart from the general thermostatic trends, the Latin American right has benefited from other, more significant tailwinds than the abolition of USAID. South American countries have recently begun to experience their own illegal immigration crisis, driven almost entirely by Venezuelans fleeing the collapsing economy of the Maduro regime. Stopping mass migration and securing national borders, previously issues that barely registered with the public, have become major priorities, creating a political environment that played directly into the hands of the right (which has always been the champion of law and order). This issue may, ironically, soon fade away thanks to the Trump administration’s actions in Venezuela. Another significant boost to the image and prestige of the Latin American right is the performance of President Nayib Bukele in El Salvador. Many a would-be caudillo has promised to bring down the mano dura (“iron fist”) and restore order and security to a broken society; Bukele has actually delivered. The transformation of El Salvador—from the most dangerous country in the hemisphere to a place that is by many metrics safer than the United States—is a more convincing pitch for Latin American right-wingers than any campaign speech or ad could be. HED: Why is Latin America Swinging to the Right? DEK: The Western Hemisphere’s rightward turn has more to do with thermostatic politics than the demise of USAID. With the apparently imminent triumph of Flávio Bolsonaro in the Brazilian presidential runoff, the Latin American right is reaching heights not seen for decades. One by one, the bulwarks of leftism in the region have fallen: the Peronists of Argentina to Javier Milei, Evo Morales’ Bolivian socialists to Rodrigo Paz, Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela to American special forces wielding deadly discombobulators, Gabriel Boric of Chile to José Antonio Kast, Colombia’s Gustavo Petro to Abelardo de la Espriella, and now, it seems, Lula da Silva to Bolsonaro. The last major bastion of the Latin American left is Mexico, where President Claudia Sheinbaum has shown little appetite for defying the United States of America. A smattering of minor powers rounds out the pathetic list of the region’s remaining left-wing governments: Nicaragua, Belize, Guatemala, Uruguay, and Cuba. What explains this rout of the Latin American left, which only a few years ago seemed almost invincible? Some commentators on the right have suggested that the Trump administration has facilitated the turn, pointing, for example, to the dismantling of USAID, which they say funneled American foreign aid to left-wing causes and organizations. The White House’s efforts to rein in foreign aid distribution, however, while useful in their own right, are probably not a significant contributor to the political wave sweeping Latin America. The real reasons for the shift are more structural; as such, they are both more prosaic and more profound. This is far from the first time right-wing governments have swept the Western Hemisphere. In 2000, Latin America was governed predominantly by conservative parties. Vicente Fox’s National Action Party had broken the death grip of the Institutional Revolutionary Party in Mexico, bringing an end to the “perfect dictatorship”; Alberto Fujimori was blundering through his final days as president-turned-dictator-turned-president-again in Peru; Hugo Banzer, once the military dictator of Bolivia, had returned to govern the country again, this time as a democratically elected president; and Fernando Cardoso was enjoying his second term as president of Brazil, having been reelected two years prior to great popular acclaim (in the process crushing a much younger Lula da Silva, his principal rival). Even the minor Latin American countries, from Costa Rica to Uruguay, were nearly all controlled by some flavor of conservative. The George W. Bush administration hoped to capitalize on this to remake the hemisphere. “Should I become president, I will look south, not as an afterthought, but as a fundamental commitment of my presidency,” Bush pledged during the 2000 campaign season, and his administration poured billions into Colombia and Mexico in a mostly unsuccessful attempt to smash the cartels and end the flow of drugs into the United States. But the Latin American prosperity the Bush White House hoped would come from right-wingers liberalizing their economies and embracing democracy never really materialized. In fact, conservative dominance of Latin America at the turn of the century proved short-lived. Disillusioned voters turned back to the left, hoping that socialist economic policies might provide more concrete improvements to their quality of life. By 2008, the region had been swallowed up by the “pink tide,” a current that carried into power a generation of left-wing icons: Lula in Brazil, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, Michelle Bachelet in Chile, and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in Argentina. Like democratic systems everywhere, Latin American politics is largely thermostatic: Voters grow frustrated with the government in power as it generates grievances, accumulates failures, and becomes associated with the political irritants of the day. Eventually, the popular backlash becomes strong enough that no policy program or charismatic leader can overcome it, and voters throw out the incumbents. The alternative does not even need to be particularly attractive—opposition parties with poor track records in government are frequently the beneficiaries of this trend, because voters have short memories and prefer parties whose great offenses they have forgotten to those whose offenses, though lesser, are daily paraded in front of them. And Latin American political movements have plenty of opportunities to aggrieve their voters. The promised economic boom is always just around the corner, but never arrives; the politicians who yesterday denounced the graft of their predecessors today are outed for having secret mansions in Miami and hidden bank accounts in the Bahamas. Javier Milei was catapulted to an unanticipated victory in 2023 by savaging the Argentine political class for its corruption and self-dealing; now he is confronting his own corruption scandals. In other words, though it may be true that “the left hasn’t won a single presidential election in Latin America” since we gutted USAID, it would be foolish to expect the trend to last. Indeed, whether the Trump administration’s destruction of the agency has any relation to this shift remains an open question—political slush funds and patronage from the U.S. have frequently aided the global left, but elections can be surprisingly hard to buy. Apart from the general thermostatic trends, the Latin American right has benefited from other, more significant tailwinds than the abolition of USAID. South American countries have recently begun to experience their own illegal immigration crisis, driven almost entirely by Venezuelans fleeing the collapsing economy of the Maduro regime. Stopping mass migration and securing national borders, previously issues that barely registered with the public, have become major priorities, creating a political environment that played directly into the hands of the right (which has always been the champion of law and order). This issue may, ironically, soon fade away thanks to the Trump administration’s actions in Venezuela. Another significant boost to the image and prestige of the Latin American right is the performance of President Nayib Bukele in El Salvador. Many a would-be caudillo has promised to bring down the mano dura (“iron fist”) and restore order and security to a broken society; Bukele has actually delivered. The transformation of El Salvador—from the most dangerous country in the hemisphere to a place that is by many metrics safer than the United States—is a more convincing pitch for Latin American right-wingers than any campaign speech or ad could be. Delivering the kind of transformation that Bukele has accomplished is a tall order for any government—and, indeed, may not be possible outside of the unique circumstances of El Salvador. But for the Latin American right-wing wave to last, that is what they will need to deliver. Otherwise, expect yet another pink tide in 2030.HED: Why is Latin America Swinging to the Right? DEK: The Western Hemisphere’s rightward turn has more to do with thermostatic politics than the demise of USAID. With the apparently imminent triumph of Flávio Bolsonaro in the Brazilian presidential runoff, the Latin American right is reaching heights not seen for decades. One by one, the bulwarks of leftism in the region have fallen: the Peronists of Argentina to Javier Milei, Evo Morales’ Bolivian socialists to Rodrigo Paz, Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela to American special forces wielding deadly discombobulators, Gabriel Boric of Chile to José Antonio Kast, Colombia’s Gustavo Petro to Abelardo de la Espriella, and now, it seems, Lula da Silva to Bolsonaro. The last major bastion of the Latin American left is Mexico, where President Claudia Sheinbaum has shown little appetite for defying the United States of America. A smattering of minor powers rounds out the pathetic list of the region’s remaining left-wing governments: Nicaragua, Belize, Guatemala, Uruguay, and Cuba. What explains this rout of the Latin American left, which only a few years ago seemed almost invincible? Some commentators on the right have suggested that the Trump administration has facilitated the turn, pointing, for example, to the dismantling of USAID, which they say funneled American foreign aid to left-wing causes and organizations. The White House’s efforts to rein in foreign aid distribution, however, while useful in their own right, are probably not a significant contributor to the political wave sweeping Latin America. The real reasons for the shift are more structural; as such, they are both more prosaic and more profound. This is far from the first time right-wing governments have swept the Western Hemisphere. In 2000, Latin America was governed predominantly by conservative parties. Vicente Fox’s National Action Party had broken the death grip of the Institutional Revolutionary Party in Mexico, bringing an end to the “perfect dictatorship”; Alberto Fujimori was blundering through his final days as president-turned-dictator-turned-president-again in Peru; Hugo Banzer, once the military dictator of Bolivia, had returned to govern the country again, this time as a democratically elected president; and Fernando Cardoso was enjoying his second term as president of Brazil, having been reelected two years prior to great popular acclaim (in the process crushing a much younger Lula da Silva, his principal rival). Even the minor Latin American countries, from Costa Rica to Uruguay, were nearly all controlled by some flavor of conservative. The George W. Bush administration hoped to capitalize on this to remake the hemisphere. “Should I become president, I will look south, not as an afterthought, but as a fundamental commitment of my presidency,” Bush pledged during the 2000 campaign season, and his administration poured billions into Colombia and Mexico in a mostly unsuccessful attempt to smash the cartels and end the flow of drugs into the United States. But the Latin American prosperity the Bush White House hoped would come from right-wingers liberalizing their economies and embracing democracy never really materialized. In fact, conservative dominance of Latin America at the turn of the century proved short-lived. Disillusioned voters turned back to the left, hoping that socialist economic policies might provide more concrete improvements to their quality of life. By 2008, the region had been swallowed up by the “pink tide,” a current that carried into power a generation of left-wing icons: Lula in Brazil, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, Michelle Bachelet in Chile, and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in Argentina. Like democratic systems everywhere, Latin American politics is largely thermostatic: Voters grow frustrated with the government in power as it generates grievances, accumulates failures, and becomes associated with the political irritants of the day. Eventually, the popular backlash becomes strong enough that no policy program or charismatic leader can overcome it, and voters throw out the incumbents. The alternative does not even need to be particularly attractive—opposition parties with poor track records in government are frequently the beneficiaries of this trend, because voters have short memories and prefer parties whose great offenses they have forgotten to those whose offenses, though lesser, are daily paraded in front of them. And Latin American political movements have plenty of opportunities to aggrieve their voters. The promised economic boom is always just around the corner, but never arrives; the politicians who yesterday denounced the graft of their predecessors today are outed for having secret mansions in Miami and hidden bank accounts in the Bahamas. Javier Milei was catapulted to an unanticipated victory in 2023 by savaging the Argentine political class for its corruption and self-dealing; now he is confronting his own corruption scandals. In other words, though it may be true that “the left hasn’t won a single presidential election in Latin America” since we gutted USAID, it would be foolish to expect the trend to last. Indeed, whether the Trump administration’s destruction of the agency has any relation to this shift remains an open question—political slush funds and patronage from the U.S. have frequently aided the global left, but elections can be surprisingly hard to buy. Subscribe Today Get daily emails in your inbox Apart from the general thermostatic trends, the Latin American right has benefited from other, more significant tailwinds than the abolition of USAID. South American countries have recently begun to experience their own illegal immigration crisis, driven almost entirely by Venezuelans fleeing the collapsing economy of the Maduro regime. Stopping mass migration and securing national borders, previously issues that barely registered with the public, have become major priorities, creating a political environment that played directly into the hands of the right (which has always been the champion of law and order). This issue may, ironically, soon fade away thanks to the Trump administration’s actions in Venezuela. Another significant boost to the image and prestige of the Latin American right is the performance of President Nayib Bukele in El Salvador. Many a would-be caudillo has promised to bring down the mano dura (“iron fist”) and restore order and security to a broken society; Bukele has actually delivered. The transformation of El Salvador—from the most dangerous country in the hemisphere to a place that is by many metrics safer than the United States—is a more convincing pitch for Latin American right-wingers than any campaign speech or ad could be. Effecting the kind of transformation that Bukele has accomplished is a tall order for any government—and, indeed, it may not be possible outside of the unique circumstances of El Salvador. But for the right-wing wave to last, that is what Latin America's conservatives will need to deliver. Otherwise, expect yet another pink tide in 2030.