BRIAN WINTER
BRIAN WINTER é o editor-chefe da Americas Quarterly.
Foreign Affairs
THE NEW CONSERVATISM
For decades, politicians on the Latin American right were weighed down by their association with dictatorships of the Cold War era. From the 1960s through the 1980s, dictators such as Augusto Pinochet of Chile, Hugo Bánzer of Bolivia, and Efraín Ríos Montt of Guatemala oversaw widespread state-sponsored repression and murder, often carried out in the name of fighting communism. After a great democratizing wave swept Latin America in the 1980s, most political leaders, including those on the right, sought to avoid any association with those regimes and were usually hesitant to put law-and-order issues at the center of their campaigns for fear of sounding fascist.
But the idea that the right is inherently or uniquely authoritarian has lost traction in today’s Latin America, where all three cases of clear-cut dictatorship are on the ideological left: Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. (Some other countries, including El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico, are hybrid regimes, neither fully democratic nor authoritarian, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual global survey of democratic health.) A succession of right-of-center presidents who respected democratic institutions, including Mauricio Macri of Argentina (2015–19) and Sebastián Piñera of Chile (2010–14 and 2018–22), helped dilute the lingering distrust of conservative leaders. It’s also true that, as memories of the Cold War fade and frustration with crime rises, warnings about authoritarian rule have lost some of their punch. In the Latinobarómetro poll, about 40 percent of respondents either preferred an authoritarian government or did not care whether it was democratic, up about ten percentage points from a decade ago. Polling in other parts of the Western world has shown a similar erosion of support for democracy.
Over the last decade, the Latin American right has also worked to undo the long-standing perception that it is indifferent to the fate of the poor. The neoliberal, small-state dogma that guided generations of conservative leaders has not been discarded, but it has been amended, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Right-wing governments in power at the peak of the pandemic oversaw some of Latin America’s most ambitious expansions in social spending and have since maintained many of those benefits. For example, in Chile—a country that for decades was the poster child for small-state, market-friendly neoliberalism—Piñera’s conservative government spent proportionally more on pandemic-related relief than any other country in the region. In Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro oversaw a massive expansion of Bolsa Família (“Family Grant”), an internationally renowned program of cash transfers to the poor that he had previously attacked as misguided socialism. Bolsonaro even increased the program’s payout by 50 percent in the months before his failed reelection campaign in 2022. More recently, in Argentina, even as Milei gleefully took his chainsaw to other government programs, he doubled the size of cash transfers for the country’s poor, which helped his government maintain the support of many in the working class and avoid the mass social unrest that doomed previous Argentine austerity drives.
Foreign Affairs
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| Matt Rota |
Desde praticamente o momento em que ele e seu grupo de rebeldes barbudos entraram em Havana em 1959 até sua morte por causas naturais em 2016, o líder mais icônico da América Latina foi Fidel Castro. Com seu uniforme militar característico, charutos Cohiba finos e discursos longos vilipendiando os Estados Unidos, Castro cativou a imaginação de aspirantes a revolucionários e milhões de pessoas ao redor do mundo. Nunca satisfeito em apenas governar Cuba, Castro trabalhou incansavelmente para exportar suas ideias. Sua rede global de aliados e admiradores cresceu ao longo das décadas, incluindo líderes tão diversos quanto Salvador Allende no Chile, Hugo Chávez na Venezuela, Robert Mugabe no Zimbábue e Yasser Arafat, o chefe da Organização para a Libertação da Palestina.
O comandante se reviraria no túmulo se soubesse que, hoje, as duas figuras latino-americanas que mais se aproximam de seu perfil global são ambas da direita ideológica. Javier Milei, o autoproclamado presidente “anarcocapitalista” da Argentina, que empunha uma motosserra para simbolizar seu zelo por reduzir drasticamente o tamanho do governo, e Nayib Bukele, o líder barbudo da geração millennial de El Salvador, conquistaram seguidores fervorosos em seus países e no exterior. Em vez do onipresente grito revolucionário cubano, ¡Hasta la victoria, siempre! (“Sempre em frente para a vitória!”), o lema libertário de Milei, ¡Viva la libertad, carajo! (“Viva a liberdade, droga!”), agora estampa camisetas em alguns campi universitários nos Estados Unidos e é citado por políticos até mesmo em Israel.
Assim como Castro em sua época, ambos os líderes estão exercendo uma influência muito maior do que o esperado para seus países no cenário global. Milei foi o primeiro chefe de Estado a se encontrar com o presidente dos EUA, Donald Trump, após sua eleição em 2024, recebendo uma recepção suntuosa em seu resort Mar-a-Lago. Trump chamou Milei de "meu presidente favorito" e, em outubro, concedeu um pacote de resgate de US$ 20 bilhões à Argentina — o maior auxílio financeiro dos Estados Unidos para qualquer país em 30 anos. O sucesso de Milei em reduzir a burocracia e os entraves governamentais, o que ajudou a diminuir a inflação na Argentina de mais de 200% quando ele assumiu o cargo em 2023 para cerca de 30% no final de 2025, foi aclamado como um modelo pela líder da oposição conservadora do Reino Unido, Kemi Badenoch, pela primeira-ministra italiana Giorgia Meloni e por muitos outros na direita europeia. Isso também o tornou uma espécie de guru para titãs libertários do Vale do Silício, como Elon Musk, que empunhou a motosserra de Milei no palco de uma conferência de conservadores nos Estados Unidos em fevereiro. Enquanto isso, a repressão de Bukele às gangues o tornou uma figura extremamente popular em grande parte da América Latina e além, mesmo que ele ignore sem pudor as preocupações com o devido processo legal e os direitos humanos. (Em uma pesquisa de 2024, cerca de 81% dos chilenos avaliaram Bukele positivamente, percentual superior ao de qualquer outro líder global e mais que o dobro do de seu próprio presidente.) Bukele tem mais de 11 milhões de seguidores no TikTok, mais do que qualquer outro chefe de Estado, com exceção de Trump.
O verdadeiro fervor revolucionário na América Latina atual, com líderes determinados a transformar não apenas seus países, mas a própria região, é evidente principalmente na direita ideológica. Com líderes conservadores vencendo diversas eleições recentemente e favoritos em outras no próximo ano, a América Latina parece preparada para uma mudança histórica que alteraria fundamentalmente a forma como os países lidam com o crime organizado, a política econômica, suas relações estratégicas com os Estados Unidos e a China, e muito mais. Em 2025, o presidente conservador do Equador, Daniel Noboa, foi reeleito, enquanto o partido de Milei obteve uma vitória inesperadamente expressiva nas eleições legislativas de meio de mandato da Argentina, impulsionando ainda mais sua agenda. A Bolívia viu o fim de quase 20 anos de regime socialista com a eleição de Rodrigo Paz Pereira, um reformista de centro. Os candidatos conservadores à presidência lideram as pesquisas na Costa Rica e no Peru, e estão muito próximos da vitória no Brasil e na Colômbia, em eleições previstas para antes do final de 2026.
O comandante se reviraria no túmulo se soubesse que, hoje, as duas figuras latino-americanas que mais se aproximam de seu perfil global são ambas da direita ideológica. Javier Milei, o autoproclamado presidente “anarcocapitalista” da Argentina, que empunha uma motosserra para simbolizar seu zelo por reduzir drasticamente o tamanho do governo, e Nayib Bukele, o líder barbudo da geração millennial de El Salvador, conquistaram seguidores fervorosos em seus países e no exterior. Em vez do onipresente grito revolucionário cubano, ¡Hasta la victoria, siempre! (“Sempre em frente para a vitória!”), o lema libertário de Milei, ¡Viva la libertad, carajo! (“Viva a liberdade, droga!”), agora estampa camisetas em alguns campi universitários nos Estados Unidos e é citado por políticos até mesmo em Israel.
Assim como Castro em sua época, ambos os líderes estão exercendo uma influência muito maior do que o esperado para seus países no cenário global. Milei foi o primeiro chefe de Estado a se encontrar com o presidente dos EUA, Donald Trump, após sua eleição em 2024, recebendo uma recepção suntuosa em seu resort Mar-a-Lago. Trump chamou Milei de "meu presidente favorito" e, em outubro, concedeu um pacote de resgate de US$ 20 bilhões à Argentina — o maior auxílio financeiro dos Estados Unidos para qualquer país em 30 anos. O sucesso de Milei em reduzir a burocracia e os entraves governamentais, o que ajudou a diminuir a inflação na Argentina de mais de 200% quando ele assumiu o cargo em 2023 para cerca de 30% no final de 2025, foi aclamado como um modelo pela líder da oposição conservadora do Reino Unido, Kemi Badenoch, pela primeira-ministra italiana Giorgia Meloni e por muitos outros na direita europeia. Isso também o tornou uma espécie de guru para titãs libertários do Vale do Silício, como Elon Musk, que empunhou a motosserra de Milei no palco de uma conferência de conservadores nos Estados Unidos em fevereiro. Enquanto isso, a repressão de Bukele às gangues o tornou uma figura extremamente popular em grande parte da América Latina e além, mesmo que ele ignore sem pudor as preocupações com o devido processo legal e os direitos humanos. (Em uma pesquisa de 2024, cerca de 81% dos chilenos avaliaram Bukele positivamente, percentual superior ao de qualquer outro líder global e mais que o dobro do de seu próprio presidente.) Bukele tem mais de 11 milhões de seguidores no TikTok, mais do que qualquer outro chefe de Estado, com exceção de Trump.
O verdadeiro fervor revolucionário na América Latina atual, com líderes determinados a transformar não apenas seus países, mas a própria região, é evidente principalmente na direita ideológica. Com líderes conservadores vencendo diversas eleições recentemente e favoritos em outras no próximo ano, a América Latina parece preparada para uma mudança histórica que alteraria fundamentalmente a forma como os países lidam com o crime organizado, a política econômica, suas relações estratégicas com os Estados Unidos e a China, e muito mais. Em 2025, o presidente conservador do Equador, Daniel Noboa, foi reeleito, enquanto o partido de Milei obteve uma vitória inesperadamente expressiva nas eleições legislativas de meio de mandato da Argentina, impulsionando ainda mais sua agenda. A Bolívia viu o fim de quase 20 anos de regime socialista com a eleição de Rodrigo Paz Pereira, um reformista de centro. Os candidatos conservadores à presidência lideram as pesquisas na Costa Rica e no Peru, e estão muito próximos da vitória no Brasil e na Colômbia, em eleições previstas para antes do final de 2026.
A América Latina é composta por cerca de 20 países com histórias e dinâmicas políticas distintas, e a direita pode não prevalecer em todos os casos. Mas houve outros momentos na história em que a região se moveu mais ou menos em sincronia: as ditaduras reacionárias que varreram grande parte da região nas décadas de 1960 e 1970, após a Revolução Cubana; a grande onda de redemocratização da década de 1980; as reformas pró-mercado do "Consenso de Washington" da década de 1990; e a chamada onda rosa que levou Chávez e outros esquerdistas ao poder no final da década de 1990 e início dos anos 2000. Hoje, outro realinhamento regional parece estar se formando, desafiando algumas das premissas mais básicas que o mundo exterior faz sobre a América Latina. O resultado seria uma região que, nos próximos anos, adotaria uma política mais agressiva contra o narcotráfico e outros crimes, seria mais receptiva a investimentos nacionais e estrangeiros, se preocuparia menos com as mudanças climáticas e o desmatamento e estaria amplamente alinhada com o governo Trump em prioridades como segurança, migração e limitação da presença da China no Hemisfério Ocidental. Dado o histórico de intervencionismo dos EUA na América Latina, seria de se esperar que a ascensão de um presidente americano autoritário, nacionalista e de direita impulsionasse uma resistência de esquerda na região. Em vez disso, pelo menos por enquanto, os líderes latino-americanos que mais se beneficiam com o retorno de Trump não são aqueles que o denunciam e desafiam, mas sim aqueles que o admiram, o bajulam e até o imitam.
ROTAÇÃO À DIREITA
Essa guinada à direita não parece ser apenas mais uma oscilação pendular cíclica ou passageira na política da região. Uma análise cuidadosa das pesquisas e de outras tendências subjacentes sugere que ideias e prioridades políticas conservadoras parecem estar ganhando terreno na América Latina. Uma pesquisa anual, acompanhada de perto, com mais de 19.000 entrevistados em 18 países, realizada pelo Latinobarómetro, um instituto de pesquisa regional com sede no Chile, relatou que, em 2024, o grau de identificação dos latino-americanos com a direita atingiu seu nível mais alto em mais de duas décadas. A mesma pesquisa mostrou Bukele como o político mais popular em toda a região, com uma média de 7,7 em uma escala de dez pontos; o menos popular, também por uma ampla margem, foi Nicolás Maduro, o ditador socialista da Venezuela, com uma pontuação de apenas 1,3.
A maioria das razões para a ascensão da direita não decorre de fatores externos, mas sim de mudanças na realidade interna da América Latina. No topo da lista está a crescente frustração pública com a criminalidade, que não é um desafio novo para a região, mas que se agravou substancialmente nos últimos anos. Segundo estimativas das Nações Unidas, a quantidade de cocaína produzida na América Latina triplicou na última década, proporcionando às gangues e aos cartéis da região riqueza e poder sem precedentes e alimentando a violência relacionada ao narcotráfico. A América Latina representa 8% da população mundial, mas cerca de 30% dos homicídios do planeta. Em diversos países que realizarão eleições no próximo ano, incluindo Brasil e Peru, a criminalidade — um tema eleitoral que tradicionalmente favorece a direita — aparece nas pesquisas como a principal preocupação dos eleitores.
Outros fatores-chave na ascensão da direita incluem a disseminação do cristianismo evangélico na América Latina, tradicionalmente católica, que transformou a política em diversos países, principalmente no Brasil, ao colocar questões da guerra cultural, como o aborto e a “ideologia de gênero”, no centro do debate público. Os dramáticos colapsos econômicos e sociais que se prolongaram por anos na Venezuela e em Cuba desacreditaram as políticas socialistas na mente de uma geração de eleitores em toda a América Latina, prejudicando a popularidade até mesmo de alguns candidatos de esquerda moderados, que, no entanto, são percebidos como parte da mesma tribo ideológica. O êxodo de pessoas desses dois países, e de outras nações em crise, como Haiti e Nicarágua, levou a uma migração sem precedentes dentro da própria América Latina, provocando uma reação negativa em países receptores como Chile, Colômbia e Peru, que alguns candidatos de direita buscaram explorar.
Enquanto isso, a fama global de Milei e Bukele também desempenhou um papel fundamental. Mesmo que a maioria dos eleitores da América Latina não deseje eleger cópias exatas de Milei e Bukele, cujas políticas muitos consideram extremistas, vídeos virais dos dois presidentes recebendo recepções de estrelas do rock na Casa Branca e em encontros prestigiosos, como a reunião anual do Fórum Econômico Mundial em Davos, despertaram curiosidade, alimentando a sensação de que líderes de direita estão em ascensão não apenas em seus países, mas também no exterior.
For decades, politicians on the Latin American right were weighed down by their association with dictatorships of the Cold War era. From the 1960s through the 1980s, dictators such as Augusto Pinochet of Chile, Hugo Bánzer of Bolivia, and Efraín Ríos Montt of Guatemala oversaw widespread state-sponsored repression and murder, often carried out in the name of fighting communism. After a great democratizing wave swept Latin America in the 1980s, most political leaders, including those on the right, sought to avoid any association with those regimes and were usually hesitant to put law-and-order issues at the center of their campaigns for fear of sounding fascist.
But the idea that the right is inherently or uniquely authoritarian has lost traction in today’s Latin America, where all three cases of clear-cut dictatorship are on the ideological left: Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. (Some other countries, including El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico, are hybrid regimes, neither fully democratic nor authoritarian, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual global survey of democratic health.) A succession of right-of-center presidents who respected democratic institutions, including Mauricio Macri of Argentina (2015–19) and Sebastián Piñera of Chile (2010–14 and 2018–22), helped dilute the lingering distrust of conservative leaders. It’s also true that, as memories of the Cold War fade and frustration with crime rises, warnings about authoritarian rule have lost some of their punch. In the Latinobarómetro poll, about 40 percent of respondents either preferred an authoritarian government or did not care whether it was democratic, up about ten percentage points from a decade ago. Polling in other parts of the Western world has shown a similar erosion of support for democracy.
Over the last decade, the Latin American right has also worked to undo the long-standing perception that it is indifferent to the fate of the poor. The neoliberal, small-state dogma that guided generations of conservative leaders has not been discarded, but it has been amended, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Right-wing governments in power at the peak of the pandemic oversaw some of Latin America’s most ambitious expansions in social spending and have since maintained many of those benefits. For example, in Chile—a country that for decades was the poster child for small-state, market-friendly neoliberalism—Piñera’s conservative government spent proportionally more on pandemic-related relief than any other country in the region. In Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro oversaw a massive expansion of Bolsa Família (“Family Grant”), an internationally renowned program of cash transfers to the poor that he had previously attacked as misguided socialism. Bolsonaro even increased the program’s payout by 50 percent in the months before his failed reelection campaign in 2022. More recently, in Argentina, even as Milei gleefully took his chainsaw to other government programs, he doubled the size of cash transfers for the country’s poor, which helped his government maintain the support of many in the working class and avoid the mass social unrest that doomed previous Argentine austerity drives.
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| Assistindo Bukele falar em San Salvador, El Salvador, junho de 2025 Jose Cabezas / Reuters |
Although throughout Latin America the left is still regarded as more generous in its social spending, its advantage is no longer as big as it once was. By partly neutralizing criticism that its leaders are elitist or antidemocratic, the right has been able to focus on issues that play to its strengths. None has been more salient than security. Cartels and other organized crime groups have grown vastly more powerful over the last decade, thanks in part to a staggering increase in their income from drug smuggling. According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the amount of cocaine produced globally reached an estimated 3,700 tons in 2023, compared with 902 tons in 2013. Almost all the world’s coca, the raw material for the drug, is produced in three Latin American countries—Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru—and virtually every other country in the region is a staging ground for smuggling and, increasingly, is a consumer market in its own right.
Indeed, much of the growing anger over crime in Latin America stems from changes in how and where cocaine is consumed. The notion that cocaine flows only north, to wealthy partygoers in Berlin, London, and New York, is less true today than it ever was: the drug increasingly moves east, west, and south, as well. Although North America remains the leading market, accounting for about 27 percent of global cocaine consumption, with Europe second at 24 percent, Latin America and the Caribbean are now close behind, accounting for about 20 percent of global consumption, according to UN estimates. Asia (about 14 percent of global consumption) and Africa (about 13 percent) are also home to rapidly expanding markets for the drug.
The evolving geography of cocaine consumption has in turn brought about important changes in smuggling routes, especially those leading to the Pacific coast, turning once relatively peaceful Latin American countries such as Chile, Costa Rica, and Ecuador into battlegrounds as cartels fight over control of seaports and other key transit hubs. Flush with unprecedented amounts of cash, cartels have diversified into other activities, including extortion, cargo theft, kidnapping, illegal mining, logging in the Amazon, and trafficking migrants bound for the United States.
Indeed, much of the growing anger over crime in Latin America stems from changes in how and where cocaine is consumed. The notion that cocaine flows only north, to wealthy partygoers in Berlin, London, and New York, is less true today than it ever was: the drug increasingly moves east, west, and south, as well. Although North America remains the leading market, accounting for about 27 percent of global cocaine consumption, with Europe second at 24 percent, Latin America and the Caribbean are now close behind, accounting for about 20 percent of global consumption, according to UN estimates. Asia (about 14 percent of global consumption) and Africa (about 13 percent) are also home to rapidly expanding markets for the drug.
The evolving geography of cocaine consumption has in turn brought about important changes in smuggling routes, especially those leading to the Pacific coast, turning once relatively peaceful Latin American countries such as Chile, Costa Rica, and Ecuador into battlegrounds as cartels fight over control of seaports and other key transit hubs. Flush with unprecedented amounts of cash, cartels have diversified into other activities, including extortion, cargo theft, kidnapping, illegal mining, logging in the Amazon, and trafficking migrants bound for the United States.
A ideia de que a direita é inerentemente ou exclusivamente autoritária perdeu força.
The consequences have been shocking even for a region long troubled by drug trafficking and violence. Images of rifle-toting gang members taking journalists hostage at a television station in Ecuador in 2024 circulated worldwide. The coastal Ecuadorean city of Durán, the site of a turf war among Albanian, Colombian, and Mexican cartels, is now the world’s most dangerous city according to some indices, with an annual homicide rate of about 150 per 100,000 people—approaching that of Medellín, Colombia, in the early 1990s, the era of the notorious drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. The recent assassination of Miguel Uribe, a right-wing presidential candidate in Colombia, has stoked fears that two decades of progress on security in that country is unraveling. A 2023 poll showed that over 85 percent of Chileans now sometimes avoid going out at night and just eight percent feel safe. In Costa Rica, long known as a tourist paradise so secure that it had no need for a standing army, homicides have soared by more than 50 percent since 2020 as the country has become one of the world’s leading transshipment points for cocaine. Even in the handful of countries where homicides have fallen in recent years, such as Brazil, rates of other crimes, such as robbery, remain high.
Under such circumstances, it’s clear why Bukele and other politicians who promise an iron-fisted approach to crime have made gains. Since Bukele took office in 2019, homicides have fallen in El Salvador by more than 90 percent, and by some measures the country is now one of the safest in the Americas, with a murder rate comparable to that of Canada. Many observers in Latin America do not regard Bukele’s approach—suspending constitutional rights such as due process and freedom of assembly, and jailing about two percent of the country’s adult population—as particularly problematic. Even in Chile, which is home to some of the region’s strongest democratic institutions, 80 percent of respondents in a recent poll agreed that they would support a “state of exception,” suspending certain civil liberties in order to combat crime. After a police operation in Rio de Janeiro in October degenerated into a chaotic shootout, leading to more than 120 deaths, Brazilian civil society groups reacted in horror. But a poll taken days later showed that a majority of city residents believed the raid was a success. Support for the harsh crackdown was just as strong among respondents in the city’s favelas, or slums, as it was in wealthier parts of the city. Across the region, even some leaders who reject extreme measures are heeding the call for a tougher approach to crime by building new high-security prisons and ramping up arrests of gang leaders.
Meanwhile, politicians who fail to get security under control increasingly risk losing their seats. In Brazil, polls suggest President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s perceived weakness on crime is a significant obstacle to his reelection bid in 2026. In Mexico, the assassination of a vocal anticrime mayor in November caused a wave of street protests and intense criticism of President Claudia Sheinbaum, who, although tougher on cartels than her predecessor, gets lower marks from voters on security than in any other area. In Peru in October, men on motorcycles opened fire at a concert, wounding four; the attack was the final straw for Peruvian President Dina Boluarte, who already had an approval rating in the low single digits because of alleged corruption in her government and other challenges. Days after the attack, Peru’s congress voted 122–0 to remove her from office, citing “permanent moral incapacity.”
Under such circumstances, it’s clear why Bukele and other politicians who promise an iron-fisted approach to crime have made gains. Since Bukele took office in 2019, homicides have fallen in El Salvador by more than 90 percent, and by some measures the country is now one of the safest in the Americas, with a murder rate comparable to that of Canada. Many observers in Latin America do not regard Bukele’s approach—suspending constitutional rights such as due process and freedom of assembly, and jailing about two percent of the country’s adult population—as particularly problematic. Even in Chile, which is home to some of the region’s strongest democratic institutions, 80 percent of respondents in a recent poll agreed that they would support a “state of exception,” suspending certain civil liberties in order to combat crime. After a police operation in Rio de Janeiro in October degenerated into a chaotic shootout, leading to more than 120 deaths, Brazilian civil society groups reacted in horror. But a poll taken days later showed that a majority of city residents believed the raid was a success. Support for the harsh crackdown was just as strong among respondents in the city’s favelas, or slums, as it was in wealthier parts of the city. Across the region, even some leaders who reject extreme measures are heeding the call for a tougher approach to crime by building new high-security prisons and ramping up arrests of gang leaders.
Meanwhile, politicians who fail to get security under control increasingly risk losing their seats. In Brazil, polls suggest President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s perceived weakness on crime is a significant obstacle to his reelection bid in 2026. In Mexico, the assassination of a vocal anticrime mayor in November caused a wave of street protests and intense criticism of President Claudia Sheinbaum, who, although tougher on cartels than her predecessor, gets lower marks from voters on security than in any other area. In Peru in October, men on motorcycles opened fire at a concert, wounding four; the attack was the final straw for Peruvian President Dina Boluarte, who already had an approval rating in the low single digits because of alleged corruption in her government and other challenges. Days after the attack, Peru’s congress voted 122–0 to remove her from office, citing “permanent moral incapacity.”
SEA CHANGES
To be sure, the left remains alive and well and electorally competitive throughout much of the region. Its message, centered on economic inequality, will probably always resonate among voters in a region with the world’s largest gap between rich and poor. The left also has its share of relatively popular, democratically elected leaders, such as Lula, who will run for his fourth (nonconsecutive) term as Brazil’s president in 2026, and Sheinbaum, who has earned admirers abroad for her calm but firm handling of difficult negotiations with Trump on trade and immigration. In some instances, the right may be leading in polls in part because the left is currently in power, and incumbents have been struggling to win elections in Latin America and throughout much of the democratic world. Similarly, some observers have argued that the current shift has little to do with traditional ideological considerations of left versus right and that populists and political outsiders of all stripes are on the rise.
There are other reasons to be skeptical that a right-wing wave in Latin America will fully materialize. In Colombia and Chile, leftist governments have approval ratings in the 30 to 40 percent range—not high, but not so low as to preclude the possibility of future electoral success for their parties. Moreover, in Colombia and Brazil, a proliferation of candidates on the right could split the vote, potentially resulting in a runoff election in which the public sees the conservative candidate as too extreme, and a candidate from the left or center comes out on top. Noboa, Ecuador’s president, failed in November to secure passage of a referendum that would have allowed foreign military bases in his country, among other reforms, suggesting that there will be some limits to how much power right-wing leaders can accumulate.
Perhaps ironically, one of the biggest risks to a conservative shift in Latin America may be Trump. The U.S. president has paid intense attention to the region in his second term, evidence that some of his top domestic priorities—combating drug trafficking and illegal immigration—require strong engagement in Latin America and the Caribbean. But polls suggest that Trump is not particularly popular in the region. He fared relatively poorly in the Latinobarómetro survey, with an average rating of just 4.2 on its ten-point scale, and some of his policies have sparked a backlash that risks pulling down his conservative allies in the region. For example, Trump’s decision to slap some of the world’s highest tariffs on Brazil and his demand that criminal charges be dropped against Bolsonaro in relation to a 2023 coup attempt led to a surge in Brazilian nationalism, a drop in support for Bolsonaro, and a rise in approval ratings for Lula. Likewise, Trump’s vow to “take back” the Panama Canal for the United States damaged the popularity of Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino, one of the most pro-U.S. politicians in Latin America.
To be sure, the left remains alive and well and electorally competitive throughout much of the region. Its message, centered on economic inequality, will probably always resonate among voters in a region with the world’s largest gap between rich and poor. The left also has its share of relatively popular, democratically elected leaders, such as Lula, who will run for his fourth (nonconsecutive) term as Brazil’s president in 2026, and Sheinbaum, who has earned admirers abroad for her calm but firm handling of difficult negotiations with Trump on trade and immigration. In some instances, the right may be leading in polls in part because the left is currently in power, and incumbents have been struggling to win elections in Latin America and throughout much of the democratic world. Similarly, some observers have argued that the current shift has little to do with traditional ideological considerations of left versus right and that populists and political outsiders of all stripes are on the rise.
There are other reasons to be skeptical that a right-wing wave in Latin America will fully materialize. In Colombia and Chile, leftist governments have approval ratings in the 30 to 40 percent range—not high, but not so low as to preclude the possibility of future electoral success for their parties. Moreover, in Colombia and Brazil, a proliferation of candidates on the right could split the vote, potentially resulting in a runoff election in which the public sees the conservative candidate as too extreme, and a candidate from the left or center comes out on top. Noboa, Ecuador’s president, failed in November to secure passage of a referendum that would have allowed foreign military bases in his country, among other reforms, suggesting that there will be some limits to how much power right-wing leaders can accumulate.
Perhaps ironically, one of the biggest risks to a conservative shift in Latin America may be Trump. The U.S. president has paid intense attention to the region in his second term, evidence that some of his top domestic priorities—combating drug trafficking and illegal immigration—require strong engagement in Latin America and the Caribbean. But polls suggest that Trump is not particularly popular in the region. He fared relatively poorly in the Latinobarómetro survey, with an average rating of just 4.2 on its ten-point scale, and some of his policies have sparked a backlash that risks pulling down his conservative allies in the region. For example, Trump’s decision to slap some of the world’s highest tariffs on Brazil and his demand that criminal charges be dropped against Bolsonaro in relation to a 2023 coup attempt led to a surge in Brazilian nationalism, a drop in support for Bolsonaro, and a rise in approval ratings for Lula. Likewise, Trump’s vow to “take back” the Panama Canal for the United States damaged the popularity of Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino, one of the most pro-U.S. politicians in Latin America.
Protesting the sentencing of Bolsonaro, Brasilia, Brazil, November 2025
Jorge Silva / Reuters
But Washington’s role in the hemisphere is yet another area in which the political ground seems to be shifting in unpredictable ways. Trump’s bailout of Argentina was widely seen as instrumental in ensuring the much larger than expected victory of Milei’s party in midterm elections. Many were surprised when polls showed considerable support throughout Latin America for Trump’s military strikes against alleged drug smuggling boats and other targets in Venezuela. The apparent message was that, once again, a broader anger against drug cartels in the region, and widespread public rejection of Maduro, outweighed other public concerns.
If a right-wing shift does materialize as current trends suggest, the consequences could be sweeping. The last time Latin America’s politics moved in a kind of unison, during the leftist wave of the first decade of the twenty-first century, serves as a guide for what might be possible. Back then, a group of broadly aligned leaders, including Chávez, Argentine President Néstor Kirchner, and Lula, managed to sink a hemispheric trade deal that had been promoted by U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, fundamentally altering the region’s economic trajectory for years afterward. Leftist Latin American presidents implemented stronger social policies to ensure the fruits of that decade’s commodities boom were equitably distributed, helping bring tens of millions of Latin Americans out of poverty and ensuring greater resources for education and health care. The relative ideological consensus also gave rise to renewed efforts at regional collaboration, with the creation, in 2008, of the Union of South American Nations, a group that sought to promote intraregional trade and social cooperation and to provide a forum for regional decision-making that excluded the United States; it was effectively dismantled in the late 2010s as leftist governments lost power and their successors deemed the bloc too ideological.
Today, many observers are betting that a similarly transformative shift, but this time to the right, would result in a wave of more business-friendly policies throughout Latin America. After a so-called lost decade that saw the region’s economies grow only about one percent per year on average from 2014 until 2023, the slowest pace among any major bloc of emerging markets, many politicians are vowing to follow Milei’s example by cutting regulations and the size of government. Rafael López Aliaga, the mayor of Lima and a leading candidate in Peru’s election, has called Milei a “savior.” In Colombia, the right-wing journalist Vicky Dávila, who is running in the 2026 presidential election, has hired Axel Kaiser, a former adviser to Milei, to work on her campaign. (Kaiser’s brother, Johannes, was himself a right-wing candidate in Chile’s 2025 election.) José Antonio Kast, the conservative candidate in Chile’s December runoff election, vowed to slash government expenditures by $21 billion while also cutting red tape, a plan he said would help Chile achieve four percent annual economic growth, double the pace of recent years.
Uma América Latina mais à direita pode adotar uma postura mais cética em relação à China.
But Washington’s role in the hemisphere is yet another area in which the political ground seems to be shifting in unpredictable ways. Trump’s bailout of Argentina was widely seen as instrumental in ensuring the much larger than expected victory of Milei’s party in midterm elections. Many were surprised when polls showed considerable support throughout Latin America for Trump’s military strikes against alleged drug smuggling boats and other targets in Venezuela. The apparent message was that, once again, a broader anger against drug cartels in the region, and widespread public rejection of Maduro, outweighed other public concerns.
If a right-wing shift does materialize as current trends suggest, the consequences could be sweeping. The last time Latin America’s politics moved in a kind of unison, during the leftist wave of the first decade of the twenty-first century, serves as a guide for what might be possible. Back then, a group of broadly aligned leaders, including Chávez, Argentine President Néstor Kirchner, and Lula, managed to sink a hemispheric trade deal that had been promoted by U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, fundamentally altering the region’s economic trajectory for years afterward. Leftist Latin American presidents implemented stronger social policies to ensure the fruits of that decade’s commodities boom were equitably distributed, helping bring tens of millions of Latin Americans out of poverty and ensuring greater resources for education and health care. The relative ideological consensus also gave rise to renewed efforts at regional collaboration, with the creation, in 2008, of the Union of South American Nations, a group that sought to promote intraregional trade and social cooperation and to provide a forum for regional decision-making that excluded the United States; it was effectively dismantled in the late 2010s as leftist governments lost power and their successors deemed the bloc too ideological.
Today, many observers are betting that a similarly transformative shift, but this time to the right, would result in a wave of more business-friendly policies throughout Latin America. After a so-called lost decade that saw the region’s economies grow only about one percent per year on average from 2014 until 2023, the slowest pace among any major bloc of emerging markets, many politicians are vowing to follow Milei’s example by cutting regulations and the size of government. Rafael López Aliaga, the mayor of Lima and a leading candidate in Peru’s election, has called Milei a “savior.” In Colombia, the right-wing journalist Vicky Dávila, who is running in the 2026 presidential election, has hired Axel Kaiser, a former adviser to Milei, to work on her campaign. (Kaiser’s brother, Johannes, was himself a right-wing candidate in Chile’s 2025 election.) José Antonio Kast, the conservative candidate in Chile’s December runoff election, vowed to slash government expenditures by $21 billion while also cutting red tape, a plan he said would help Chile achieve four percent annual economic growth, double the pace of recent years.
Uma América Latina mais à direita pode adotar uma postura mais cética em relação à China.
Modern Latin American history is littered with austerity measures and pro-investment plans that failed because of social unrest or a lack of political support. Investors also risk overestimating the degree to which any politician can overcome the region’s long-standing structural challenges, such as low educational levels and productivity. Nevertheless, financial markets have reacted to the potential for change with considerable enthusiasm, with one closely watched index that tracks stock prices in Latin America rising more than 30 percent in 2025—a sign of high expectations for faster economic growth and better corporate profits under right-leaning leaders. Many believe that with more pro-market leaders at the helm, the region can better realize its potential as a provider of critical minerals, including lithium and rare-earth minerals, as well as of oil and gas. In October, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, announced plans to invest in artificial-intelligence-related data centers and other projects in Argentina that could eventually be worth up to $25 billion, reflecting broad enthusiasm in Silicon Valley for Milei and his brand of economic policy more generally.
A more right-wing Latin America may also take a more skeptical stance on China and lean more toward the United States. A previous generation of conservative leaders was hesitant to choose between the two superpowers. China is the largest trading partner for several Latin American countries, including Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay, while the United States remains by far the biggest investor in the region. But the Trump administration has ramped up pressure on allies to turn away from Beijing, especially when it comes to Chinese investment in potentially sensitive areas such as telecommunications and port infrastructure. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described the recent rescue package for Argentina as an explicit bid to counter Beijing’s rising influence, calling it part of a new “economic Monroe Doctrine,” in reference to the nineteenth-century idea that outside powers are unwelcome in the Western Hemisphere. Some observers have speculated that Washington may have attached conditions to the aid, such as requiring Buenos Aires to possibly curtail or terminate Beijing’s lease on a space station in southern Argentina that the United States believes could eventually have military uses. More broadly, Trump seems determined to send a message that he will reward allies in Latin America with aid and other benefits while punishing antagonistic governments with tariffs and sanctions. It remains to be seen whether a new wave of leaders will respond to such incentives or continue to maintain a posture of nonalignment.
A more right-wing Latin America may also take a more skeptical stance on China and lean more toward the United States. A previous generation of conservative leaders was hesitant to choose between the two superpowers. China is the largest trading partner for several Latin American countries, including Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay, while the United States remains by far the biggest investor in the region. But the Trump administration has ramped up pressure on allies to turn away from Beijing, especially when it comes to Chinese investment in potentially sensitive areas such as telecommunications and port infrastructure. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described the recent rescue package for Argentina as an explicit bid to counter Beijing’s rising influence, calling it part of a new “economic Monroe Doctrine,” in reference to the nineteenth-century idea that outside powers are unwelcome in the Western Hemisphere. Some observers have speculated that Washington may have attached conditions to the aid, such as requiring Buenos Aires to possibly curtail or terminate Beijing’s lease on a space station in southern Argentina that the United States believes could eventually have military uses. More broadly, Trump seems determined to send a message that he will reward allies in Latin America with aid and other benefits while punishing antagonistic governments with tariffs and sanctions. It remains to be seen whether a new wave of leaders will respond to such incentives or continue to maintain a posture of nonalignment.
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| Milei em um comício político em Rosário, Argentina, outubro de 2025 Cristina Sille / Reuters |
A partir da década de 1990, uma geração de líderes de esquerda se conheceu pessoalmente em eventos como o Foro de São Paulo, uma conferência de grupos de esquerda fundada pelo Partido dos Trabalhadores do Brasil, o que facilitou sua coordenação regional nos anos seguintes. Hoje, muitos na nova direita latino-americana também estão formando laços estreitos, inclusive em eventos como a Conferência de Ação Política Conservadora (CPAC), que começou nos Estados Unidos na década de 1970 e se espalhou pela região nos últimos anos. Entre os convidados estiveram Milei, Bukele, membros da família Bolsonaro, bem como o chileno Kast. Alguns na região estão otimistas de que esses laços sociais levarão a uma maior coordenação em questões como comércio, infraestrutura e combate ao crime organizado.
Por fim, essa mudança pode resultar em transformações profundas em diversas outras questões também. Uma América Latina mais conservadora provavelmente se preocupará menos com as mudanças climáticas ou o desmatamento na Amazônia, especialmente se a direita retornar ao poder no Brasil. Alguns líderes de direita também podem tentar fechar as fronteiras de seus países para novas imigrações. Kast propôs a construção de uma barreira de fronteira nos moldes da dos Estados Unidos e a deportação de imigrantes ilegais do Haiti, da Venezuela e de outros países. Questões sociais como o aborto também podem ganhar importância na política nacional, dado o crescente percentual de eleitores cristãos evangélicos no Brasil e em diversos outros países da região. Em um possível sinal do que está por vir, em julho, Milei ajudou a inaugurar a maior igreja evangélica da Argentina, com capacidade para 10.000 pessoas. Em seu discurso aos fiéis, ele citou a Bíblia, Max Weber e o economista conservador Thomas Sowell ao explicar como os “valores judaico-cristãos” têm norteado as políticas de seu governo.
De fato, a América Latina de hoje é uma região onde o tom e o conteúdo de alguns eventos políticos não pareceriam deslocados no Texas ou em Nebraska; onde líderes políticos tradicionais falam com entusiasmo sobre disciplina fiscal e repressão policial; e onde as demandas por justiça social parecem ter sido suplantadas, pelo menos por ora, por invectivas contra narcoterroristas e ditadores socialistas. Se a atual geração de líderes de direita conseguir chegar ao poder e mantê-lo, eles acreditam que poderão criar uma América Latina que se livre da sua reputação global de criminalidade e estagnação econômica, que colabore mais estreitamente com governos de ideologia semelhante nos Estados Unidos e na Europa e que, em última análise, seja segura e próspera — de modo que seus cidadãos queiram ficar em vez de buscar uma vida melhor em outros lugares. Isso não seria uma revolução no sentido em que Castro a definia. Mas seria, sem dúvida, uma mudança drástica.
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