Last weekend, right-wing extremist candidate Abelardo de la Espriella won Colombia’s presidential election, defeating leftist rival Iván Cepeda, in which the former focused heavily on the country’s security crisis.
In Chile, another far-right candidate, José Antonio Caste, took the reins from the leftist government in March elections. Caste, who is cutting education and welfare while providing tax cuts to businesses, openly talks somewhat positively about Chile’s military dictatorship under General Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990).
And right-wing populist Javier Meili, a big admirer of US President Donald Trump, is set to rule Argentina through 2023. He also says that he is betting on austerity to save his economically weak nation.
Latin America’s largest country will hold elections this autumn
Right-wing, conservative or economic liberal forces now also rule Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay and Peru.
On the other hand, Brazil, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Venezuela are run by left-liberal or far-left governments.
Brazil, Latin America’s largest and most populous country, will go to the polls this autumn pitting the incumbent candidate of the country’s leftist Workers’ Party (PT), Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, against the far-right Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of the country’s jailed former President Jair Bolsonaro.
The trend is clear but what is driving it?
Political control has reversed in eight Latin American countries since 2023 – left to right in six cases, right to left in the other two. But what is behind the change?
Sabine Kurtenbach, head of the German Institute for Global and Area Studies in Hamburg, Germany, says recent right-wing victories can be linked to three closely linked issues: extreme social inequality, high crime rates and a lack of rule of law – and the fact that those in power have consistently failed to get a handle on these.
In Colombia, Abelardo de la Espriella promised voters that he would combat armed guerrillas and drug cartels. Kurtenbach calls it “punitive populism” or the “Bukele model” – after El Salvador’s controversial President Nayib Bukele, who declared a state of emergency in the country three years ago. Since then, more than 75,000 Salvadorans have been jailed, many without trial.
Reaction to the ‘pink tide’ of the early 2000s
Jonas Wolff, a political science professor who specializes in Latin America at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, points to security concerns and general voter dissatisfaction as reasons for the continent’s current rightward swing. He says this is a reversal of the decades-old trend.
He says many countries in the region suffered large-scale repression under right-wing military dictatorships between the 1960s and 1980s. This phase was followed by democratization and peace agreements, resulting in leftist parties being allowed to stand in elections.
“There was economic growth in the early 2000s. The so-called ‘pink tide’ in many countries brought left-wing governments to power,” Wolff told DW. “But that phase ended recently with the coronavirus pandemic.”
Kurtenbach sees the current shift toward conservatism and even right-wing authoritarianism as a reaction against what voters see as left-wing governments’ economic stagnation, rising crime rates, and inability to get corruption under control.
‘The extent to which fundamental human rights are being questioned is new’
Political scientist Thomas Kestler of the University of Wurzburg in Germany uses the analogy of a pendulum that has now swung to the right. Noting that he does not actually see any true right-wing ideological shift in Latin America, Kestler says that the very narrow majorities in recent polls are a reflection of deep political polarization in the region.
“I expect the pendulum will swing back in the not-too-distant future if the promised successes don’t materialize,” says Kestler, who adds that much of the voting public is fickle and diverse.
Furthermore, in many countries, presidents cannot be directly re-elected, or the office is subject to a strict one-term limit, meaning “the cards are automatically replaced.”
Still, if campaign promises are kept, the continent’s right lung could reinvent itself. For example, in El Salvador, President Bukele has kept his promise to substantially reduce gang violence.
“The shift to the right is certainly a swing of the pendulum – but it is linked to a worrying theory,” says Jonas Wolff. “The extent to which right-wing forces openly question fundamental civil and human rights is new.”
Wolff believes that right-wing voters think it is time to roll back the progress achieved by the feminist and nativist movements, as well as sexual and ethnic minorities. The previously mentioned security issues and the “Bukele model” also go hand in hand with a general neglect of fundamental human rights.
America is also creating obstacles on this scale
Wolfe also says that right-wing forces in both South and North America are cooperating and supporting each other wherever possible. US President Donald Trump, more than anyone, has aggressively sought to aid right-wing allies in other countries.
For example, last year Trump not only issued pro-Military statements ahead of Argentina’s parliamentary elections, but he also doled out billions in financial aid in an effort to slow the country’s rapidly rising inflation. He has also been a very vocal supporter of the Bolsonaro family in Brazil.
But the Trump administration is also resorting to measures that many observers say violate international law.
In Cuba, the US increased pressure on the communist leadership by imposing a near-complete oil embargo. And in January, Trump went so far as to order US troops to kidnap Venezuela’s leftist authoritarian leader Nicolas Maduro and force him to resign in the US. This is not the first example of direct US intervention in Latin American politics, although, for example, it occurred regularly during the Cold War.
All this being said, today’s right-wing political shift is not solely a Latin American phenomenon. State institutions and established political forces are under pressure around the world, simply because they are unable to come up with the solutions that voters are demanding. So it is no surprise that populists on both the left and the right want to use mass voter dissatisfaction with the established parties for their own means.
Sabine Kurtenbach says it is important to look beyond the existing labels of “right” and “left” when analyzing what is going on, pointing to Jonas Wolff’s idea of looking at human rights and the rule of law.
“There are governments that recognize autonomy and the role of democratic institutions. And there are others, whether on the right or the left, that do not,” says Kurtenbach. “This is an important distinction.”
This article was originally written in German.