Pink tide recedes as Latin America looks right
The latest presidential elections, in Bolivia on Sunday, marked the end of almost 20 years of socialist rule. The second-round run-off in October will pit a soft-right economic reformer against an austerity-minded hard-right political veteran. Both agreed that the left-wing rule of Evo Morales and his successors had shunted the economy into the doldrums. Inflation — at 25 per cent last month — fuel shortages and investor concern about socialist mismanagement made Bolivia seem like a poor bet.A similar pattern of imploding leftist incumbencies could hit Chile in November's presidential election, Peru next April, Colombia then Brazil.
This is partly down to incumbency fatigue. The so-called pink tide of the early 2000s left six of the seven most populous Latin American countries with left-of-centre governments by 2023. That has started to change, for three reasons.
• Bolivia elections 2025: Socialists defeated after almost 20 years
The first is the uncontrolled spread of organised crime and the perceived feebleness of the government response. Typically, the flamboyant Mexican leftwinger Andrés Manuel López Obrador introduced a policy of 'hugs not bullets' — Abrazos no balazos — in dealing with young criminals. Colombia's president Gustavo Petro announced a policy of 'total peace' towards gangs, a more civilised approach, he thought, to dealing with the drugs problem than turning the police into paramilitaries.
Both misread the popular mood. The global cocaine business is shifting; legal systems cannot keep up with crime groups diversifying into other businesses. 'Criminals are now starting to accumulate revenue at the scale of national GDPs, with none of the burdens of a state,' says Ricardo Zuniga, formerly a senior US government expert on Latin America.
Second, the awarding of public contracts has become deeply flawed. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, has swollen the role of the state across the economy. The result: huge public debt, uncontrolled infrastructure spending, the politicisation of technical jobs.
Finally, the economic collapse of Venezuela — the country's per capita income plunged by more than 70 per cent in the 2010s — drove six million to flee across borders, making them a burden to neighbours, a source of friction and destabilisation in host societies. They were taken in but as migrant children grew older, and with no sign of a change in the Nicolas Maduro regime in Caracas, so part of the solution became to allow them to move northwards to the United States. Voters understood but acknowledged this was both a failure of their governments and a way of pre-programming conflict with the US.
• Venezuelan opposition 'rescued' from embassy after 15-month siege
The political answer to these slow-burn problems came not from incumbent governments but the right. There was not one single response but irrespective of whether the leader was like Argentina's president Javier Milei, a libertarian admirer of Margaret Thatcher's Austrian guru Friedrich Hayek, or like El Salvador's gang-busting president Nayib Bukele, who calls himself 'the world's coolest dictator', what matters most is that they get on just fine with the Trump White House.
Joe Biden, notoriously, neglected central and south America. Trump's team have found a way of connecting with different brands of conservatism. Elon Musk's enthusiasm for the anarcho-capitalist Milei's chainsaw, a graphic commitment to getting rid of superfluous bureaucracy, has helped make Milei acceptable in the White House. Trump probably regards him as a bit of a freak — not many at Mar-a-Lago will have cloned their dead English mastiff and named the bio-engineered pooches after prominent monetarists — but he will admire the guts of someone willing to deploy shock therapy to turn around the budget. Likewise, Bukele is not a conventional conservative. After re-election in 2024 he holds near-total control of the country's institutions. His appeal to Trump is that he has cracked down on violent crime: the murder rate has dropped from several thousand a year to just over 100, fewer than Canada. He has created huge prisons and filled them; Trump sends him deportees, alleged gang members.
Neither Milei nor Bukele will ever be described as men of the centre right and the problem with Trump stamping them with his seal of approval — the way forward, as he sees it, for a dysfunctional Latin America — is that they generate short-term results. Milei has still to win the congressional majority he needs to get on with labour law reform and big privatisation. Ruling by decree remains his default option. As for Bukele, being tough on crime and illegal immigration has resulted in mass, unscrutinised arrests. He is only a hop away from outright (not 'cool') dictatorship.
Resource-rich Latin America needs a coherent revolution in good governance, not autocrats from left or right; not generals in sunglasses but competent, fair-minded modernisers. If Trump does not get on to this soon, China will occupy the vacuum.
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7 hours ago
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Pink tide recedes as Latin America looks right
There is something theatrical, even vaudevillian, about Latin American politics and not only because of Andrew Lloyd Webber's passion for Argentinian populists. No surprise then, when Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the former Argentine president and ardent Peronista, recently celebrated the first full day of a six-year house arrest sentence on corruption charges by addressing hundreds of supporters from her balcony, Evita-style. But she will not be enjoying a comeback. The left-wing leaders who came to power in Latin America, riding the commodities boom of the early 2000s, are either burnt out or being replaced by right-wingers. Across the region, the mood is turning. The latest presidential elections, in Bolivia on Sunday, marked the end of almost 20 years of socialist rule. The second-round run-off in October will pit a soft-right economic reformer against an austerity-minded hard-right political veteran. Both agreed that the left-wing rule of Evo Morales and his successors had shunted the economy into the doldrums. Inflation — at 25 per cent last month — fuel shortages and investor concern about socialist mismanagement made Bolivia seem like a poor bet.A similar pattern of imploding leftist incumbencies could hit Chile in November's presidential election, Peru next April, Colombia then Brazil. This is partly down to incumbency fatigue. The so-called pink tide of the early 2000s left six of the seven most populous Latin American countries with left-of-centre governments by 2023. That has started to change, for three reasons. • Bolivia elections 2025: Socialists defeated after almost 20 years The first is the uncontrolled spread of organised crime and the perceived feebleness of the government response. Typically, the flamboyant Mexican leftwinger Andrés Manuel López Obrador introduced a policy of 'hugs not bullets' — Abrazos no balazos — in dealing with young criminals. Colombia's president Gustavo Petro announced a policy of 'total peace' towards gangs, a more civilised approach, he thought, to dealing with the drugs problem than turning the police into paramilitaries. Both misread the popular mood. The global cocaine business is shifting; legal systems cannot keep up with crime groups diversifying into other businesses. 'Criminals are now starting to accumulate revenue at the scale of national GDPs, with none of the burdens of a state,' says Ricardo Zuniga, formerly a senior US government expert on Latin America. Second, the awarding of public contracts has become deeply flawed. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, has swollen the role of the state across the economy. The result: huge public debt, uncontrolled infrastructure spending, the politicisation of technical jobs. Finally, the economic collapse of Venezuela — the country's per capita income plunged by more than 70 per cent in the 2010s — drove six million to flee across borders, making them a burden to neighbours, a source of friction and destabilisation in host societies. They were taken in but as migrant children grew older, and with no sign of a change in the Nicolas Maduro regime in Caracas, so part of the solution became to allow them to move northwards to the United States. Voters understood but acknowledged this was both a failure of their governments and a way of pre-programming conflict with the US. • Venezuelan opposition 'rescued' from embassy after 15-month siege The political answer to these slow-burn problems came not from incumbent governments but the right. There was not one single response but irrespective of whether the leader was like Argentina's president Javier Milei, a libertarian admirer of Margaret Thatcher's Austrian guru Friedrich Hayek, or like El Salvador's gang-busting president Nayib Bukele, who calls himself 'the world's coolest dictator', what matters most is that they get on just fine with the Trump White House. Joe Biden, notoriously, neglected central and south America. Trump's team have found a way of connecting with different brands of conservatism. Elon Musk's enthusiasm for the anarcho-capitalist Milei's chainsaw, a graphic commitment to getting rid of superfluous bureaucracy, has helped make Milei acceptable in the White House. Trump probably regards him as a bit of a freak — not many at Mar-a-Lago will have cloned their dead English mastiff and named the bio-engineered pooches after prominent monetarists — but he will admire the guts of someone willing to deploy shock therapy to turn around the budget. Likewise, Bukele is not a conventional conservative. After re-election in 2024 he holds near-total control of the country's institutions. His appeal to Trump is that he has cracked down on violent crime: the murder rate has dropped from several thousand a year to just over 100, fewer than Canada. He has created huge prisons and filled them; Trump sends him deportees, alleged gang members. Neither Milei nor Bukele will ever be described as men of the centre right and the problem with Trump stamping them with his seal of approval — the way forward, as he sees it, for a dysfunctional Latin America — is that they generate short-term results. Milei has still to win the congressional majority he needs to get on with labour law reform and big privatisation. Ruling by decree remains his default option. As for Bukele, being tough on crime and illegal immigration has resulted in mass, unscrutinised arrests. He is only a hop away from outright (not 'cool') dictatorship. Resource-rich Latin America needs a coherent revolution in good governance, not autocrats from left or right; not generals in sunglasses but competent, fair-minded modernisers. If Trump does not get on to this soon, China will occupy the vacuum.
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a day ago
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US deploys warships near Venezuela to combat drug threats, sources say
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Bolivia heads to runoff after right turn in presidential vote
LA PAZ, Aug 18 (Reuters) - Bolivians decisively repudiated the leftist party which has ruled the country for most of the past two decades in a first-round presidential election vote, likely paving the way for more market-friendly policies for its crisis-wracked economy. Centrist senator Rodrigo Paz secured 32.18% of the vote, while Eduardo del Castillo of the Movement for Socialism, MAS, had just 3.16%, according to initial results released by the electoral tribunal on Sunday night. Conservative former president Jorge "Tuto" Quiroga of the Alianza coalition was second with 26.94%, with over 92% of the ballots counted. If no candidate obtains more than 40% of the vote with a 10-point lead, there will be a runoff on October 19. Full official results will be announced within seven days. The result marked a drastic shift for a country which since 2006 has mostly been dominated by the interventionist MAS party led by the charismatic Evo Morales, although his once tight grip on the leftist coalition had already faded. "Bolivia is not just asking for a change in government, it's asking for a change in the political system," Paz said in a speech broadcast on Sunday night. "This is the beginning of a great victory, of a great transformation," he added, as his supporters chanted "renewal." Bolivian bonds gained nearly 3 cents, with the 2030 maturity bid at 79.69 cents on the dollar, according to Tradeweb data, its highest level this year. Investors were hopeful that a turn away from the leftist party could help the country turn its economy around, avoid a debt default and pave the way for an IMF program. Earlier on Sunday, Quiroga acknowledged the results, confirming his place in the runoff, and congratulated Paz. Outgoing President Luis Arce released an upbeat statement recognizing the results, saying "Democracy has triumphed." With a crowded field of eight contenders and no dominant MAS party candidate, the election marked a "crossroads moment" for Bolivia, said Southern Andes analyst Glaeldys Gonzalez Calanche of the International Crisis Group. Bolivia's fragile economy has been at the top of many voters' minds. Price rises have surged past other Latin American countries this year, and fuel and dollars have run scarce. Annual inflation doubled to 23% in June, up from 12% in January, with some Bolivians turning to cryptocurrencies as a hedge. The Bolivia result also may foreshadow a death knell for other left-leaning governments in Latin America, with elections looming in Chile in the coming months and in Colombia in the first half of 2026. Many Bolivians, especially those who work in the informal economy, were struggling to make ends meet, said economist Roger Lopez. "Bolivia is on the brink," said Lopez. "It has no dollars and faces obligations that must be paid in dollars, and voters understand that the coming years will be difficult." Paz's strong performance surprised analysts. Opinion polls had suggested that the senator was far behind Quiroga and center-right candidate Samuel Doria Medina of the Unidad Alliance coalition. Businessman Medina conceded defeat and said he would support Paz in any runoff. Sunday's vote dramatized the fall from favor of Morales, once overwhelmingly popular with the pivotal indigenous Aymara voting bloc, but whose calls to boycott the election appeared to fall short. Voter turnout was steady, authorities said. Despite earlier concerns that the electoral process could be obstructed by supporters of Morales, international observers said there were no major disruptions. Null and blank ballots totaled 21.5%, likely reflecting some support for Morales, who had urged voters to cast null ballots in protest. Usually the share of blank and null votes does not exceed 6%. Several minor incidents took place at polling stations in the central region of Cochabamba, Morales' political stronghold. The results will create an opportunity for the first time in nearly two decades for centrists and the right, which together commanded roughly three quarters of the vote, the early count showed. "Every year the situation has got worse under this government," said Silvia Morales, a 30-year-old retail worker from La Paz. A former MAS voter, she said this time she would cast her vote for the center-right. Carlos Blanco Casas, 60, a teacher in La Paz, said he intended to vote for change. "This election feels hopeful. We need a change of direction," he said. Quiroga has promised "radical change" to reverse what he calls "20 lost years" under MAS rule. He supports deep public spending cuts and a shift away from alliances with Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. Quiroga was president for a year in 2001-2002 after Bolivia's then-leader resigned. Paz, meanwhile, plans to decentralize government by introducing a "50-50 economic model" in which the central government would manage only half of public funds. The remainder would be designated to regional governments. Voters also elected all 26 senators and 130 deputies, who will take office on November 8.
