Leaders face a short honeymoon in shift left
In Chile, a tattooed former student activist won the presidency with a pledge to oversee the most profound transformation of Chilean society in decades, widening the social safety net and shifting the tax burden to the wealthy.
In Peru, the son of poor farmers was propelled to victory on a vow to prioritize struggling families, feed the hungry and correct long-standing disparities in access to health care and education.
In Colombia, a former rebel and longtime legislator was elected the country’s first leftist president, promising to champion the rights of Indigenous, Black and poor Colombians, while building an economy that works for everyone.
“A new story for Colombia, for Latin America, for the world,” he said in his victory speech, to thunderous applause.
After years of tilting rightward, Latin America is hurtling to the left, a watershed moment that began in 2018 with the election of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico and could culminate with a victory later this year by a leftist candidate in Brazil, leaving the region’s six largest economies run by leaders elected on leftist platforms.
A combination of forces has thrust this new group into power, including an anti-incumbent fervor driven by anger over chronic poverty and inequality, which have only been exacerbated by the pandemic and have deepened frustration among voters.
But just as new leaders settle into office, their campaign pledges have collided with a bleak reality, including a European war that has sent the cost of everyday goods, from fuel to food, soaring, making life more painful and evaporating much of the good will presidents once enjoyed.
Chile’s Gabriel Boric, Peru’s Pedro Castillo and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro are among the leaders who rode to victory promising to help the poor and disenfranchised, but who find themselves facing enormous challenges.
Unlike today, the last significant leftist shift in Latin America, in the first decade of the millennium, was propelled by a commodities boom that allowed leaders to expand social programs and move an extraordinary number of people into the middle class.
Now that middle class is sliding backward, and instead of a boom, governments face pandemic-battered budgets, galloping inflation fed by the war in Ukraine, rising migration and increasingly dire economic and social consequences of climate change.
In Argentina, where the leftist Alberto Fernandez took the reins from a right-wing president in late 2019, protesters have taken to the streets amid rising prices. Even larger protests erupted recently in Ecuador, threatening the government of one of the region’s few newly elected right-wing presidents, Guillermo Lasso.
“I don’t want to be apocalyptic about it,” said Cynthia Arnson, a distinguished fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “But there are times when you look at this that it feels like the perfect storm, the number of things hitting the region at once.”
The rise of social media, with the potential to supercharge discontent and drive major protest movements, including in Chile and Colombia, have shown people the power of the streets.
Beginning in August, when Petro takes over from his conservative predecessor, five of the six largest economies in the region will be run by leaders who campaigned from the left.
The sixth, Brazil, the largest country in Latin America, could swing that way in a national election in October.
Polls show that former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a fiery leftist, has a wide lead on the rightwing incumbent, President Jair Bolsonaro.