How Trump boosts the Left in Latin America

Alfredo Serrano Mancilla and Silvina Romano

U.S. President Donald Trump has achieved the impossible: uniting Latin Americans, said Alfredo Serrano Mancilla and Silvina Romano. Large majorities of voters surveyed across the region can’t stand him. And it’s quite personal. They take offense at Trump’s “interventionist stance, his supremacist character, his warmongering language, his anti-immigration policies”—not to mention his obvious animosity toward Latin Americans in general and Mexicans in particular. This disdain for Trump holds true not merely in countries currently led by the Left, such as Mexico and Argentina, but also in those with governments that tilt Right, such as Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, and Brazil.

This causes a dilemma for conservative governments that need “to reconcile their high degree of dependence on the current U.S. president” with the antipathy toward him felt by the majority of voters. As the people reject Trump, they also repudiate Trumpism, with its “matrix of reactionary values” and its disastrous approach to governance. His administration’s utter inability to contain the coronavirus is a warning to the region, a failure that is turning Latin Americans away from conservatism and “toward progressivism.” Conservative leaders must now ask themselves: Do they really want to be seen as Trump clones? Or should they move leftward, “as their citizens wish”?