Opinion: Latin America’s Sharp Leftward Shift Should Worry Americans
Colombia’s Election Cements “Pink Tide” in Latin America
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The dominos keep falling in Latin America’s sharp tilt toward the left.
Colombia, arguably the U.S.’s strongest ally in region, elected a former guerilla, Gustavo Petro, as its first left-wing president ever.
Petro’s election means that six of the region’s seven-most-populous countries (Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela, and Chile) are now governed by left-leaning leaders. Chile, Colombia, and Peru have all elected leftist leaders just in the past year, as did the smaller Honduras.
Also, when Brazil votes for a new president in October, Latin America’s largest and most populous country could join the trend. Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has a strong lead over his rivals in the AS/COA poll tracker. A leader of Brazil’s Worker’s Party, a traditionally socialist group that has shifted toward social democracy, Lula governed as a center-left pragmatist in two presidential terms that ended in 2011.
Former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva speaks during an event to announce his pre-candidacy for Brazil's October presidential elections at Expo Center Norte on May 7, 2022, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. (Buda Mendes/Getty Images)
Add in Cuba, Bolivia, and Nicaragua, all of which have long been under authoritarian socialist rule, and some 550 million people, more than 80% of the region’s population, could live in countries not inclined to be friendly to the U.S.
The past year has confirmed the concerns I laid out in a column published on July 19, 2021, titled “While the U.S. Sleeps, a Political ‘Pink Tide’ Threatens Latin America,” where I argued that the U.S. ignores the region at its own peril.
The maps below, first published in that column, represent the recent ebb and flow of the political tides in Latin America. In 2011, the original “pink tide” that began at the turn of the century was at its former high, as indicated by the countries colored in red, all with left-of-center governments. In 2018, a more conservative wave colored many countries blue. But the leftward trend has been even stronger that I predicted in the 2022 map, as Honduras elected a leftist leader. If Brazil elects Lula, the region will be dominated by left-leaning governments as never before.
The 2022 forecast, which I published in July, 2021, should also include Honduras among the countries colored red (left-leaning), but Ecuador should be colored blue .
Admittedly, the governing philosophies of these new leaders varies enormously, from the sharply socialist dictatorships in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, to the democratically elected leaders of the other countries mentioned. Those range from the more strongly leftist, statist, and populist leaders of Mexico and Peru, to the others who are mostly closer to the center than to the socialist extreme.
However, even if the leftist leaders are not extremists, Latin American history has proven that they will often take anti-U.S. positions, in the name of opposing “imperialism.”
We just saw it happen when Mexico’s president boycotted the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles because the U.S. refused to invite the authoritarian leaders of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. In October of 2021, Argentina, Mexico, and Bolivia couldn’t even vote in favor of an Organization of American States resolution demanding the release of political prisoners and condemning outrageous human rights violations in Nicaragua.
Meanwhile, China’s influence has been growing throughout the region and so has the Kremlin’s. Evidence of the latter is how countries across Latin America have refused to impose sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, something the state-owned TASS news agency has used for propaganda purposes.
At the extreme, countries such as Venezuela become supporters of terrorist groups and other enemies of the U.S., according to the State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism.
Hostile regimes also often cease to cooperate with important American objectives like drug interdiction. Venezuela, the worst offender, has even become a hub of organized crime and an active narco-trafficker, according to multiple reports and charges filed by the U.S. Justice Department.
The failure of the region’s governments to effectively combat the coronavirus epidemic created conditions that made the ground fertile for change, especially because of the economic hit. “Economies in Latin America had stagnated and the pandemic hit them while they were down,” Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, told me. He added that Americans “need to know that what happens in Latin America will have direct consequences for them on migration, health, and even climate change.”
Despite higher commodity prices and the leftward political shift, the region’s growth is slowing, according to various forecasts.
One likely direct result is that a record number of undocumented migrants are crossing the U.S. border with Mexico. Among those fueling the increase are record arrivals of people from what former National Security Advisor John Bolton called the “troika of tyranny”: Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.
The U.S. is understandably distracted by inflation, a possible recession, supply-chain shortages, increasing crime, the war in Ukraine, and many other issues.
However, the election in Colombia and the surge in migrants should be wake-up calls to Americans that what happens south of the border does not stay south of the border, and that attention must be paid to Latin America’s political shift.
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Cover photo: Newly elected President of Colombia Gustavo Petro and Vice-President Francia Marquez of Pacto Historico coalition celebrate in Bogota, Colombia, after winning the presidential runoff on June 19, 2022. According to official results, Gustavo Petro of Pacto Historico coalition had received slightly more than 50% of the votes, while his opponent, Rodolfo Hernandez, a construction magnate, won just over 47% almost all of the votes counted on Sunday evening. (Guillermo Legaria/Getty Images)