BarcelonaColombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, Paraguay, Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala and El Salvador. A blue tide has mutated the political map of Latin America since 2023. What just a few years ago seemed like a new pink tide –the way the wave of left-wing governments on the continent was named in the early 2000s– has only lasted one term. Now, the ideological shift is even more abrupt. If 15 years ago South Americans veered to the right, now, following the global trend, they are moving towards the far-right, paving the way the United States’ plans to re-establish the region as Washington’s backyard.
The latest have been Peru and Colombia. Keiko Fujimori and Abelardo de la Espriella, respectively, will soon assume the presidency of their countries, and will join the list of ultraconservative leaders on the continent aligned with Washington with names like José Antonio Kast (Chile), Nayib Bukele (El Salvador) and Javier Milei (Argentina). The bloc that the right and far-right made with the United States has been evident in the electoral campaigns that have given victory to these political options, but above all it was confirmed at the meeting in Miami that Donald Trump organized in March, when the Latin American leaders and the New York tycoon presented what they dubbed as Coat of Arms of the Americas, an alliance of 12 leaders from the region loyal to Trumpism.
Although right-wing parties on the continent have traditionally aligned with Washington, this stance often took a backseat in public discourse, as rejection of tutelage by the White House has been a widespread sentiment among the Latin American population in recent decades. “The politically incorrect thing to say was that you were aligned with the US. But now, among right-wing political parties, this has ceased to be a taboo,” Melisa Deciancio, a researcher at Flacso and Conicet, explains to ARA.
However, even though the population supports political options at the ballot box that advocate for close collaboration with the White House, in most countries Donald Trump’s figure generates distrust. According to data from the Pew Research Center, in Argentina, Chile, and Peru, between 60 and 70% of citizens distrust the US president.
The rejection of Trump’s figure is shared by the majority of the Latin American population, but the opinion on the United States varies greatly depending on the country
That citizens do not sympathize with Trump’s figure does not necessarily mean they view the United States unfavorably. In Colombia, 60% of the population has a favorable opinion of the neighbor to the north. This percentage stands at 51% in Peru, drops to 44% in Argentina, and is 37% in Chile. As the data show, it must be taken into account that it is “very difficult” to read Latin America as a whole, especially when it comes to citizen opinions, as Palmira Tapia, a political scientist at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE) in Mexico, warns.
In any case, what is a fact is that the triumphs of the far-right – with leaders who, to varying degrees and forms, assimilate to Donald Trump and align with him – are proliferating on the continent, especially when it comes to presidential elections. “The hyper-presidentialism of the region favors candidates who present themselves as political “outsiders”, who run campaigns highly focused on hyper-personalism,” Deciancio describes. A paradigmatic case is Colombia. In June, the far-right won the presidential elections, but in the spring, the party of the then-president, Gustavo Petro, from the left, achieved victory in both chambers of the country.
Beyond the implications that voting for pro-Trump parties may have, the reasons that lead citizens to vote for these options rarely have to do with foreign policy or the candidate’s stance regarding the United States. Tapia points out that, while elections cannot be understood without Trump’s open interference supporting certain candidates and conditioning aid or credit on specific victories, what truly determines the vote are usually internal dynamics and problems, in addition to an intention to punish the parties that had governed until then. “I would be cautious about the idea that there is a rightward shift of the Latin American electorate. Most countries where the far-right governs are still in their first term in which this political option achieves power, and we will have to see what happens when they finish their first term,” she warns, recalling the case of Brazil and Jair Bolsonaro.
Brazil and Mexico hold their ground
In fact, amid the rise of the far-right on the continent, Brazil and Mexico – the two largest economies in the region – maintain left-wing executives with a clearly interventionist discourse against Washington. It is obvious to everyone that the reality of these two countries is very different from that of states like Venezuela and Cuba, which, with more left-wing executives, have ended up adopting policies aligned with the interests of the United States.Although quantitatively they are only two states, the countries governed by Lula da Silva and Claudia Sheinbaum together contribute more than 60% of the regional GDP, according to IMF data from 2025, and their leaders are part of global social democracy that champions opposition to the US president.
Beyond their weight in the region’s economy, factors such as Mexico’s geographical proximity to the United States – to whom it is not convenient for the neighboring country to destabilize – or Brazil’s diversification of international trading partners, looking towards China, mean that Washington has to balance rhetoric and collaboration with the two states, at a time of growing influence of Beijing on the continent, one of the main threats to Trump’s plans to control the region. A right-wing victory in these two countries would be the final push for Washington to re-edit the Monroe Doctrine without major obstacles. For now, however, Sheinbaum is the Mexican president with the most support at the polls in recent history of the country and Brazil holds elections in the autumn with Lula leading all polls.