In the final weeks of 2021, Chile and Honduras voted decisively for left-wing presidents to replace right-wing leaders, extending a significant shift that has been underway across Latin America for several years.
This year, left-wing politicians are the favorites to win presidential elections in Colombia and Brazil, taking over from incumbent right-wing presidents, which would put the left and center-left in power in the six largest economies in a region. which extends from Tijuana to Tierra del Fuego.
Economic difficulties, rising inequality, fervent discontent with the rulers and mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic have fueled a pendulum swing away from the center-right and right-wing leaders who dominated a few years ago.
In Colombia, Gustavo Petro, a leftist former mayor of Bogotá who belonged to an urban guerrilla group, has maintained a consistent lead in the polls.
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–The left has promised a more equal distribution of wealth, better public services and expanded social safety nets. But the region’s new leaders face severe economic constraints and legislative opposition that could hamper their ambitions, as well as uneasy voters who have been willing to punish anyone who doesn’t deliver.
Advances from the left could boost China and undermine the United States in its competition for regional influence, analysts say, as a new generation of Latin American leaders emerges desperate for economic development and more open to Beijing’s global strategy. to offer loans and investments in infrastructure. The change could also make it more difficult for the United States to further isolate leftist authoritarian regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.
With inflation rising and economies stagnating, Latin America’s new leaders will have a hard time bringing about real change on deep-seated problems, said Pedro Mendes Loureiro, a professor of Latin American studies at the University of Cambridge. To some extent, he said, voters are “choosing the left simply because right now it’s the opposition.”
Poverty levels are at a 20-year high in a region where a short-lived commodity boom lifted millions into the middle class as the 21st century began. Several countries are now facing double-digit unemployment figures, and more than 50 percent of workers in the region work in the informal sector.
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–Corruption scandals, deteriorating infrastructure, and chronic underfunding of health and education systems have eroded trust in government and public institutions.
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