Don't Make Sweeping Generalizations About Latin American Politics

Michael Reid, who is a highly experienced observer of Latin American politics, should know better than to make sweeping generalizations about it, but he did. He says that the rightward trend in Latin America is different from past pendulums and is likely here to stay. Here are his two main reasons and the problems with them.

1. Latin American voters have been afraid of a repeat of Venezuela so vote for the right instead. The problem here is obvious--in 2022 neighboring Colombia voted in not just a leftist (the first in their history!) but a former guerrilla. The same year, neighboring Brazil chose Lula over a Jair Bolsonaro, who was both incumbent and close to Donald Trump. So this reason doesn't pass muster.

2. "Since the Covid-19 pandemic, which hit the region hard, voters’ focus has changed to the basics of life: finding stable work, putting food on the table and, perhaps above all, keeping safe." The entire first part of this puzzles me because Latin American voters have always, and I mean always, centered on finding stable work and food. That's what gave rise to Hugo Chávez in the first place. And it absolutely relates to incumbency because when the right or left can't fulfill those promises, voters look elsewhere. That said, his point about how drug violence has spread more than in the past is definitely true. But even in countries with serious drug trafficking (take Honduras or Mexico) voters have moved to the left and right.

After making the point that anti-incumbency is less likely now and so the right might well dominate, he hedges:

"In the end, the durability of Latin America’s latest shift will turn on how successful these leaders are in improving the lives of ordinary citizens, in making them safer and less poor and offering them better services like health care, education and public transport."

In other words, if incumbents don't fulfill promises, voters look elsewhere.

He does make the critical point that the current Latin American right is heterogeneous. Different approaches, different personalities, and different priorities. This is the most important takeaway of the piece because it tells us that sweeping generalizations will always lead you astray. What happens in Argentina--always so idiosyncratic--may or may not have significant impact elsewhere. If there is a regional or global recession (let's say the AI bubble bursts badly) then we might soon be talking about a resurgence of the center-left.*

* I do think the revolutionary left is so badly discredited that it will take decades for people to forget about its disasters. But they always do eventually!