The Latin American Electoral Pendulum

The recent defeat of the left in Peru and Colombia, where Keiko Fujimori and Abelardo de la Espriella have won their respective elections, means that few countries in Latin America and the Caribbean will be governed by red or pink governments in the near future. If Brazil’s elections later this year echo the trend and Flávio Bolsonaro defeats President Lula da Silva, the left would not just lose one more ally—it would lose the country with the region’s largest economy and population. 

Of the twenty largest economies, only six are governed or going to be governed by the left—Brazil, Mexico, Guatemala, Uruguay, Guyana and Nicaragua. I am excluding Venezuela because, although that authoritarian regime has well-known left-wing roots, it is now under the control of the United States. I am including Guatemala, whose president is ideologically far more moderate than the others. So much so that he should probably be described as a centrist rather than a leftist, but given the nature of that country’s politics and the systematic assault against Arévalo’s presidency since day one by certain institutions at the instigation of the political right, it is probably fair to place him on the center-left of the political spectrum notwithstanding the fact that he has had to resort to tough law and order measures such as declaring a state of siege because of gang violence. On the right, I include Puerto Rico, which is not an independent country nor a U.S. state, and is generally treated as a Latin American entity by some international organizations that compile country statistics.

I hasten to add that, though few in number, among the twenty largest economies, the governments run by the left have a combined gross domestic product that far exceeds that of the other fourteen countries, and a larger population. This factor has much to do with Brazil and Mexico, the two largest economies, both of which are in the hands of the left. If we take the International Monetary Fund’s statistics, the six left-wing governments have a combined gross domestic product of just under US$9 trillion in purchasing power parity terms. In comparison, the other fourteen are shy of $6 trillion. 

Still, we have to go back several years to find a time when the left was swept from power, as it has been in recent months and years. After becoming a dominant force in the first decade of the 21st century, with the defeat of Peronismo in Argentina in 2015, the fall of Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, and the defeat of Evo Morales in Bolivia’s constitutional referendum in 2016, the region generally veered to the right.

However, the shift did not last very long because of four reasons—the right was not able or willing to engage in the kinds of reforms that would have kept the left out of power much longer; it succumbed to populist/authoritarian temptations that alienated part of the population; it was incapable of meeting the population’s high expectations regarding the quality of public services; and in some cases it was associated with major corruption scandals. 

There was also an international factor that did not help at all: by then, the commodities supercycle that had funded the left’s populism in the early part of the new millennium had subsided. The prices of commodities are a determining factor in economic performance in much of Latin America, particularly South America.

Has the right learned the lesson? For starters, unlike last time it was in power, it is enjoying and will continue to enjoy a commodities boom of sorts, which means that the global conditions in which it will operate should be favorable. That said, there is still too much uncertainty about the fate of the U.S. and the Chinese economies in the near future for predictions to be made with any degree of assurance.

Another element that could stand in the way of the right’s success in the current period is the exponential growth of criminal violence in most countries. This violence is partly the reason why some right-wing governments came to power recently, but the failure to produce results could turn voters against them very quickly. Or they could succumb to authoritarian temptations in the pursuit of efficient results against crime, as has happened in El Salvador. One more risk associated with the wave of criminal violence is that the right-leaning governments could be consumed by this overriding matter and neglect the reforms that the population desperately needs to experience greater economic growth after years of mediocre performance, as well as the overhaul of the dismal state of public services.

It is too early to say what will happen. But clearly, the people of Latin America and the Caribbean have decided to give the right a new opportunity; it had better deliver something much better than it did last time it conquered the hearts of the people if the pendulum is not to turn yet again in the other direction.