“The favorite is whoever is not in power, not whoever is on the right,” said Andrés Malamud, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon, as he described the changing political landscape across Latin America. The victories of Javier Milei in Argentina, José Antonio Kast’s rise in Chile, Abelardo De La Espriella’s win in Colombia, and Keiko Fujimori’s return to power in Peru may appear to be a sweeping conservative movement — but Malamud says the data tells a more complicated story: voters are turning against whoever holds power, punishing governments that failed to control crime, rein in inflation, fight corruption, and maintain basic order.
“What is happening in Latin America in this decade is a shift toward the opposition more than a shift toward the right,” he said. That distinction carries real weight as right-wing parties gain ground across the region. Argentina kicked off this cycle in November 2023 when Milei, a libertarian outsider, channeled widespread anger at the political establishment into a presidential victory. Chile followed when Kast took office in March 2026 after a campaign focused on crime, immigration, and fiscal discipline. Colombia rejected Gustavo Petro and chose De La Espriella, a hardline right-wing newcomer to national politics. Peru, after years of political turmoil and repeated unsuccessful runs, has brought the Fujimorismo movement back to the presidency under Fujimori.
The picture is not uniform, however. Brazil and Mexico — the two largest nations in Latin America — remain under left-wing leadership. Uruguay returned the Frente Amplio to power in 2024. In Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is still polling ahead of Senator Flávio Bolsonaro before an October election that analysts say will either confirm the regional rightward drift or reveal its limits. That uncertainty is why experts are hesitant to declare a definitive ideological realignment. The right is winning more frequently, but not everywhere, and not always by large margins.
What has spread more rapidly than any ideology, analysts say, is voter impatience.
Malamud offered historical context for the shift. In the first decade of this century, he said, left-wing candidates won approximately 60% of presidential elections in Latin America. In the following decade, that figure dropped to around 55%. So far in this decade, the share has fallen further to roughly 40%, meaning right-wing candidates now win more often than before. But the stronger pattern, he said, is alternation — opposition candidates now win about 75% of elections regardless of ideology. “The right wins 60% in this decade, the oppositions win 75%,” he said. “That means the favorite is the one who is not in power.”
That framing matters, Malamud explained, because several recent victories — including those in Colombia and Peru — were decided by narrow margins. Describing the moment as a simple rightward tide, he argued, risks underestimating how closely divided public opinion actually is and how intense political polarization has become. Latin America, in his view, is moving both to the right and against incumbents simultaneously.
The new wave of right-wing leaders is far from a unified bloc. Milei represents an economic and libertarian rebellion in Argentina. El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele has built his government around a security-first approach. Kast’s Chile leans more conservative and institutional. De La Espriella’s Colombia blends law-and-order politics, deregulation, and open admiration for President Donald Trump. Fujimori carries a family political brand tied to security, market economics, authoritarian history, and Peru’s long institutional crisis. Malamud said what these leaders share is a common language of rejection — broadly opposing what they label communism, globalism, socialism, and feminism — more than any shared governing agenda.
Christian Pino, a Chilean journalist with a master’s degree in international relations, security, and defense from Chile’s National Academy of Political and Strategic Studies, ANEPE, views the movement through the lens of Chile’s history of political pendulum swings. Chile, he noted, has spent two decades alternating between left and right: Michelle Bachelet, Sebastián Piñera, Bachelet again, Piñera again, Gabriel Boric, and now Kast. Similar back-and-forth patterns have played out in Argentina — moving between Kirchnerism, Mauricio Macri, and Milei — and in Brazil, which shifted from Jair Bolsonaro to Lula.
But Pino said the pendulum is now “being dyed with more conservative ideas,” primarily because voters are demanding order. In Chile and elsewhere, he argued, irregular immigration, organized crime, and new forms of violence have reshaped political debate. “Mainly, I understand it, because of the demand for order that irregular immigration has brought in several countries,” he said, drawing comparisons to the appeal of the punitive public security model championed by El Salvador’s President Bukele.
Security stands out as the clearest common thread running through many of the region’s new right-wing campaigns, even where economic platforms differ. Malamud said Kast, Fujimori, De La Espriella, and Bukele are all responding to public safety as a top voter concern. Milei is an exception, he noted, because Argentina’s crisis was primarily economic. Bolsonaro’s original rise, Malamud added, was driven more by opposition to Brazil’s Workers’ Party and anger over corruption than by crime — even though insecurity has long been a serious issue in Brazil.
Prof. Arie Kacowicz, professor of international relations and the Chaim Weizmann Chair in International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, also urged caution against drawing simple conclusions. “It is not one explanation,” he told The Media Line. Some observers link the shift to what they call the “effect” of President Donald Trump’s return to power — as though Latin American countries were rushing to align with Washington. Kacowicz acknowledged that may be part of the backdrop but said he does not view it as the central driver. The deeper issue, he argued, is whether citizens believe governments “deliver or do not deliver.”
For Kacowicz, Latin America’s capacity to punish incumbents is one of the region’s most powerful political forces. When voters conclude the economy is stagnant, corruption remains entrenched, or crime is unchecked, governments get replaced. That dynamic, he said, helps explain the elections in Colombia, Peru, and Chile without reducing them to a single ideological narrative. He described the current moment as a “grey tide” — a conservative counterpart to the earlier “pink tide” of left-wing governments — but emphasized that voters typically prioritize their daily lives. The average Latin American voter, he said, is less focused on geopolitical issues like Iran, Hezbollah, Israel, or the Middle East than on whether he can walk down the street without being robbed.
Immigration — particularly from Venezuela — has intensified that domestic debate. Malamud said Venezuelan immigration has had its greatest political impact in the Andean countries and in Chile, where it has become a central political rather than merely social issue. In Argentina and Uruguay, he noted, many Venezuelan migrants arrived as professionals and did not provoke the same political reaction. In Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Chile, by contrast, Venezuelan immigration became closely linked to debates over public safety, state capacity, and national identity.
Pino described the Venezuelan crisis as a regional shock that disrupted Chile’s long-held sense of geographic isolation. Chile, he said, had traditionally viewed itself as protected by the northern desert, the Andes to the east, Antarctica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. The arrival of new criminal networks and high-profile violent crimes shattered that self-image. Kast’s promise of “order and justice,” Pino said, created high expectations that will be difficult to meet quickly. He added that Brazil could face a similar political dynamic if crime and public frustration come to dominate that country’s campaign.
Beyond domestic politics, the shift carries geopolitical implications. The new right-wing governments tend to speak more comfortably with Washington, more warmly toward Israel, and more skeptically about China, Russia, and Iran. But the gap between campaign rhetoric and actual state policy remains large. The Trump administration has positioned Latin America within a broader competition over influence, infrastructure, communications, and strategic alignment. Yet even governments sympathetic to the US president cannot easily break from Beijing, which has become central to trade, investment, and infrastructure across much of South America.
Malamud said Washington’s concern about China extends beyond Trump and reflects a broader anti-Chinese consensus within the US political establishment. That consensus, he said, has produced red lines for allies — especially regarding communications technology such as Huawei’s 5G and 6G networks — and in sensitive infrastructure like deep-water ports or space observation facilities with potential military applications. Sometimes Washington manages to shape or block projects before they move forward; sometimes it arrives too late.
He also rejected the idea that China, Russia, and Iran function as a coordinated bloc in Latin America. Washington may group them together, he said, but in practice their cooperation is limited. China pursues commercial interests. Russia pursues its own agenda. Iran seeks political influence, but neither Russia nor China intervened directly when Iran came under attack. Right-wing Latin American leaders may be inclined to accept Washington’s framing, but trade creates firm limits. Both Bolsonaro and Milei talked about reducing business with China, Malamud said, yet neither could break from Beijing because the commercial relationship was too important.
Brazil illustrates that constraint clearly. During Bolsonaro’s presidency, Malamud said, the government’s public rhetoric leaned strongly toward the West, but the military establishment quietly maintained ties with China. Former Vice President Hamilton Mourão, himself a military figure, helped preserve that relationship when Bolsonaro neglected it. For Malamud, the example demonstrates why ideology does not automatically override trade relationships, institutions, or geography.
Chile faces a similar tension. Pino said China, Russia, and Iran have all expanded their presence in Latin America, with China especially visible in Argentina and Chile. He cited the debate over a Chile-China communications cable as an example of the pressures facing Santiago. Chile, he said, is “caught in the middle” — a country of 20 million people navigating a relationship with a power the size of China. In his view, Kast’s government is working to repair what he described as a damaged foreign policy under Boric, particularly regarding Israel and in areas connected to defense and commerce.
Israel is where the ideological shift becomes most visible, even if it rarely drives voter decisions. Under Milei, Argentina has developed an unusually close relationship with Jerusalem. Chile, after years of diplomatic friction under Boric, is moving toward rebuilding those ties. Colombia, after Petro severed relations with Israel, is expected to restore them under De La Espriella. Brazil remains the larger unresolved question: relations under Lula have been deeply strained but not formally broken.
Kacowicz said Israel tends to view Latin American elections through a narrow lens — whether a given candidate is pro-Israel or anti-Israel. Colombia is the clearest case, because Petro broke off relations and a new government is expected to reopen diplomatic channels. Kacowicz noted that Colombia has historically been a close Israeli partner in security matters and also sells coal to Israel. Brazil, he said, is more strategically significant and more complicated. Lula, he said, is not anti-Semitic, but made “very, very extreme” statements about Israel’s actions in Gaza, including comparisons to the Nazis.
Still, Kacowicz cautioned that pro-Israel rhetoric does not translate equally across the region. Argentina has gone further than most under Milei, moving its embassy to Jerusalem and deepening ties with Israel. Brazil remains more complicated because of its relationships with Arab nations, China, and Iran, and because its diplomatic tradition has generally resisted abrupt breaks. Those constraints apply even to governments that are friendlier toward Israel. “It is complicated,” he said. Even so, he added, Israel stands to benefit from the rightward shift if diplomatic relations improve in Chile, Colombia, and — depending on Brazil’s election — in Brasília as well.
Malamud was more direct in describing Israel as an ideological marker. In today’s Latin America, he said, left-wing governments tend to be suspicious of Israel’s government while right-wing governments tend to support it. But he stressed that this matters far more to political elites than to ordinary voters. Leaders can take strong positions on Israel because the electoral cost is typically low. Latin American voters, he said, mostly cast their ballots based on security, the economy, and immigration — with Israel ranking much lower on the public agenda.
In Chile, Pino said the issue is especially sensitive because of the country’s large Palestinian community and much smaller Jewish community. Publicly supporting Israel, he said, carries social and political costs. But he also argued that the Middle East remains distant for most Chileans, beyond activists and communities directly engaged with the issue. Chile lost citizens in the October 7, 2023 attack, but Pino said the country never fully told their stories or made the attack part of a national conversation. For most voters, crime, wages, and immigration remain far more immediate concerns.
That is why Brazil now stands at the center of what comes next. If the right wins in October, the ideological map of South America will look dramatically different. If Lula survives, the region stays divided, and the notion of a consolidated conservative wave becomes much harder to sustain.
Kacowicz called Brazil the most important case to watch — for both Latin America and Israel — not only because of its size but because its runoff election system makes coalition-building decisive.
Malamud argued that even a right-wing victory in Brazil would not automatically produce a coherent conservative bloc across the region. Ideological affinity, he said, has rarely generated durable regional institutions in Latin America. The left-wing cycle of the early 2000s brought leaders like Lula, Néstor Kirchner, and Hugo Chávez to power simultaneously, yet left few lasting structures. “There is no pipeline that goes from Caracas to Buenos Aires,” he said. A new right-wing wave could generate enthusiasm and high-profile summits, but economic integration would remain limited because the region’s main commercial partners lie outside Latin America. Security cooperation would also face obstacles because right-wing leaders tend to be strongly protective of national sovereignty.
That leaves Latin America in a paradox. The region is moving right, but it is not necessarily building a conservative international order. Its leaders may speak more favorably about President Trump, more warmly about Israel, and more skeptically about China, Russia, and Iran. But they govern divided societies, unstable legislatures, crime-plagued borders, and economies tied to Chinese demand, US pressure, and local hardship. Their voters want immediate order — not geopolitical doctrine.
For now, the balance has shifted enough to be significant. Argentina has moved openly toward Washington and Jerusalem. Chile is repairing its relationship with Israel and drawing closer to regional conservatives. Colombia is preparing to reverse Petro’s break with Israel. Peru is returning Fujimorismo to the presidency. Ecuador, Panama, and others have added to the broader rightward trend. But Mexico remains under Morena, Brazil remains under Lula, Uruguay has returned to the center-left, and the new conservative governments still have to prove they can actually govern after winning on public anger.
For Israel, the change is already tangible. A region that recently included several governments openly hostile to Jerusalem now offers the possibility of restored diplomatic ties, renewed security cooperation, and a more receptive political climate in Santiago, Buenos Aires, Bogotá, and — depending on Brazil — Brasília. For Washington, the same movement creates an opening to rebuild influence in a hemisphere where China has become too economically embedded to ignore.
But the rightward turn will not erase the other powers already deeply rooted in Latin America. China will remain a buyer, lender, and infrastructure partner. Russia and Iran will continue seeking political, media, and diplomatic space. Even governments that feel ideologically aligned with Trump or Israel will face the constraint Malamud described: campaign language can move faster than trade relationships, institutions, or geography. The new political map should be read as an opening — not a reversal of the regional order.
