BOGOTA, Colombia — Across some of Latin America’s most powerful economies, right-wing populist politicians are gaining momentum, offering iron-fisted solutions to crime and illegal immigration as a direct counter to the left-leaning movements that dominated the region just a few years ago.
While murder rates across Latin America have generally fallen compared to ten years ago, surges in specific countries — combined with a broader regional uptick in other types of crime — have created fertile ground for conservative politicians. Many are pointing fingers at migrants and borrowing the tough tactics made famous by El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele.
Voters who feel let down by their governments are rallying behind these approaches, even though critics caution that such strategies could open the door to human rights violations and democratic backsliding.
Latin America and the Caribbean saw their combined average homicide rate fall by more than 5% last year compared to 2024, with the median rate landing at roughly 17.6 killings per 100,000 people, according to InSight Crime, a think tank that tracks organized crime across the Americas.
However, there are notable exceptions to that downward trend. Drug-related killings have climbed in Peru and Colombia — the world’s two leading cocaine-producing nations — as well as in neighboring Ecuador, whose major ports have become attractive transit points for traffickers moving drugs to European markets.
Last year, authorities recorded 2,400 homicides in Peru and 14,780 in Colombia, the highest figures in each country since at least 2020. Ecuador saw an even more alarming jump, with killings rising 31% in a single year to reach 9,216.
Adam Isacson, director for defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, noted that while populist movements across the political spectrum have found success, only the right has put forward short-term security plans capable of making citizens feel safer within months — even if those plans come at the cost of “democracy and human rights.”
Left-leaning proposals, such as community-based violence prevention, improved police training, and reforms to the justice and prison systems, tend to take longer to produce visible results, Isacson explained.
“It’s absolutely what you’re supposed to be doing, but people’s patience runs out,” Isacson said of those longer-term strategies. “So, there come the Bukeles of the world saying, ‘You want to feel better? We got this.’”
In Colombia, where large portions of the countryside have been pulled back into armed conflict, pro-Trump businessman Abelardo de la Espriella has led polls ahead of Sunday’s runoff election while closely following Bukele’s playbook.
In Peru, where extortion has skyrocketed fivefold over the past five years, Keiko Fujimori surged into a June 7 presidential runoff on a law-and-order message. She has pledged to send the military into prisons and deploy forces along the country’s borders, drawing on the authoritarian reputation of her late father, disgraced former President Alberto Fujimori.
