South America’s New Wave of Leftist Leaders Is Struggling
It’s the best of times and the worst of times for South America’s left. Leftist candidates have been sweeping to power, winning election after election with promises of tackling the region’s chronic—and recently aggravated—poverty and inequality. The bad news is that, once in office, the new presidents have struggled badly. The phenomenon confirms the well-known maxim that it’s much easier to criticize than to govern.
In this case, both the ease of criticism and the challenge of governance have been magnified by the global crises that have afflicted the world in recent years and buffeted the region with enough force to recast its political dynamics. It’s been an energizing time to be in the opposition—and a brutal one to run a government.
If there’s any consolation for the left, it’s that some recently elected right-wing leaders have also struggled.
South America was one of the hardest-hit regions during the worst of the coronavirus pandemic. And then, as happened to much of the world, before it could recover it was slammed again by a tsunami of post-pandemic inflation, exacerbated by Russia’s war in Ukraine. Coming as it did on top of the region’s baseline of long-term economic woes, the crisis has left countries across South America low on resources and filled with unhappy voters. The result has been a wave of successful campaigns by anti-establishment politicians promising to bring dramatic change at a time when the need for that change was plain to see.
But delivering on those promises has been, shall we say, complicated.
Nowhere has the promise unraveled more dramatically than in Peru, where President Pedro Castillo’s 14 months in office have proven almost unfathomably chaotic.
To be sure, Peru’s politics were already shambolic before the former rural schoolteacher from a far-left party won a narrow victory against his far-right opponent, perennial presidential candidate—and daughter of the country’s former dictator—Keiko Fujimori. By the time Castillo won an election in which voters were forced to choose the candidate they disliked less, the country had gone through five presidents in five years.
The new wave of South American leftist leaders face a mountain of troubles without the benefits of a surging global economy to help propel their agendas.
But the mayhem under Castillo has been of a different order. Every day brings another sensationalist headline, none of them reassuring. Castillo has tried to pin his troubles on the opposition and those seeking to undercut his presidency, but many of the problems, as I have noted in previous columns, are of his own making.
By now, he has been expelled from his own party, Free Peru, and faces charges not only of corruption but of ties to organized crime.
Just last week, his recently named foreign minister resigned after one month on the job, angry after Castillo undercut him. The public clashes with a key member of his team were of a piece with his relations with the rest of his Cabinet, which has undergone more than 50 personnel changes in a year.
Castillo has endured—and survived—two impeachment attempts and is the target of an unprecedented six separate criminal investigations, amid accusations that his administration is rife with corruption, including a network of graft and influence-peddling run from his office.
Castillo vehemently denies all the accusations as “manufactured tales.” But dark clouds hang over his administration due to the multiple criminal investigations targeting his team and his family. Early in his term, a police raid found $20,000 in cash stashed in the bathroom of his then-chief of staff’s office in the presidential palace. Last month, police raided the palace to execute an arrest warrant for Castillo’s daughter-in-law—raised by Castillo and his wife as a daughter—who has been accused of corruption. The next day they raided the president’s private home in the northern highlands of Cajamarca.
Not surprisingly, Castillo’s approval ratings are dismal, and getting worse all the time. And his agenda of social and economic change looks hopelessly stalled.
In neighboring Chile, the troubles for the recently elected leftist President Gabriel Boric have been less theatrical but more consequential.
Since taking office in March, Boric has run a more professional operation, with a serious, methodical effort to transform Chile. Even so, voters seemed to sour on him early. Earlier this month, the 36-year-old former student protest leader saw the cornerstone of his vision for a new Chile starkly repudiated by voters, who on Sept. 4 rejected the proposed draft of a new constitution that Boric had urged them to accept.
The referendum lost, as predicted, but by a much larger margin than expected. What was striking about the outcome is that the scant 38 percent of Chileans who voted in favor of the draft constitution is almost exactly the same percentage that approves of Boric. Rejection of the referendum in large measure reflected attitudes toward the president.
Chastened, Boric has initiated discussions with the opposition in order to restart the lengthy constitution-writing process.
Eventually, Chileans will approve a new document. Close to 80 percent have already said they want to discard the current one, written during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. But having failed to push through what would have been the world’s most progressive constitution, Boric will now preside over the enactment of what is sure to be a much more centrist replacement. The failure of the referendum has fortified the opposition, a strategic defeat for the left with long-term consequences.
Across the border in Argentina, the left-leaning administration of President Alberto Fernandez and Vice President Cristina Fernandez—no relation—is also in turmoil. The vice president’s worsening legal troubles only add drama to the upheaval that has gripped the country as inflation climbs toward triple-digits, creating more poverty and more discontent.
In Colombia, the country’s first leftist president in its modern history, Gustavo Petro, took office a month ago. He comes with much more executive and legislative experience than Castillo and Boric, and most Colombians are so far giving him the benefit of the doubt. His out-of-the-gate approval stands at 56 percent. But Petro owes his election in large part to voters from Colombia’s marginalized communities, who will be expecting him to follow through on his ambitious campaign pledges to address the country’s long-standing—and intractable—socio-economic inequalities.
Then there’s Brazil, where polls show the veteran former President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva well ahead of President Jair Bolsonaro in next month’s elections, though Bolsonaro, following the Trump playbook, may reject the results if he loses, with potentially ominous consequences.
Lula was part of the original so-called Pink Tide that brought leftist leaders to power across the region two decades ago. Back then, with commodity export prices surging, the left had the resources to boost living standards. It was a different time.
The new wave of leftists come from a range of backgrounds, with widely different strategies. Above all, they face a mountain of troubles without the benefits of a surging global economy to help propel their agendas. So what often looks like the best of times at the polls can quickly turn into the worst of times once they take office.
Frida Ghitis is a world affairs columnist and a regular contributor to CNN and The Washington Post. Her WPR column appears every Thursday. You can follow her on Twitter at @fridaghitis.