Latin america

Chile has joined the right-wing trend sweeping Latin America by electing the ultra-conservative candidate Jose Antonio Kast as its first rightist president since the demise of Pinochet's military dictatorship in 1990. Kast, 59, leader of the Republican party, trounced Jeannette Jara, a communist party member, and the candidate of Chile’s current ruling left-wing coalition, winning almost 58 percent of the vote in Sunday’s poll. Jara, a former Labor minister, conceded victory to Kast, saying “Democracy has spoken loud and clear” and wishing her opponent success “for the good of Chile.

Donald Trump’s second term has been revolutionary in many ways, particularly in his administration’s approach to foreign affairs. From the get-go, the nomination of Marco Rubio as his top diplomat and Chris Landau as Rubio’s deputy signaled a break from orthodoxy. In picking Rubio, previously the most vocal senator on hemispheric affairs, and Landau, Trump’s ambassador to Mexico in his first term, the message was clear: our neighborhood is a top priority.  In his first exclusive magazine interview of his second term, Trump met with The Spectator’s Ben Domenech in the Oval Office, where a large portion of the conversation delved into Latin-American affairs.

Sunday night was a long one in Venezuela. At midnight, the much anticipated yet dubious results came in for the South American country's election. The head of the National Electoral Council, Elvis Amoroso — a close ally of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro who has served as a deputy for his party — said that with 80 percent of ballots counted, Maduro had won with 51 percent of the vote. His rival, Maria Corina Machado’s replacement, Edmundo González, ended with 44 percent. The opposition has a different story. “Venezuela has a new president and his name is Edmundo González Urrutia. We won! And everyone knows it,” Machado said from a press conference following some silence after Maduro’s announced win.

At the opening ceremony of the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles last year, President Joe Biden announced the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity, which the White House described as “a historic new agreement to drive our hemisphere’s economy recovery and growth and deliver for our working people.” The plan has become the administration’s signature Latin America policy. As noted by the White House, the region matters not solely because it’s where the US is situated, but because it also accounts for 32 percent of global GDP. Even more so, the region is rich in resources that are crucial in the development of emerging technologies.

For over a month, Peru has been in a state of near-constant unrest. In December, as the legislature threatened to impeach President Pedro Castillo for, among other things, allegations of corruption, Castillo tried to dissolve the legislature and “govern through decrees.” By all measures, this was an attempted coup, and it resulted in his impeachment (by a vote of 101-6), arrest, and condemnation from left and right. In his place, Vice President Dina Boluarte was sworn in as president, having denounced her former boss’s attack on the country’s democracy. This was a success in a country that has seen six new presidents in the past seven calendar years. The Congress has repeatedly been at odds with the president, and scandals have rocked administration after administration.

As the dust settled on Jair Bolsonaro’s seismic victory in Brazil back in 2018, one might have spared a thought for those dedicated to the cause of international socialism. Having bathed in the glory of the so-called "Pink Tide" and the commodities boom of the early 2000s that allowed socialist governments such as Hugo Chávez's Venezuela to seemingly prosper, any hopes that Latin America would forever unify in the cause of left-wing anti-imperialism seemed well and truly dashed. In many of the continent’s wealthiest countries, right-of-center politicians had swept to power with a view to restoring their nation’s former glory. These included Bolsonaro in Brazil, Sebastian Piñera in Chile, Ivan Duque in Colombia, and Mauricio Macri in Argentina, among others.

Italy is about to have its first female leader and the American left is furious. Giorgia Meloni grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Rome and was raised by a single mother, after her father, a communist, fled to the Canary Islands and was later convicted of drug trafficking in Mallorca. She wrote in her autobiography that her mother planned to have an abortion when she was pregnant with her but changed her mind at the last minute. Meloni worked as a nanny, a waitress, and a bartender before getting into politics, but she’s no AOC. Meloni, 45, is the leader of the right-wing populist Brothers of Italy party, which recently won Italy’s general election with 26 percent of the vote. She’s widely expected to be named Italy’s first female prime minister.