Trump and the Latin American Left

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In mid-November, during a trip to participate in the APEC and G20 leaders’ summits in Latin America, Chinese President Xi Jinping attended the inauguration of a mega port in Chancay, Peru. The huge deep-water infrastructure project, built with $1.3 billion in Chinese investment, is set to be complemented by a bi-oceanic railway that will connect Chancay to Brazil’s Atlantic coast. According to a Chinese government spokesperson, the completion of the mega port solidifies “Peru’s role as a gateway linking shipping between Asia and Latin America.”

Back in 2018, when Donald Trump started a trade war with China during his first term as president, few imagined this degree of expansion of Chinese investments in Latin America, the often-cited “backyard” of the United States.

At that time, the Peruvian government was a loyal ally of Washington—in theory, it still is. In 2017, less than 100 kilometers south of the recently inaugurated mega port, Peru hosted the founding of the Lima Group, a forum created by 12 countries that sought to intervene in Venezuela’s domestic politics. The Group rejected Venezuela’s 2018 presidential elections and pushed for President Nicolás Maduro’s de facto removal from office, as dictated by Trump's officials. During a Latin American tour in early 2018, then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made clear his objective of overthrowing the Venezuelan government and generated support for what later crystallized as the “Guaidó project” in January 2019, when Juan Guaidó declared himself the country’s interim president.

The juxtaposition of the imposing new mega port and the now-defunct Lima Group only serves to underscore how much things have changed in recent years in Latin America, even among the governments closest to the hardliners in Washington. When Trump returns to the White House in a few weeks, he will face a map of the Americas occupied predominantly by progressive forces. Meanwhile, on the commercial front, China is making overwhelming progress in almost all the countries of the region.

Trump's first administration from 2017 to 2021 presented a golden opportunity for the Latin American right, which had been in retreat for more than a decade amid the advance of progressive governments in the region. Right-wing forces had shrewdly created “conservative populisms,” represented by Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Mauricio Macri in Argentina, that served a blow to left-wing forces and won political power in several countries.

But by the end of Trump’s administration, the right-wing governments that made up the Lima Group—expanded from the original 12 member countries to 17—were dissolving. Right-wing forces that had made electoral gains were unable to secure reelection and stabilize their footholds in their respective countries. By the end of 2018, Andrés Manuel López Obrador was in power in Mexico. In 2019, Macri lost his reelection bid in Argentina. In 2020, Luis Arce won in Bolivia after a stint under the coup government of Jeanine Áñez. In 2021, Pedro Castillo, Gabriel Boric, and Xiomara Castro won power in Peru, Chile, and Honduras.

During this same period, from 2019 to 2021, several unusually intense episodes of protests rocked Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Puerto Rico, and Haiti. These uprisings all came as a consequence of the implementation of neoliberal measures designed with the blessings of a Republican-occupied Washington. In 2022 Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeated Bolsonaro, the same year Gustavo Petro won a historic victory against right-wing populism in Colombia. These progressive gains were bolstered by the rise of Bernardo Arévalo in Guatemala in 2023 and Yamandú Orsi in Uruguay in 2024.

Weeks away from the transfer of power in the United States, many are concerned about how progressive heads of state will face Trump and his Republican officialdom and to what extent the region’s leftist governments are prepared to handle another Trump presidency.

Trump Is Back. Will the Right Return With Him?

Rómulo Betancourt, Venezuelan president from 1945 to 1948 and 1959 to 1964, used to say that “when the United States sneezes, Latin America gets bronchitis.” That sentiment may no longer be such a given. Still, Trump’s return is not so much a simple sneeze, but rather something more worrisome that will surely have a strong impact on Latin America.

It is to be expected that the region’s right will once again take advantage of Trump's victory to reposition itself and implement designs to regain political power. However, there is not a unidirectional line between what happens in the north and what happens in the south of the continent. The recent victory of the Frente Amplio in Uruguay is a case in point.

The protectionist policies that Trump has promoted against Mexico and Canada, as well as his xenophobic way of dealing with immigration, make for a bellicose outlook, which is consistent with Trump’s nomination of Senator Marco Rubio for secretary of state. Rubio, an ultra-conservative Cuban American, has emerged as the linchpin of the Republican campaign against leftist governments, especially in Latin America. To be sure, Washington will generously pump up right-wing forces in the region, which are already preparing to return to power and reduce leftist contenders to a minimum.

Protectionism, persecution of migrants (which affects the remittances that millions of families in Latin America rely on to live), highly ideological rhetoric from the nominee for secretary of state, and competition with China to co-opt markets together represent a cocktail that could deliver a hard blow to political stability throughout the continent, including the United States itself, which already saw a kind of uprising (“estallido”) against Trump in 2020.

During Trump's recent election campaign, the issue of Latin America was rather absent, taking a backseat to the criminalization of Venezuelans and Haitians around issues of migration and insecurity. Since being elected, Trump has focused on criticizing Mexico's performance on curtailing migration and the flow of fentanyl, threatening to increase tariffs on Mexican imports. At the end of November, he had his first skirmish with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who replied by warning against a trade war, saying: “One tariff will be followed by another in response.” In other words, as soon as he was elected, rather than broaching possible negotiations, Trump began to fire his batteries against his closest Latin American neighbor, using language very reminiscent of the bellicose tone of his first administration.

Latin America: United or Divided?

Despite having so many progressive governments in office, Latin America does not have the same degree of cohesion as it had in the previous decade, when there were fewer leftist leaders in power but with greater shared political force.

At the beginning of the 2010s, formidable regional integration mechanisms were beginning to solidify, such as the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). These intergovernmental organizations sought to create spaces for political, economic, and cultural articulation and succeeded in unifying governments of the right and left, even as progressive leaders carried the founding baton. The main feature that differentiated CELAC and UNASUR from the existing Organization of American States (OAS) was their exclusion of the United States and Canada, which created the conditions for Latin American and Caribbean states to make autonomous decisions.

Today, both entities are languishing. The cycle of right-wing governments that followed the first wave of leftist presidents left these bodies tremendously impacted, and the recent second progressive cycle has not managed to boost their supranational articulation. The next CELAC summit will be held in Bogotá in 2025.

At the same time, the mechanisms of the right are either defunct, such as the Lima Group, or weakened, such as the OAS. This lack of cohesion one way or another may imply an open door for the kinds of unconscionable actions that Trump (or Rubio) may try to take toward any Latin American country.

Part of the issue is that the leftist governments have not taken a coherent position on certain issues and have even been divided in some cases. Brazil's recent veto of Venezuela and Nicaragua’s petitions to join the BRICS is perhaps the most indicative sign of the depth of the rupture between these forces. However, it is not the only one.

Another example is the differing positions on the removal from office of Peru’s Castillo and the subsequent presidency of Dina Boluarte. Boluarte has been in office since 2022 and refused to call for early elections, keeping herself in power through fierce repression that resulted in dozens of deaths. Various leftist leaders’ rejection of the results of this year’s presidential elections in Venezuela, and the refusal of the Venezuelan state to release the vote tally sheets, has also deepened the rift.

In addition, the enthusiasm generated by the first cycle of leftist governments is no longer the same, for different reasons. The smaller margins of their victories, divisions between internal factions, authoritarian drift, reduced importance of regional integration, and institutional weaknesses are all aspects of a lack of consistency with which to face the complex situations to come.

Trumpism could accentuate these handicaps, although there is also a possibility that, if he intends to clash head-on, ignoring the power accumulated by the left, he could end up pragmatically bringing dissimilar sectors of Latin America together again. Such a scenario could also give commercial advantages to China and other countries.

Currently, leftist political forces do not exhibit the same vigor as they once did, and in a few months or years they will have to navigate electoral processes amid the rise of the radical right. First, they will have to contend with fashioning successful, popular electoral formulations that will be able to defeat a right wing that is increasingly radicalizing its degree of populism. In the meantime, existing political models seem to be exhausted, from Cuba and Venezuela, to Chile and Brazil.

Latin America could be turning to the right again, or at least pushing several leftist governments out of the way. But that might not be the end of the story.

Reinvigorating the Left

Even if the Republicans impose their agenda of promoting right-wing forces, they could end up unintentionally reviving social movements and generating new leftist proposals in the region. Understanding the level of threat, governments may decide to reestablish integration mechanisms. On national stages, new initiatives may emerge, both at the grassroots and electoral levels, propelled as always by the intensification of neoliberal radicalism.

If we recall how Trump's first term ended in the United States—with Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 amid Covid-19 denialism that enabled the deaths of more than a million people, and with the assault on the Capitol in January 2021—and in Latin America with revolts and leftist triumphs throughout the region, then we can see Trumpism as a challenge of which progressive sectors can once again take advantage.

The situation in Argentina under the government of President Javier Milei will be vital. His success or defeat, which will be measured in the 2025 midterm elections, will indicate in which direction part of Latin America is moving vis-à-vis its ally in the White House.

It is possible that every Trump sneeze will turn into pneumonia. But it is also possible that Latin American countries no longer have the same level of dependence on the United States. This new reality is both because of new levels of political autonomy and because of new allies, such as China, which is pulling ahead in trade and whose investment plans are gaining steam and making an impact in Latin American countries ruled by both the left and right alike.

It may be, then, that the new U.S. political model, politically incorrect and “savage” as it may be, will not have such a strong impact on Latin America's designs and that the current governments, regardless of their political orientations, will successfully navigate the geopolitical storm, shielded against any sneezing or more serious illness coming from the North.

Ociel Alí López is a sociologist and winner of the CLACS-SIDA award for young researchers and the Caracas municipal literature award. He is a professor at the Central University of Venezuela and writes about Latin America.

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