Crime and economic woes push South American voters to the right

The reasons why South Americans are electing right-wing candidates this year differ in each country: Empty fuel tanks and scarce dollars in Bolivia, chronic economic crises in Argentina, fears over runaway migration and violent crime in Chile.

But they’re all driving the region in the same political direction.

On Sunday, Chileans sent arch-conservative José Antonio Kast to a presidential run-off next month, likely making him the latest South American leader to ride a crest of disillusion with leftist politicians who have failed to make people feel safe or economically secure. The emerging right-wing cadre is promising to revive growth, lock up gangs and get on the good side of Donald Trump. MAGA gear is even popping up at some of their rallies. 

In Argentina’s midterm elections last month, voters overwhelmingly backed allies of libertarian President Javier Milei and his economic reforms. Bolivians ended two decades of socialist rule in October by electing Rodrigo Paz, a pragmatist who has moved quickly to mend ties with Washington and multilateral institutions. 

Now Kast is tapping into outrage over Chile’s porous borders and an economic system seen as favoring the country’s elites.

“They want the economic model to work for them,” said Patricio Navia, a political scientist at New York University. “And I think that’s the message that we’re getting election after election in Latin America.”

An anti-incumbent wave partly explains the rightward shift, but as developments in Ecuador recently showed, voter sentiment can swing back the other way. Voters on Sunday tossed out recently reelected President Daniel Noboa’s referendum to allow for US military bases on Ecuadorean soil. The outcome was widely interpreted as a rebuke of his attempt to consolidate power and hike fuel prices.

The realignment is unfolding as the US reasserts sway across Latin America, from the bombing of alleged drug boats off Venezuela and Colombia, both led by leftists, to a US$20-billion US Treasury lifeline for Argentina, whose leader is a regular in Trump’s orbit. 

With more elections next year in Colombia, Peru and Brazil, presidential hopefuls are taking note. Conservative candidates such as former Lima mayor Rafael López Aliaga, alias ‘Porky,’ are polishing platforms that are anti-crime, anti-statist and pro-US – hoping for a bear hug and trade deals from Trump.

The White House’s full-throated embrace of Milei sent a signal to neighboring countries that a Trump alliance carries economic benefits. The US rescue package helped the Argentine leader score a political comeback in last month’s congressional elections after his party was trounced in a key provincial race in September. His austerity drive has caused widespread pain, but Argentines were loath to hand power back to the long-ruling Peronists, whose policies are blamed as the root cause of the country's current crisis. 

“Part of the problem is that the left in Argentina is just so unable to come up with a convincing alternative economically,” said Nicolás Saldías, a senior analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

The promise of change drove Bolivians to vote for the pro-business Paz in this year’s elections, rejecting the socialist movement that has dominated politics since former president Evo Morales took office in 2006.

And while Kast still has to square off against Communist Jeannette Jara in the December 14 runoff, Chile’s rightward lurch seems inevitable. Nearly 70 percent of voters backed right-leaning candidates in Sunday’s vote, underscoring the hard turn underway in a once fast-growing nation that elected leftist President Gabriel Boric just four years ago.

“Tonight, Chile woke up,” Kast told supporters Sunday night. After “years of violence, ideology and mediocrity, today millions of Chileans have decided to embrace the project proposed by the opposition.” Two days later, Kast made sure to publicise his calls with Milei and another like-minded leader, Paraguay’s Santiago Peña.

The former congressman and strict Catholic is proposing a US$6-billion cut in public spending over 18 months and mass deportations of migrants. His agenda would be tested by a divided legislature.

“Outsiders and disrupters are mostly winning but when they get to office, they don’t have the majorities to pass legislation,” said Juan Ignacio Carranza, a Latin America analyst at Aurora Macro Strategies in New York.

The result also shows that the region’s voters are still likely to reward results over ideology, said NYU’s Navia.

“Latin Americans, particularly in this era of globalisation, can easily see which countries are doing better and which countries have not,” he said. “We’re going to see a more sort of pragmatic vote in elections.”

It’s a marked shift in a region where leaders such as Venezuela’s late socialist icon Hugo Chávez once whipped up voters by railing against US imperialism. He had vowed to use oil to redistribute wealth, but instead the revenues were mismanaged, corruption spiraled, and poverty soared as commodity prices sank. 

These days Nicolás Maduro, Chávez’s autocratic successor, is a pariah while US warships idle off Venezuela’s coast.

A few weeks before Chile’s election, Constanza González, a mother of three, said she would vote for Kast, citing daily TV reports of violent crime. “These are things we didn’t used to see, totally new and terrible things,” she said. “There has to be someone who comes in and brings order.”