Conrad Black : Amid Changing Political Winds, Latin America Is at a Turning Point

 The vote of the Brazilian Congress to reduce former President Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence is a stinging defeat for three-term president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, who was himself imprisoned for over 18 months. This appears to be part of a general move to the right in Latin America, partly in response to heavy pressures from the Trump administration.

After the end of the Cold War, the United States didn’t much care what happened in Latin America as long as it was not itself threatened. Almost the entirety of Latin America was in the hands of left-wing governments for some time, though apart from the transmission of lethal drugs from China and elsewhere through Colombia, Venezuela, and Mexico into the United States, little occurred that provoked the Americans.

This changed with the virtual takeover of the northern provinces of Mexico by extremely sinister gangs who were instrumental in trafficking millions of illegal immigrants into the United States, including, during the Biden's term. Video link here :  approximately 500,000 people convicted of violent crimes. But the ambitious program of penetration of Latin America by China has aroused the Trump administration at the same time that the widespread failure of the leftist governments that welcomed China into this hemisphere provoked a turn of direction in government to the right in Latin America.

While Lula da Silva was popular when he left office in 2010, his successor, Dilma Rousseff, was impeached for corruption and incompetence at a time when her popularity stood at 7 percent in the polls. She was replaced by her vice president, Michel Temer, who finished Rousseff’s term but with popularity ratings also in single figures. A dramatic move to the creative right in Argentina with the election of Javier Milei in 2023, followed by the resounding defeat last year of the Marxist regime in Chile by the new president José Antonio Kast, wrenched two of South America’s most important countries out of the hands of the left.

The same trend could be observed in Peru, where there have been eight presidents in ten years, three in five days in 2020, and numerous presidential impeachments. Ecuador (2023), Bolivia (2025), El Salvador (2019), and probably soon Colombia seem to be moving in the same direction. 

The change of regime in Venezuela was effected by the extraordinary intervention of elite American forces who seized Marxist President Nicolás Maduro and his wife and transferred them in one day from the presidential palace in Caracas to the detention center in Brooklyn, New York. And Cuba appears ripe to fall as a Marxist state from one day to the next, ending the catastrophic Castro communist experience of 67 years.

The most positive aspect of these seismic shifts in the political life of Latin America is that almost all of them have been the result of constitutional processes and elections. The history of Latin America was replete with military coups and juntas that governed Argentina until 1982, Brazil until 1985, and Chile until 1990. 

It should be emphasized that the South American military normally appeared in tunics so overloaded with medals and ribbons they had difficulty getting them on, yet practically none of them ever exchanged a shot in genuine military activity. Most of their offensives and maneuvers had been conducted in the officers’ clubs.

The progress of democratic political institutions in the last 35 years in most of Latin America has been conspicuous and gratifying, and has generally proved itself capable of absorbing and rejecting within a frequently fragile but adequate constitutional framework profound moves to the political left and right. There has been great progress: Brazil was only 53 percent literate in 1968, and the equivalent number today is 95 percent.

Guerrilla warfare, which was widespread for many decades, has almost stopped, after the efforts of Castro’s disciple Che Guevara in Bolivia, which led to Guevara’s capture and execution in 1967. There was a prolonged civil war in Colombia, La Violencia, which became mixed up in the activities of ferocious drug gangs as well. These disturbances have subsided considerably.

Argentina is an instructive case, as it was one of the most prosperous countries in the world up to World War I, and even at the end of World War II had a standard of living very close to Canada’s. It was largely built by British investment as part of Britain’s pursuit and promotion of Argentinian wheat and beef. After the end of World War I, Britain was economically exhausted and could not devote as much capital to the growth of Argentina as previously. 

With the removal of the steady hand of British influence and capital, political militarism and demagogy prevailed and reached their apogee with Gen. Juan Domingo Peron. Despite Peron being evicted in 1955 and recalled in 1973, and his widow succeeding him on his death in 1974 and her eviction in 1976, Peronism remained popular in Argentina until the last few years. The British victory in the Falkland Islands in 1982 was required to send the generals who deposed Peron’s widow packing.

Argentina finally returned to the front ranks of Latin American politics with the elevation of President Milei two years ago. He has dismantled the regulatory state, savagely cut the bureaucracy, reduced spending, and facilitated investment, and has made dramatic progress.

Mexico, the most populous Latin American country next to Brazil, after 100 years of tumultuous history settled down to straight six-year terms of the single real political party in the country, the Revolutionary Institutional Party, which ruled from 1929 to 2000 and is back again for the most part.

it produced tolerably orderly and not overly oppressive government, and Mexico’s progress was better than most Latin American countries. But with the extreme profusion of violent narco-crime in the northern provinces and the drift to the left under former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico lost ground. There are signs of hope that the current president, Claudia Sheinbaum, although a committed leftist, is susceptible to reason on the most important issues.

Returning to Brazil, a decisive choice between the civilized left and right is coming with the election in October of either Lula da Silva, 80 years old and in his seventh presidential campaign, or Bolsonaro’s son, Flávio. Given Brazil’s population of 215 million, the outcome of this election will be observed with great interest throughout the world.

President Trump imposed increased tariffs on Brazil because he objected to the imprisonment of President Bolsonaro. The U.S. administration would be as delighted at his son’s victory as at the success of Javier Milei in Argentina.

 First published in the Epoch Times

https://www.newenglishreview.org/amid-changing-political-winds-latin-america-is-at-a-turning-point/