It may not be a return of the “Pink Tide” of leftist governments that swept into power across South America in the early 2000s—and were largely swept out again amid a conservative backlash in the mid-2010s. But the region’s left has been showing signs of revival.In Argentina’s October 2019 presidential election, the moderate-left Peronist candidate, Alberto Fernandez, ousted the market-friendly incumbent, Mauricio Macri, whose austerity measures and heavy borrowing triggered an economic crisis that cost him the presidency. Also in 2019, violent protests erupted in Colombia in September against mounting police brutality under law-and-order President Ivan Duque. And both Ecuador and Chile saw massive demonstrations that forced Ecuador’s government to backtrack on austerity measures and challenged Chile’s longstanding neoliberal economic model. More recently, in October 2020, Bolivia returned the Movement Toward Socialism to power in the first presidential election since Evo Morales was ousted.
The conservative wave that followed the Pink Tide is far from ebbing, though. The 2018 election of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil was a particular blow to the region’s progressives, and he has justified their fears. His administration has curbed the fight against corruption and downplayed the severity of the coronavirus pandemic, even as he has continued to denigrate the country’s Indigenous communities. And in Uruguay, conservatives took control of the government last December from the leftist Broad Front coalition that had been in power for a decade and a half.
With most of the continent turning away from the extremes and toward more pragmatic approaches to the persistent challenges of poverty, inequality and economic development, Venezuela’s regime remains as the last holdout of South America’s Pink Tide. But the Bolivarian revolution that began under former President Hugo Chavez has transformed into an economic and humanitarian disaster under his successor, Nicolas Maduro. Maduro managed to eke out reelection in 2018 amid complaints of voting irregularities. Much of the region, with Washington’s backing, coalesced around an effort to push him from office by supporting opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s legitimate president. But the attempt to dislodge Maduro flagged, and the opposition’s decision to boycott December’s elections due to fears they would be as rigged as Maduro’s 2018 reelection cost it control of the legislative body that had been the legal foundation of Guaido’s claim to legitimacy as interim president. Guaido is now struggling to keep his movement from fading into irrelevance.
Major advances in the region are also in danger. Colombia’s fragile peace process faltered after Duque’s hostility to the deal resulted in half-hearted implementation of its measures. Meanwhile, the illicit drug trade is booming, as is organized crime, even as corruption continues to flourish. Now the coronavirus pandemic has added another immense challenge to South America’s public health systems and economies, with implications for leaders who failed to take the threat seriously. It has already claimed one victim: Suriname’s longtime strongman President Desi Bouterse was voted out of office in May, in part over dissatisfaction with his response to COVID-19.
Prior to the pandemic, Russia and China sought to deepen trade ties with countries across the region. America, threatened by Moscow and Beijing’s newfound interest, has accused them of propping up corrupt governments and is taking steps to shore up its own partnerships in South America. How prominent a role the region will play in President-elect Joe Biden’s Latin America policy remains to be seen.
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