Latin America is turning right, and it’s a vindication for President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
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it → turn → State
In some ways, the Cold War never really ended in the Western Hemisphere: socialism has haunted the nations of Central and South America long after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the same Cuban regime the Soviet Union propped up for decades remains in power to this day.
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Union → end → day
The hard left thought it had cemented control over Venezuela, too, thanks to Hugo Chavez and Nicolàs Maduro — until American forces snatched Maduro right out of his bed back in January and took him to New York to stand trial.
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forces → think → trial
Yet most of our neighbors to the south are not ruled by dictators: Instead, elections in Latin America have swung back and forth between left and right.
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elections → rule → left
Only now they’re all swinging to the right, as the region’s biggest nation dramatically illustrated this weekend.
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nation → swing → right
Flavio Bolsonaro — whose father, former president Jair Bolsonaro, is under house arrest — defeated leftist incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in the first round of the country’s presidential contest on Sunday.
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father → defeat → Sunday
Bolsonaro took 47% of the vote to Lula’s 45%, and with other right-leaning candidates garnering nearly 5%, Bolsonaro’s prospects in the runoff election on Oct. 25 look bright.
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prospects → take → Oct.
Yet that’s only half the story: The right, and the Bolsonaro family itself, also made huge advances in the nation’s legislative elections.
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right → ’ → elections
“The Bolsonaro clan claimed victory in every race they contested,” the Buenos Aires Times noted.
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Times → claim → race
The ex-president’s wife, Michelle, won a federal senate seat, as did his second son, Carlos — Flavio’s younger brother.
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son → win → seat
Meanwhile, third son Jair Renan Bolsonaro was elected as a federal deputy, as was the former president’s brother, Renato.
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brother → elect → deputy
Their party, the Liberal Party, nearly doubled its number of senators, from 15 to 28, and won the largest number of seats in the Chamber of Deputies of any party since the nation’s current constitution came into effect in 1988.
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constitution → double → 1988
Smaller conservative parties also fared well on Sunday — as the Brazilian people sent an unmistakable message that they’re through with the leftism Lula represents.
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Lula → fare → leftism
In this, the Brazilian electorate is moving in synchrony with voters throughout Latin America, who in election after election have tossed out left-wing regimes or reelected conservatives who were already in office.
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who → move → office
It’s as if the whole region has been going through its own version of Trump’s 2024 victory over the past two years.
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region → ’ → years
And as more than one wit on social media has remarked, leftists haven’t won a single national election in Central America or South America since USAID was dismantled.
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USAID → remark → America
Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Honduras and Costa Rica have all moved right, while Javier Milei’s party staved off left-wing challenges and won big in Argentina’s legislative elections last year.
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party → move → elections
No, this isn’t just because American taxpayer dollars are no longer being funneled by progressive non-government organizations into humanitarian efforts that get co-opted by left-wing foreign interests.
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that → funnel → interests
But the ecosystem of international aid — which during the Cold War was seen by Washington as a way to blunt the appeal of communism in the Third World — has for a long time helped rather than hindered the global left.
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which → see → left
Jeane Kirkpatrick, who became Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to the United Nations, argued in the late 1970s that Washington treated foreign friends on the right worse than most enemies on the left, as if the only way to beat communism and socialism was to prove America could appeal to left-wing sensibilities, too.
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America → become → sensibilities
Trump and Rubio have taken the opposite approach: They encourage pro-American, right-leaning governments, especially close to home in the Western hemisphere.
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They → take → hemisphere
This has given Central and South Americans a moral boost to free themselves from left-wing governments — much as the stark contrasts President Reagan drew between freedom and communism helped inspire Eastern Europeans to tear down the Berlin Wall.
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Reagan → give → Wall
The peoples of Eastern Europe knew better than anyone how evil Communism was, but they had reason to wonder whether the West was really willing to stand for an alternative, rather than offering endless moral accommodations and capitulations.
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West → know → accommodations
Until now, the State Department and Washington’s foreign-policy elite have habitually thought our country isn’t good enough and must prove itself equal to the professed — yet entirely fraudulent — ideals of left-wing regimes.
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itself → think → regimes
The Trump administration has a different attitude: it’s proud of America, and in the places around the world where hope and pride matter more than resentment and shame, that new stance gets results.
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stance → have → results
Latin America knows it has a choice — and now that it’s clear, the peoples of South and Central America are choosing “Trumps” of their own.
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peoples → know → own
The Aporia
