Latin America is in the midst of another political swing. After a wave of leftist governments swept through the region, a counter-current is now pulling voters to the right.
But this is not simply a result of shifting political cycles. What is taking place across the region is less a coherent ideological shift and more a deepening of the trenches: a politics of mutual repulsion, in which candidates are reduced to caricatures and voters to opposing camps. Communist versus fascist. The revolution versus the iron fist. The rhetoric is blunt and dramatised, and the space for anything in between is vanishing.
First-round elections reinforce divisions
The Colombian first-round elections, held on 31 May, laid this dynamic bare. Right-wing populist Abelardo de la Espriella pulled off a surprise first place, beating leftist Iván Cepeda of the ruling Pacto Histórico coalition. More than 23m people voted, representing roughly 58% of registered voters – a significant turnout for a country that has long struggled with civic disengagement. More telling, the difference between the two candidates was just 3%, with both candidates concentrating more than 80% of the votes.
Yet the drama that followed the count was as telling as the results themselves. Outgoing President Gustavo Petro moved swiftly to cast doubt on the outcome, claiming that hundreds of thousands of votes had been manipulated.
Peru is heading down the same road. After a first round contested by 35 candidates, conservative Keiko Fujimori advanced with 17% of the vote, while leftist Roberto Sánchez secured 12%, setting up a 7 June runoff. The field was crowded precisely because coherent political movements have fragmented. In their place, personal brands and protest candidacies fill the void. The ballot included a comedian, a political dynasty heiress and a hard-line ex-mayor who has embraced the nickname ‘Porky’ as he likens himself to a cartoon pig.
That the eventual runoff still collapsed into the familiar binary of right against the left speaks to the structural gravity of polarisation. However broad the first-round field, the logic of the second round sorts voters back into two blocs, each convinced the other represents an existential threat.
Trump adds fuel to the fire
External forces have amplified this dynamic rather than tempered it. Donald Trump’s return to the White House has given the region’s right a new ideological centre of gravity. Ahead of Argentina’s October midterm elections, the White House announced a loan of up to $20bn to stabilise Argentina’s currency markets, resulting in a major win for Javier Milei.
When José Antonio Kast won Chile’s presidential election in late 2025, Milei celebrated by posting a map of South America divided into red and blue halves, captioned: ‘The left recedes, freedom advances.’ The imagery was cartoonish, but it captured something real: Trump has lent legitimacy to figures who might otherwise have been dismissed as fringe, and an unbroken arc of right-wing governments now runs from Ecuador down through Argentina.
The problem is that this alignment is more aesthetic than programmatic. The current wave of conservative leaders shows significant internal differences. What unites them is less a coherent governing vision than a shared posture: anti-left and ‘anti-communist’.
This is the central problem. Polarisation of this kind does not just inflame political debate; it ends it. When the choice is framed as a civilisational conflict rather than a policy contest, the incentive to offer credible programmes diminishes. Candidates compete to dramatise the danger posed by their opponent, not to articulate how they would govern. Structural questions – how to raise productivity, how to formalise labour markets, how to minimise inequality – do not generate the same heat as warnings about communism or fascism, so they are left unaddressed.
Cycle of inequality and discontent
Latin America remains one of the most unequal regions on earth. Informality still accounts for most employment across the region, leaving workers outside pension systems, healthcare coverage and labour protections. Productivity growth has been sluggish for years, limiting the capacity of even well-governed economies to translate commodity booms into durable improvements in living standards. Some countries are growing and the macroeconomic numbers can look reasonable. But growth without structural reform tends to be shallow, and its benefits are unevenly distributed, which are precisely the conditions that fuel the resentment on which populism feeds.
The paradox is almost self-sustaining. Inequality breeds political frustration. Frustration breeds populist candidates. Once in office, populist candidates lack the institutional capital, ideological coherence or adequate experience to address inequality. The next election begins with the same frustrations, only more acute. Peru has had nine presidents in less than a decade, a statistic that captures the exhaustion of this cycle better than any analysis.
None of this means democratic instability is inevitable or that reform is impossible. But reform requires political construction: coalitions built across differences, programmes designed to survive electoral cycles and institutions trusted to implement them. A region perpetually choosing between two extremes is not positioned to do that work.
Andrea Correa is Head of Research at OMFIF.
In September, OMFIF is hosting the Americas Transition Finance Summit in Mexico City.
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