How old are the presidents of Latin America?
I let the machines make the maps today. Uruguay will be disappointed.
It’s Presidents’ Day in the United States. Since it's a holiday, I asked the AI to do my job today.
Anthropic’s Claude created two versions of a map of presidential ages, one here (click through, it’s interactive) and the other on Datawrapper. The Claude map also includes how long each president has been in power.
Some notes:
The three oldest presidents in the hemisphere are Lula (80), Ortega (80), and Trump (turns 80 later this year). Interestingly, all three are serving as a second time in office after a stint out of power. Non-consecutive terms in office are rare, so to have three in parallel, all of whom are the same age, is unique. Then there is a gap with no presidents in their 70s. Still, just over half of the presidents on this map are over 60 years old while the average citizen in Latin America is right around 30. There is a generational gap between citizens and political leaders that explains at least some of the discontent with political systems.
This map includes Chilean President Boric and Costa Rican President Chaves. In March, Kast (age 59) will take over in Chile, and in May, Laura Fernandez (age 39) will take over in Costa Rica.
Peru’s president may change later this week. This comment is specific to this Tuesday (Jeri faces an impeachment vote), but is also likely true no matter when you read this post in the future.
It’s fascinating that I was able to create these maps via AI tools today. I’ve been testing these tools for years, and creating this sort of map was not possible to do easily and with accuracy even a few months ago. The technology is improving quickly, and every analyst needs to adapt with it.
More comments on AI and geopolitics coming soon.