Mapping Latin America's ideological landscape - Q4 2023
An updated map and some comments
A year ago, I published a map about the left vs right ideological narrative around the region. It went viral. This is a good week to update that map, understanding that the basic critique remains: categorizing countries as simply “left” or “right” is an oversimplification that loses a lot of interesting context and nuance. The above attempts to capture the current narrative about the left vs right battles throughout the region to the extent they apply to various countries. Below are a few comments.
The left has the lead in much of the region, but the left is also self-destructing. A basic and more boring left-right map of the region would show most of the country marked as having left-leaning presidents. That’s true. At the same time, the left throughout the region is weakening while they are in power and the anti-incumbency wave continues. This can be seen in Boric’s challenges with the constitution, Petro’s losses in last weekend’s regional elections, and Bolivia’s recent political split. A big question for Brazil and Honduras is whether their leftwing leaders can avoid this fate.
The right isn’t imploding. The one place where the right imploded, Ecuador, has already seen a political transition to… well… a rightwing politician who talked more about social progress and environmental protection than his leftwing opponent. In most places where the Right is in charge, they are managing ok. Paraguay has a new president from the political Right (from a party that has remained in power for decades) and the Dominican Republic will likely see its conservative leader reelected next year. Panama is a weird case right now, but with a pro-business, corrupt politician leading for next year’s election, I’ve categorized it the way I have.
There is a good story in Guatemala. I’ve placed Peru and Guatemala in the same category because both have a corruption pact among their politicians and widespread opposition by the populations of the countries. But the two countries couldn’t be more different in terms of their trajectory for early 2024. Bernardo Arevalo is about to take over the presidency of Guatemala thanks to the people fighting back against the political system. In contrast, while Peru is a tinderbox ready to explode into a new round of protests, there isn’t a clear narrative, movement, or leader that brings the country out of the current situation.
Absurdity rules in Argentina and Venezuela. The two countries are very different (Argentina will have a fair election and Venezuela will not), but it’s fair to say that both experience economic chaos and political weirdness that go well beyond a basic left vs right battle. In both cases, there is a nominally leftwing government that has run the economy into territory that defies traditional economic statistics. While both main political opponents are rightwing, the coalitions supporting those individuals span a wide economic spectrum that is defined less by political ideology and more by opposition to the ruling party and its failures to govern.
El Salvador and Nicaragua face one-person rule. The political systems of both El Salvador and Nicaragua revolve around one man. Bukele is wildly popular; Ortega is an unpopular autocrat. But the path that Bukele is on, running for reelection despite the constitutional ban and eliminating checks on his power, looks in many ways like Nicaragua in the late 2000s. Last year, I said Bukele is the “self-described world’s coolest dictator” and Giammattei wished he was as cool as Bukele. When economic times get rougher and his popularity declines, Bukele will wish to have as much control and repressive capability as Ortega.
I skipped Haiti. There are many ways I could have categorized Haiti. I could have thrown it in with the “Political System vs the People.” I could have included it in a category of “people with guns vs the public” and lumped it in with Venezuela and Nicaragua. I could have made its own category of “no political system to argue about.” I wasn’t sure where to put it, so I just didn’t categorize it here.
I know people will disagree with many of the categorizations above. It’s arbitrary, half-joking, and not scientific. As I wrote last year on Twitter, feel free to make your own map if you can do better. Thanks for reading.