Conservative populists are seizing power across Latin America, leveraging public anxieties over crime and immigration despite a regionwide decline in homicide rates compared with a decade ago. This political shift follows a period, starting 6 years ago, when the region leaned left, fueled by public outrage over inequities exacerbated by the pandemic. Now, rising crime, particularly extortion, creates fertile ground for hard-line security and migration promises.
El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has popularized heavy-handed security strategies. His methods, along with stump speeches casting migrants as criminals, have won backing from U.S. President Donald Trump. These messages energize disaffected voters, even as critics warn of potential human rights abuses and threats to democracy.
The Capitalist Backlash
Enrique Roig, vice president of Human Rights First, notes the collaboration between an emergent right wing across the region and the U.S. MAGA movement, both using crime for political mobilization. Roig stated, “It’s easier to sell locking people up than it is to deal with the reasons why mainly young men join gangs in countries like El Salvador.” Adam Isacson, director for defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, observed that only the right offers short-term security solutions that make voters “feel safer in six months,” even if they must “sacrifice democracy and human rights.”
In Colombia, pro-Trump businessman Abelardo de la Espriella has topped polls ahead of Sunday’s runoff election, mirroring Bukele’s tactics. Peru’s Keiko Fujimori, campaigning on a law-and-order platform, reached a June 7 presidential runoff 3 weeks ago, vowing military deployment in prisons and along borders. Her platform leans on the authoritarian legacy of her late father, former President Alberto Fujimori. Costa Ricans, facing record drug-related killings, elected conservative populist Laura Fernández 5 months ago. Honduran businessman Nasry Asfura swept December’s election 7 months ago, endorsed by Trump as a partner against “narco-communists.”
Chile, 4 years ago, saw voters reject ultra-conservative lawmaker José Antonio Kast for ex-President Gabriel Boric. Last year, fears over rising crime, often linked in media to the country’s growing Venezuelan immigrant population, propelled Kast back to power. Venezuelan crime syndicates like the Tren de Aragua gang infiltrated human trafficking networks after the pandemic, leading to an explosion of carjackings, kidnappings, and shoot-outs in Chile. Chile’s homicide rate rose 30% from 2021 to 2022, peaking at 6.7 per 100,000 people, 4 to 5 years ago. Kidnappings have increased by nearly 180% over the past 4 years. Kast, inspired by Bukele, beat his Communist opponent in December, pledging a massive border wall, tougher prison conditions, and the deportation of hundreds of thousands of migrants without legal status.
The State as Enforcer
Despite an overall decline, Latin America and the Caribbean saw their combined average homicide rate drop by more than 5% 1 year ago, with a median rate of 17.6 per 100,000 people. However, drug-fueled killings increased in Peru and Colombia, the world’s top cocaine producers, and in neighboring Ecuador. Authorities tallied 2,400 homicides in Peru and 14,780 in Colombia 1 year ago. Killings rose 31% in Ecuador 1 year ago, to 9,216. Gangs are blamed for much of the violence in Ecuador, soaring during the COVID-19 pandemic as cartels expanded operations, leading to deadly fights over drug-trafficking routes and hundreds of inmate deaths in prisons since 5 years ago. Ecuadorian authorities recorded over 16,100 cases of extortion 1 year ago.
Kast, who toured Bukele’s mega-prisons while campaigning, promised to immediately round up and expel Chile’s more than 300,000 immigrants without legal status. Nearly three months into his tenure, his government had organized only two deportation flights. Last month, he called the mass deportation promise “a metaphor.” In a June 1 address 1 month ago, Kast proposed banning those convicted of attacking police from receiving social benefits, stating, “Governing, as many of you know, means taking responsibility for reality, especially when it’s difficult,” and adding, “I’m proceeding step by step because this isn’t something that happens overnight.”
Liberal Complicity and Systemic Failure
Experts note that public appetite for tough tactics, historically linked to the region’s 20th-century dictatorships, has grown alongside shrinking confidence in state institutions and ambivalence about democracy. Eduardo Moncada, director of the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University, explained, “The thinking is often, ‘democracy hasn’t been able to keep me and my family safe, so maybe democracy is part of the problem.’” The left faces challenges after presiding over sluggish economies, corruption scandals, and failed social reform promises. Left-wing proposals like community violence prevention programs and judicial reforms take longer to work, and Isacson noted, “people’s patience runs out.”
Even progressives like Jeannette Jara in Chile and Roberto Sánchez in Peru have shifted with the political tide. Uruguay’s president, Yamandú Orsi, called Bukele’s model an example worthy of further study. The center-left Guatemalan government declared a state of emergency this year to crack down on gang violence and welcomed Trump administration help. Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa, who campaigned 3 years ago on locking up gang leaders on barges and building mega-prisons, abandoned the floating prisons proposal after taking office. Beatriz García Nice, policy analyst for the Stimson Center, stated, “Building mega-prisons hasn’t been that easy or that straightforward because the country is in a very bad state financially and because President Daniel Noboa still sees himself as a democrat.” Pollsters found a skeptical public couldn’t distinguish Kast’s security crackdown from his left-wing predecessor’s.