A political backlash is sweeping Latin America as rising crime and immigration anxieties fuel support for conservative populists deploying strong-arm tactics, threatening hard-won democratic protections and human rights across the region. The shift marks a dramatic reversal from the start of this decade, when progressives swept to power in Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Peru on public outrage over entrenched inequities exacerbated by the pandemic.
Although homicide rates have broadly declined across Latin America compared with a decade ago, spikes in some countries and a regionwide rise in other crimes, particularly extortion, have created the conditions for conservative populists to score votes by promising tougher security measures. Stump speeches casting migrants as criminals and pitching heavy-handed security strategies popularized by El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, have won conservative candidates U.S. President Donald Trump's backing and fired up disaffected electorates despite concerns that such tactics could encourage human rights abuses or threaten democracy.
Human Rights Advocates Sound Alarm
Enrique Roig, vice president of the nonprofit Human Rights First and a former State Department official, warned of a coordinated regional movement. "You have an emergent right wing that is very much in collaboration across the region and with the U.S. through the MAGA movement, which has also used crime as a rallying cry for political mobilization," he said. "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 organization, said only the right has offered short-term security solutions that will make voters "feel safer in six months" even if they have to "sacrifice democracy and human rights." He said, "It's absolutely what you're supposed to be doing, but people's patience runs out. So, there come the Bukeles of the world saying, 'You want to feel better? We got this.'" Eduardo Moncada, director of the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University, explained the dangerous calculus: "The thinking is often, 'democracy hasn't been able to keep me and my family safe, so maybe democracy is part of the problem.'"
Electoral Victories Built on Fear
In Colombia, where swaths of the countryside have fallen into renewed conflict, pro-Trump businessman Abelardo de la Espriella has topped polls ahead of Sunday's runoff election as he takes his cues from Bukele. In Peru, where extortion has increased fivefold in the past five years, Keiko Fujimori rocketed to a June 7 presidential runoff on a law-and-order platform, vowing to deploy the military in prisons and along borders as she leans on the authoritarian legacy of her disgraced late father, former President Alberto Fujimori. Campaigning under the slogan "Peru with Order," Keiko Fujimori won the largest vote share in April's first round of voting. Results of the June 7 runoff still showed her in a technical tie with the political heir of the imprisoned Castillo, nationalist Roberto Sánchez.
Even progressives such as Jeannette Jara in Chile and 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 to crack down on gang violence this year and welcomed the Trump administration's help targeting drug traffickers.
Costa Ricans, rattled by record levels of drug-related killings, elected conservative populist Laura Fernández in February for her tough-on-crime platform. Honduran businessman Nasry Asfura swept December's election after Trump endorsed him as a partner in the fight against "narco-communists." In Chile, fears over rising crime and its frequent association in media with the country's growing population of Venezuelan immigrants played into José Antonio Kast's hands, returning him to power. Kast, who drew inspiration from Bukele and toured his mega-prisons in El Salvador while campaigning, handily beat his Communist opponent in December with pledges to build a massive border wall, toughen prison conditions for gang members and deport hundreds of thousands of migrants without legal status. For his promises of safety, voters shrugged off Kast's opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage rights and his defense of Augusto Pinochet's bloody dictatorship.
The Reality Behind the Rhetoric
As Venezuelan crime syndicates like the Tren de Aragua gang seized on their country's mass migration wave to infiltrate human trafficking networks following the pandemic, Chile, long one of Latin America's safest countries, witnessed an unprecedented explosion of carjackings, kidnappings and shoot-outs. Chile's homicide rate rose by 30%, to a peak of 6.7 per 100,000 people from 2021 to 2022, according to the Interior Ministry. It has since dropped but has stayed above pre-2021 levels. Other types of violent crime are still rising, including kidnappings, which have increased by nearly 180% over the past four years.
Nearly three months into Kast's tenure, pollsters said a skeptical public could not tell the difference between his security crackdown and that of his left-wing predecessor. His government had organized only two deportation flights after promising to immediately round up and expel Chile's more than 300,000 immigrants without legal status. A different, more sheepish tone had crept into his speeches. Last month, he came under fire for calling the mass deportation promise "a metaphor." Even as he pitched new security measures in a June 1 address, including banning those convicted of attacking police from receiving social benefits, he tried to whittle down his supporters' outsize expectations. "Governing, as many of you know, means taking responsibility for reality, especially when it's difficult," he said. "I'm proceeding step by step because this isn't something that happens overnight."
Crime Statistics Tell Complex Story
Latin America and the Caribbean last year saw their combined average homicide rate drop by more than 5% compared to 2024, with the median rate reaching about 17.6 per 100,000 people, according to InSight Crime, a think tank focused on organized crime in the Americas. But there were a few key exceptions. Drug-fueled killings increased in Peru and Colombia, the world's top cocaine producers, as well as in neighboring Ecuador, whose major ports traffickers see as a gateway to European markets. Last year, authorities tallied 2,400 homicides in Peru and 14,780 in Colombia, which were the most in each country since at least 2020. Killings rose 31% in Ecuador year-on-year, to 9,216.
Ecuadorian authorities also recorded more than 16,100 cases of extortion last year, down from 23,000 in 2024, though experts say it is an underreported crime. Gangs are blamed for much of the violence that began soaring in Ecuador during the COVID-19 pandemic, as cartels from Mexico, Colombia and the Balkans expanded their operations and hired locals, setting off a deadly fight over drug-trafficking routes. Their territorial disputes include prisons, where hundreds of inmates have been killed since 2021.
Why This Matters:
The rightward shift across Latin America represents a critical test for democratic institutions and human rights protections built over decades of struggle against authoritarian rule. As human rights advocates warn, the appeal to short-term security solutions risks sacrificing fundamental protections without addressing the structural inequalities and lack of economic opportunity that fuel gang recruitment. The willingness of voters to overlook candidates' opposition to reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ equality, and defense of past dictatorships reveals how deeply public safety anxieties can erode commitment to democratic values. Moreover, the gap between campaign promises and governing reality—exemplified by Kast's admission that mass deportations were "a metaphor"—suggests these populist approaches may fail to deliver sustainable security improvements while normalizing authoritarian methods. The regional coordination between right-wing movements and alignment with U.S. political forces raises questions about whether Latin American democracies can develop security solutions that protect both public safety and civil liberties, or whether fear will continue driving support for measures that threaten the region's democratic progress.