The current right-wing cycle in Latin America is showing signs of exhaustion even before achieving lasting hegemony. Gabriel Boric’s victory in Chile in December 2021 may symbolize a change in trend, and the elections in Colombia and Brazil throughout 2022 will be decisive for confirming this scenario.
Right-wing governments have been defeated without having managed to stay in power for even a decade. More precisely, they have only held on for one term. The exceptions were Honduras and Paraguay, two countries in which they had returned through institutional coups. Even in Honduras, they were recently defeated.
Effectively, in the 12 presidential elections held since 2019 in the region, 11 oppositionists were elected. The exception is Nicaragua in 2021, clearly a sham election held just to keep Daniel Ortega in power.
The different cycles of the right
The right-wing cycle should not be understood as an interval between progressive cycles, which will soon disappear without a trace. Elements of this wave will live on for years to come. Nor is it a temporary suspension of a progressive cycle that would not even have ended.
The rise of the rights responded to the exhaustion of that cycle of the 2000s and early 2010s. Finally, it is not a restoration of some earlier stage of the Latin American past. It presents some unique and new elements that differentiate it from previous stages.
To characterize the right-wing cycle that began in the mid-2010s, let us try to escape the application of dual analyzes such as liberal and conservative, democratic and authoritarian, new and old, cosmopolitan and nationalist.
It should be understood as something that has its own elements, that projects a future – not just the restoration of a past, mythical or not. Consequently, something that should not be treated as a “conservative restoration”, or as a resumption of neoliberal policies of the 1990s. To a large extent, this is something different.
This is because: 1) it presents elements of neoconservatism that were not present in the previous right-wing cycle, in some cases even neofascism, and its neoliberalism is more aggressive against the people; 2) it organizes itself differently, contests elections and organizes coups differently, governs in an authoritarian way or with limited democracy; and 3) presents an international alignment different from that of the 1990s.
New ideas
These rights have a long history in Latin America: they are the rule, not the exception, of regional politics. They did not make a blank slate of the ideas that have fed them since the constitution of the region. Liberal, conservative and Catholic lines of thought are still present, informing their proposals and actions.
However, there is a renovation, as these elements present themselves with new clothes. Several of its leaders express themselves as more aggressive, authoritarian figures, associated with values and practices partly inspired by neoconservatism or alternative-right traditionalism (alt-right) from the North, as in the cases of Jair Bolsonaro, Nayib Bukele and Iván Duque, who predominate in this current cycle.
It can also be suggested that the so-called current neoliberalism is a conception that expresses itself beyond those privatizing reforms previously associated with the Washington Consensus. In recent decades it has taken a deep root in Latin American societies. In this sense, it constitutes a hegemonic way of life, which continued to develop during the previous progressive cycle. It will probably express itself in the possible new progressive cycle, limiting it. It is associated with uberization, entrepreneurship, individualism, private and paramilitary militias, drug trafficking, consumerism, neo-Pentecostalism.
New practices
These rights also adopt new practices to dispute power. These resources go through institutional coups (Honduras, Paraguay and Brazil), through lawfare with the intention of preventing the return of progressive leaders through criminalization, through the profusion of fake news and the digitization of electoral campaigns.
If a few traditional right-wing parties still survive (such as the National Party in Uruguay and the Colorado Party in Paraguay), candidates who present themselves independently, or from citizen platforms and rental parties have been more common. It is a right that explicitly distances itself from its traditional institutions. And that in several cases bet more openly in the defense of the dictatorship, in the persecution of opponents and in permanent states of exception.
If in the previous right-wing cycle its representatives sought to present themselves as democrats, this demand seems less now. Many govern in an openly authoritarian way, constantly testing the limits of weakened liberal democracy (the cases of Bolsonaro, Bukele and Duque), or resorting to successive states of exception (Sebastián Piñera).
Unconditional alliance with Washington
Finally, compared to the right-wing cycle of the 1990s, there is an unconditional alignment with the US (particularly during the presidency of Donald Trump), and an abandonment of regional integrationist policies, even of “open regionalism”. Evidently, the preference for international alignment of Latin American rights since 1945 has been with the USA.
However, in the previous cycle, there was a bet on more multicentric policies, especially in the construction of institutions of South American, Ibero-American and Lusophone integration. Even the vaunted “carnal relations” of Menemism with the US gave way to a bet on Mercosur. Now, what we see are abandoned South American, Latin American and South-South institutions, and a notable absence of assertive initiatives in international relations.
This unconditional alliance has shown recent signs of weakening, which can be exemplified by Joe Biden’s US administration’s conflicts with Bukele over his support of bitcoin, and with Bolsonaro over his confused support for Vladimir Putin in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. It will be important to observe in the coming months whether in the end the alliance was more than anything ideological – with the US extreme right.
worn out cycles
It can be suggested that today, in a region that is still mostly formally democratic, and with the highest levels of inequality on the planet, it would be difficult to establish a long hegemony that is explicitly right-wing. It can also be considered that the crisis and reconfiguration of capitalism since 2008, with the end of the “consensus of commodities“, did not favor this new cycle. Neither did the disorganization at various levels promoted by the Covid-19 pandemic in the last two years.
In general, societies are increasingly divided, polarized, atomized – especially in the context of the pandemic. In this context, a possible new pink wave will also face significant difficulties to maintain itself. This could indefinitely extend a situation of short cycles and counter-cycles, which do not succeed in consolidating themselves – into a long regional organic crisis.
