The left now rules most of Latin America. Will it be able to live up to its promises?
MEXICO CITY — Over the last four years, leftist candidates have won presidential elections in one Latin American country after the other: Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Chile and Colombia. Now Brazil has cemented the trend. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s narrow victory Sunday means the left will soon control six of the region’s seven largest economies. Driving the pendulum swing are voters ...
MEXICO CITY — Over the last four years, leftist candidates have won presidential elections in one Latin American country after the other: Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Chile and Colombia.
Now Brazil has cemented the trend. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s narrow victory Sunday means the left will soon control six of the region’s seven largest economies.
Driving the pendulum swing are voters hungry for change amid rising inequality and frustration with how governments handled the pandemic and its economic fallout.
Lula, as Brazil’s next president is widely known, will immediately confront the same challenge already dogging the rest of Latin America’s new left: meeting those high expectations.
While some have christened the region’s latest
