In the corridors of Washington and the bustling squares of Bogotá and Buenos Aires, there’s a familiar ghost, sort of haunting Latin American politics. It isn’t only the specter of past dictatorships, but also a modern, almost caricatured, version of American populism that has found really fertile ground in a region that’s tired of economic stagnation, and of institutional decay too.
Monica de Bolle, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), notices the shift with an academic kind of rigor, and also with deep concern. In a recent wide-ranging conversation, she broke down the “Trumpification” of the South American far-right, where leaders like Javier Milei in Argentina and José Antonio Kast in Chile aren’t merely allies of Donald Trump, they are also stylistic clones of this new, deeply anti-democratic far-right movement that seeks to subvert the constitutional order — despite using elections to gain power.
THE MIRROR EFFECT
The recent elections in Colombia, where we saw the rise of a right-wing populist right after the pretty tumultuous time of leftist Gustavo Petro, are basically the newest proof of this kind of trend. For Monica de Bolle, it doesnt really have to mean there is some big change in ideology, more like a deep “disenchantment” with the center itself.
“What amazes me is the emptying of the center” she says, “people are so fed up that they are willing to vote for someone with the worst possible qualities just because they embody the “the new” and a populist discourse that hits the right notes.”
She argues that Latin America has become a "fertile region for populisms" of all stripes. Whether they call themselves left or right, the essence remains the same: a transactional, often coercive approach to power that bypasses established rules.
THE BRAZILIAN EXCEPTION?
Brazil, having already passed through four long years of Jair Bolsonaro — who is currently imprisoned for the crime of attempted coup d'état —, finds itself in a pretty singular place. While its neighbors are now out there trying on their own little “Trump-wannabes”, Brazil already took the medicine, and not in theory but in real life.
“I hope Brazil has actually learned some lesson from the Bolsonaro years,” Monica de Bolle says. “I’m terrified by the amount of people who still want a repeat show. We really don’t need to copy Colombia, Chile, or Argentina. They are getting their first brush with these cartoonish Trumpists; we’ve already had ours.”
It is always important to remember that Bolsonaro administration was marked by government instability, institutional conflicts, and a lack of strategic planning, which hindered the country's economic development and investment climate.
Monica de Bolle credits President Lula with handling the pressures coming from the present Trump administration, with all those tariffs and the diplomatic friction stuff, a little more deftly than Colombia’s Petro who keeps clashing with Washington, over and over.
Also, is important to point that, in Brazil, there’s been this heated back and forth since U.S. President Donald Trump’s suggested 50% tariff on Brazilian imports. Some political commentators keep saying the plan — publicly advocated by Bolsonarists, who wanted the US to impose tariffs on Brazil —, aimed at key areas like agribusiness, some industries and steel, ended up giving President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva a boost inside the country. Now, the conversation turned into a defense of Brazilian interests, and the extreme right, which used to present itself to the Brazilian electorate as an ultranationalist force, is like Milei in Argentina, prostrate and determined to do whatever the US far-right wants. The problem is that this strategy did not sit very well with a large part of the Brazilian electorate. Meanwhile, analysts say Trump’s action doesn’t just come out of nowhere. They connect it to wider attempts to pressure BRICS states and to slow down, or even counter, the shift toward a more multipolar world. According to them, the tariffs could dampen Brazil’s economic pace a bit, but it probably won’t shove the country into a recession. The reasoning is that Brazil’s trade ties are pretty diversified, and if one door closes there’s still other markets they can approach, and that flexibility matters.
A TRANSACTIONAL WORLD
De Bolle looks past the regional scene, and says theres a bigger global shift, like the US foreign policy just kind of walked away from diplomacy and now prefers raw back and forth dealmaking. “It’s all based on coercion and ‘tit-for-tat’”, she explains, sort of flat.
In this new order of things, countries are scrambling for any leverage they can find. China, for example, leans on its dominance over critical minerals to “strangle” US pressure, and somehow everyone is acting like that is totally normal. Canada and Mexico are also trying hard to find multilateral avenues, because they want something that shields them from Washingtons constant moods.
And Brazil? Monica de Bolle brings it home with a blunt comparison: “At the table where global powers are negotiating, their futures, some countries can put critical minerals or high-tech chips on the table. Brazil, for now, is basically just serving the coffee.”
THE AI FACTOR
The future, however, seems to carry a new disruptor, Artificial Intelligence. Monica de Bolle says that the effects of AI on jobs will not stay just a corporate matter, they’ll soon slide into a proper political firestorm. In the US, discontent around the cost of living, and the dread of technological displacement, are already nibbling at Trump’s support in the polls as the midterms draw near
Now, as Latin America keeps riding this populist carousel, the real question is if the region will keep stumbling between ideological extremes or if it will finally manage to assemble a stable, resilient center. For the moment, as De Bolle suggests, a lot of countries look set to “pass through the Calvary” of populist leadership before they really, and I mean, before they actually figure out what they want to build for their future.
