Latin America is being overtaken by conservative insurgents.
Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, came in ahead of socialist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election this week, 47% to 45%. Bolsonaro is expected to win the second round to be held Oct. 25, clinching a crucial conservative victory after almost two decades of left-wing governance.
For the past several years, the same story has played out again and again across the South American continent — from Chile to Honduras, long-incumbent governments with socialist platforms are being toppled by conservative or libertarian movements. Some allies of President Donald Trump have credited the international overhaul to the closure of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
But such characterizations downplay the multilateral campaign Trump has been waging to flip the continent, and ignore the grassroots campaigns that began chipping away at the socialist parties long before USAID was cut.
Front row from left, Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago Kamla Persad-Bissessar, President of Paraguay Santiago Pena, President of the Dominican Republic Luis Abinader, President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele, President Donald Trump, President of Guyana President Mohamed Irfaan Ali, President of Costa Rica Rodrigo Chaves Robles, President of Ecuador Daniel Noboa, back row from left, President of Bolivia Rodrigo Paz Pereira, President of Argentina Javier Milei, President of Panama Jose Ra˙l Mulino, President of Honduras Nasry Asfura, not visible, and President-elect of Chile Jose Antonio Kast, partially visible, pose for a group photo at the Shield of the Americas Summit, Saturday, March 7, 2026, at Trump National Doral Miami in Doral, Fla. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
" data-large-file="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/AP26066608930234.jpg?w=696" src="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/AP26066608930234.jpg?w=696" alt="Shield of the Americas summit" class="wp-image-4761287" srcset="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/AP26066608930234.jpg 1024w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/AP26066608930234.jpg?resize=300,200 300w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/AP26066608930234.jpg?resize=768,512 768w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/AP26066608930234.jpg?resize=150,100 150w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/AP26066608930234.jpg?resize=696,464 696w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px">
Front row from left, Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago Kamla Persad-Bissessar, President of Paraguay Santiago Pena, President of the Dominican Republic Luis Abinader, President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele, President Donald Trump, President of Guyana President Mohamed Irfaan Ali, President of Costa Rica Rodrigo Chaves Robles, President of Ecuador Daniel Noboa, back row from left, President of Bolivia Rodrigo Paz Pereira, President of Argentina Javier Milei, President of Panama Jose Ra˙l Mulino, President of Honduras Nasry Asfura, not visible, and President-elect of Chile Jose Antonio Kast, partially visible, pose for a group photo at the Shield of the Americas Summit, Saturday, March 7, 2026, at Trump National Doral Miami in Doral, Fla. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Donald Trump Jr. explicitly asserted the USAID narrative on Monday, when he accused the dissolved agency of intentionally funding left-wing groups and declared “the grift is over.”
“Since we gutted USAID, the left hasn’t won a single presidential election in Latin America,” the president’s son asserted. “Billions in taxpayer cash were funding NGOs, ‘democracy’ programs, and activist networks that conveniently always backed the same side. They called it aid but it was election interference.”
USAID funded a wide breadth of programs in Latin America, ranging from conservation efforts to cultural education. An audit by the Trump administration and its allies in Congress found a trove of expenditures funding “activity to strengthen trans-led organizations to deliver gender-affirming health care” in Guatemala, a “transgender opera” in Colombia, and “drag theater” in Ecuador.
A portion of USAID funding went to civic programs and campaigns for democracy, leading to the question of how this money was influencing regional politics. But experts are not enthusiastic to chalk up Latin America’s rightward leap to USAID’s demise.
Daniel Di Martino, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute who specializes in Latin American politics, told the Washington Examiner that “the decline of the Latin American left began before Trump was elected,” placing the genesis “more around the election of Javier Milei in Argentina, and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador.”
Trump initiated the freeze of USAID disbursements in January 2025, not long after his second term began. USAID officially dissolved that July, and its remaining operations were transferred into the State Department under Secretary Marco Rubio. Long before that critical moment, conservatives and libertarians were already being elected.
Bukele was elected to lead El Salvador in 2019, where he began high-profile reforms of the justice system that cracked down on cartels and introduced maximum-security mega-prisons to house offenders for life. Anti-establishment, social conservative Rodrigo Chaves was elected to lead Costa Rica in 2022 — followed by prominent Trump ally and Libertarian evangelist Javier Milei in Argentina in 2023.
“Argentina particularly inspired the rest of the region that an aggressive approach against leftists and implementing free market policies was the road to prosperity after years of socialism,” Di Martino explained. “El Salvador showed that putting criminals in jail ends crime.”
President Donald Trump watches President of Argentina Javier Milei during a signing ceremony on his Board of Peace initiative at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
" data-large-file="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/AP26022394059954.jpg?w=696" src="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/AP26022394059954.jpg?w=696" alt="Milei Trump" class="wp-image-4761286" srcset="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/AP26022394059954.jpg 1024w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/AP26022394059954.jpg?resize=300,200 300w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/AP26022394059954.jpg?resize=768,512 768w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/AP26022394059954.jpg?resize=150,100 150w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/AP26022394059954.jpg?resize=696,464 696w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px">
President Donald Trump watches President of Argentina Javier Milei during a signing ceremony on his Board of Peace initiative at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Bukele and Milei have been stalwart allies to the Trump administration, and that relationship has proved immensely beneficial for all leaders involved. The South American leaders have facilitated mass deportations of their citizens out of the United States and advocated Trumpian policies across the hemisphere. Milei has received financial support in the form of $20 billion worth of currency swaps, and Bukele received millions in payments to place deported criminals in his prisons. The three further cooperated on the Shield of the Americas anti-cartel initiatives.
Regarding Latin America’s rightward flip, Di Martino credits Trump’s bridge-building and cooperation with regional leaders far more than slashing USAID.
“Trump’s election and administration certainly helped because they provided diplomatic support, sanctioned communists and terrorists, and even provided calm to financial markers when Milei needed them in his midterm elections,” Di Martino said. “It is good that USAID was defunded but to credit that alone or even in a major part for Latin America’s rightward shift is ignoring a much larger trend and set of actions Trump took.”
Other experts are reticent to give Trump too much credit in general, seeing it instead as the inevitable outcome after decades of broken promises on a continent known for volatile swings of politics.
Carrie Filipetti — executive director at the Vandenberg Coalition — is a former deputy assistant secretary for Cuba and Venezuela in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs and Deputy Special Representative for Venezuela at the State Department. She told the Washington Examiner that continental shifts in politics are common and likely to continue in the future, swinging left and right.
“The trend in Latin America has for years been a pendulum swing from left wing populist to right wing populist,” Filipetti said. “Just a few years ago, the left was praising the so-called ‘pink wave’ in which left wing governments were being elected throughout the region. Now, the right is doing the same as those governments are being replaced by right wing administrations. Both interpretations are wrong.”
She continued: “This is less about what America is and isn’t doing and is more about what these populist governments, from either side of the aisle, are doing. After making massive promises to the people, they regularly fail to deliver and instead enrich themselves with corruption, and the people are fed up. That trend will only continue.”
One action taken by the Trump administration that no one seems to deny changed the calculus in South America has been his crackdown on Venezuela and Cuba.
Trump ordered the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January, decapitating the socialist regime that had governed the country for over a decade through elections widely condemned as corrupt and illegitimate. His vice president was installed as a rubber-stamp leader.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, center, answers a question about Cuba during a meeting between President Donald Trump and Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin in the Oval Office of the White House, on St. Patrick’s Day, Tuesday, March 17, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
" data-large-file="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/AP26076585364682.jpg?w=696" src="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/AP26076585364682.jpg?w=696" alt="Rubio Cuba White House" class="wp-image-4761459" srcset="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/AP26076585364682.jpg 1024w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/AP26076585364682.jpg?resize=300,200 300w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/AP26076585364682.jpg?resize=768,512 768w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/AP26076585364682.jpg?resize=150,100 150w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/AP26076585364682.jpg?resize=696,464 696w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px">
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, center, answers a question about Cuba during a meeting between President Donald Trump and Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin in the Oval Office of the White House, on St. Patrick’s Day, Tuesday, March 17, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Trump and Rubio are now saber-rattling a similar regime change in Cuba, where the Communist Party has survived decades of U.S. economic sanctions following Fidel Castro’s seizure of power in 1959.
“In Venezuela’s case, the legacy of its significant natural resources gave it outsized influence and power over the years,” Filipetti told the Washington Examiner. “After the rise of their socialist dictators, both Venezuela and Cuba became critical players in exporting anti American propaganda and terrorism, training partner nations in defense and terror tactics, and serving as a foothold for American adversaries like Russia, China, and Iran.”
She continued: “By changing these two regimes, the United States would have an outsized impact on securing the hemisphere from Cuba and Venezuela’s nefarious influence.”
BRAZIL HEADS TO RUNOFF ELECTION AFTER BOLSONARO AND LULA FAIL TO GARNER A MAJORITY OF VOTES
Martino told the Washington Examiner that “if Venezuela transitions to a democratic system and Cuba’s socialist regime falls, it is over for the radical left in Latin America,” calling them the “head of the snake.”
“Cuba has spent decades funding and training political activists in Latin America and even in the United States as Secretary Rubio recently showed in a State Department report,” he said. “Once the head of the snake is cut off, the rest will die. There will always be leftists, but I suspect the future Latin American left won’t be as authoritarian or radical as the current one once Cuba and Venezuela are free.”
The date for Venezuela’s next election has not yet been set, but the U.S. is expected to help oversee the process to prevent tampering by the government. Meanwhile, the White House remains committed to a “fundamental change” in Cuban governance, though Trump has suggested an agreement with Havana is more likely than military intervention.
Continue reading...
[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
