Latin America, Under the Radar as Ever

Amidst a fractious global landscape where instability, limited or world wars and widespread geopolitical political uncertainty cloud any outlook of the upcoming decade(s), it could perhaps be easy to overlook the Latin American region – coloring a ‘same as it ever was’ cynicism that anyone focused on the region certainly feels.

However, the region increasingly feels like a powder keg of polarization and division, as handily summarized by the New Yorker in its recent worthwile profile of Ecuadorean President Daniel Naboa, the Democratically elected, American educated 36-year old son of Álvaro Noboa, one of Ecuador’s richest men (who ironically oversees a Banana empire):

Noboa took office at a time of uncertain change in Latin America. As populism surges, the traditional split between left and right is eroding. There are ten governments in the region that could be described as left wing, but they range widely. There are those led by performative militants (Gustavo Petro, in Colombia, and the lame duck Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in Mexico) and by pragmatic social democrats (Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in Brazil, and Gabriel Boric, in Chile). At the extreme are the weary authoritarian regimes still proclaiming revolution in Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua.

On the right, the most visible leaders are the most outrageous ones. In El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, a social-media-savvy millennial, has given himself dictatorial powers as he fights street gangs. In Argentina, the self-described “anarcho-capitalist” Javier Milei has declared war on the welfare state, advocating a market so free of constraints that, as he once suggested, people would ultimately be able to buy and sell children. Milei has been embraced by Viktor Orbán and by Donald Trump; Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg posed for photos with him when he visited the U.S. When Bukele recently staged a ceremony to celebrate his reëlection, the guests included Donald Trump, Jr., Tucker Carlson, and Matt Gaetz.

Milei and Lula represent an easy study in contrasts as leaders from two of the largest economies in the region: whereas Lula has been a prominent name in Brazilian politics since the mid-1980s, more recently having served 2 Presidential terms, hand-picking his successor, undergoing imprisonment for nearly 2 years before returning to the popular political consciousness to win the 2022 election, Milei is a longtime University professor who has tried to ride the ‘outsider’ wave previously ridden by Donald Trump in the US and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil to political success.

Brazil and Argentina represent the far-and-away most important players in the Mercosur Trade Agreement and represent a specter of stability in the region, surrounded by neighbors in various states of discord, including an under-the-radar territory dispute between neighboring Guayana and Venezuela and a recent failed, and potentially staged coup in Bolivia.

Despite a clearly described prescription for peace, Argentina is actively escalating tensions with its Brazilian neighbors by siding with the disgraced former President Bolsonaro and enabling asylum for his supporters who stormed the capital following his electoral loss to Lula, as recounted in a strange article in the FT:

The libertarian Milei and socialist Lula have not had an official meeting since the Argentine president took office six months ago, despite the economic ties between South America’s two largest nations. Brazil is Argentina’s largest trading partner, accounting for almost 18 per cent of its total exports.

The diplomatic stand-off marks the escalation of a personal feud between the two men, which was reignited when Lula last week demanded an apology from Milei for calling the Brazilian leader “corrupt” and “communist”.

The outspoken Milei refused to apologise and then referred to Lula in a social media post entitled “idiot dinosaur”.

While I don’t profess to have a strong handle on the ongoing insanity that is Argentine politics and the anarcho-capitalist ‘shock doctrine’ that Milei purports to offer, certainly an escalation of words and an alliance with a political actor banned from running for President ever again is hardly a recipe for a regional calm.

On the other hand, I suppose it’s just as easy to see this all as a political kayfabe popularized by Trump himself, who left the institutional diplomatic and legislative class to scramble to provide ongoing reassurances to allies and enemies alike.