CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

The Ugliness of Latin America’s Angry Tide

Photograph Source: Casa Presidencial El Salvador – Public Domain

In August, right-wing billionaire Abelardo de la Espriella took office as Colombia’s president and vowed to move an agenda of the far right even though he won by less than a percentage point over the left-wing candidate Iván Cepeda. It is characteristic of the far right of a special type to adopt any mandate and pretend that they have the authority to transform their society into their toxic swamp. Of the twenty states generally thought of as being part of Latin America, eleven now have governments of the far right: Argentina (Javier Milei since 2023), Bolivia (Rodrigo Paz since 2025), Chile (José Antonio Kast since 2026), Colombia (de la Espriella since 2026), Costa Rica (Laura Fernández since 2026), Ecuador (Daniel Noboa since 2025), El Salvador (Nayib Bukele since 2024), Honduras (Nasry Asfura since 2026), Panama (José Raúl Mulino since 2024), Paraguay (Santiago Peña since 2023), and Peru (Keiko Fujimori since 2026).

Most of these leaders are not from the old conservative bloc but are part of a new generation (Noboa is the youngest of the group, born in 1987) with an average age of 52. These are men and women who represent the old oligarchies of Latin America, the old families with deep colonial roots and with vast properties, but these leaders do not have an aristocratic sensibility or come from the established conservative political parties. They are libertarian in nature with naked fealties to the United States and its agenda. They fashion themselves as patriots, but patriotism is cast aside for absolute loyalty to Washington and its corporations.

The far right emerges out of a long tradition of the oligarchy’s lawless violence, which dates to the genocide against the indigenous through to the military dictatorships of the Operation Condor era. Impunity for violence has been the hallmark of this class and its political representatives, and so the current far right is nothing if not authentic to its class and its forebearers. Laura Fernández was born in 1986 the year before Costa Rica’s president Óscar Arias won the Nobel Prize for Peace for his work in conflict resolution in Central America (Costa Rica rid itself of its military in its 1949 Constitution). At her inauguration in May 2026 Fernández said that she would have an ‘iron-fist........

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