Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Chilean President Gabriel Boric prepares to leave office, the United States and Ecuador step up anti-drug cooperation, and Colombian viewers delight in a new Netflix soap opera.

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Chilean President Gabriel Boric prepares to leave office, the United States and Ecuador step up anti-drug cooperation, and Colombian viewers delight in a new Netflix soap opera.

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Looking Back at the Boric Years

If recent presidential elections are any indication, the right is having a moment in Latin America. Some of the region’s most prolific conservative leaders are also its youngest, including Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa.

They stood in contrast to fellow millennial leader Gabriel Boric, the outgoing president of Chile. Boric campaigned on a promise to make his country the “grave” of neoliberalism and took office in 2022 at the age of 36. He will hand off power on Wednesday to a right-wing successor.

Boric rose to prominence after explosive anti-government protests in 2019. As president, he pledged to channel the demonstrations into an ambitious project to rewrite Chile’s dictatorship-era constitution, which grew into two constitutional assemblies. Although those efforts failed, his presidency marked a shift for the Latin American left that could echo beyond his time in office.

“What Boric introduces is a distinction between the authoritarian left and the democratic left,” especially when it comes to their positions on Venezuela, Argentine political scientist Andrés Malamud said.

In the 1980s and 1990s, human rights advocacy was central the left in Latin America. But in recent years, many leftists refused to criticize the authoritarian turns of countries around the world, including left-wing governments in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Boric struck a different tone when he condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Venezuela’s human rights abuses.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva once disparaged Boric for such remarks, calling him a “hasty young man” who was inexperienced in international diplomacy.

Even so, Boric’s position on Venezuela won him admiration among regional progressives befuddled by older officials’ softness toward Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who was so........

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