Latin America’s Right Turn Was Made at Home, Not in Washington.

BY JOHN PRICE

The  idea that Washington is successfully pushing Latin America to the right has become fashionable. Donald Trump publicly celebrated conservative victories, Marco Rubio congratulated aligned candidates, and several newly elected leaders have echoed U.S. talking points on security, migration, China and Venezuela. After Colombia’s Abelardo de la Espriella won the presidency, Trump and Rubio quickly signaled enthusiasm for working with him, while right-wing leaders across the hemisphere celebrated the result as part of a broader ideological bloc. The Wall Street Journal framed the region’s shift as a move toward leaders aligned with Trump’s political style and policy priorities.

But that interpretation gives Washington too much credit and Latin American voters too little agency. The better reading is more prosaic and more persuasive: politics is local. Voters in Peru, Colombia, Costa Rica, Honduras and Argentina did not primarily vote to join a Rubio-Trump hemispheric project. They voted against insecurity, corruption, weak growth, inflation, capital flight, political chaos and the perceived failures of recent left-wing or statist governments. The polling evidence from these elections points overwhelmingly to domestic grievances, not geopolitics, as the driver of voter behavior.

The distinction matters. Washington may be benefiting from the region’s electoral shift, but benefiting from a trend is not the same as causing it. Trump and Rubio are surfing a wave produced by local frustration. They did not create the wave.

The ‘Keiko Effect’

Peru offers the clearest example. In the run-up to its April 2026 first round of elections, the country was not debating U.S. alignment as its central question. Peruvians were exhausted by instability, corruption and crime. Reuters described the election as taking place after a decade in which no president completed a full term, amid corruption scandals, rising crime and voter frustration. It also noted that crime had come to rival, and often surpass, corruption as the top voter concern.

The polling is even more direct. The March 2026 IEP national opinion survey asked Peruvians, spontaneously, to name the country’s principal problem. The top answers were insecurity/crime at 39%, corruption at 26%, and the economy at 15%. Politics, politicians and instability were far behind at 7%. Geopolitics, U.S. relations and regional ideological trends were not prominent categories. Among voters for leading right-wing candidates, the local-security explanation becomes even stronger: 44.6% of Keiko Fujimori voters and 50.8% of Rafael López Aliaga voters named insecurity as the main national problem.

That is not a Rubio story. It is a Lima, Callao, Trujillo and extortion story. Keiko Fujimori’s appeal came from promising order, private investment and a technological/security shock against crime, not from persuading Peruvians that they should align with Washington. The same IEP poll shows that the right’s strongest issue advantage was public fear of criminality, while Roberto Sánchez’s voters were more likely to prioritize corruption. In other words, the Peruvian runoff was organized around domestic order versus institutional distrust, not around hemispheric ideology.

The Anti-Petro Vote

Colombia tells a similar story, despite being the country where the Trump/Rubio interpretation seems superficially strongest. De la Espriella was openly pro-Trump, promised to align with U.S.-led security initiatives, and was celebrated by U.S. conservatives after his victory. Yet the polling before the vote shows that Colombians were primarily reacting to insecurity, failed peace policy and doubts about Gustavo Petro’s governing model.

One year before the election, AS/COA’s polling review found that corruption, access to healthcare and insecurity ranked as top voter issues. By the final stretch of the campaign, security had become even more dominant. A May 2026 Invamer poll for Noticias Caracol and Blu Radio, conducted among 3,800 respondents in 152 municipalities, found deep public discontent with Petro’s “total peace” policy: 62.1% said it was going badly, 64.5% said the policy made them feel more insecure, and 73.8% believed the armed forces and the state had lost control of areas where illegal armed groups operate.

Those numbers explain De la Espriella’s rise far better than any theory of U.S. electoral engineering. The final AtlasIntel poll before the first round put Iván Cepeda slightly ahead in first-round voting but projected De la Espriella to defeat him in a runoff, 50% to 41.3%. Reuters summarized the contrast: Cepeda promised continuity with Petro’s reforms and peace talks, while De la Espriella promised a hard line against crime and drug trafficking, incentives for private investment, and expansion of mining and energy.

That is a referendum on Petro, security and the investment climate. Trump’s endorsement may have helped energize some voters, but the electoral soil had already been fertilized by Colombians’ anxiety over armed groups, rural violence, urban crime, energy policy and economic uncertainty. If Washington had been decisive, one would expect pre-election polling to show U.S. relations, China, Venezuela, or ideological alignment as top voter concerns. Instead, the measurable concerns were security, peace policy, corruption, healthcare and the economy.

The Novelty of Rising Crime in Costa Rica

Costa Rica is another case where a right-wing, tough-on-crime candidate won not because voters suddenly became Trumpian, but because crime reordered national politics. Laura Fernández, the candidate aligned with outgoing President Rodrigo Chaves, rose above the 40% threshold needed to avoid a runoff in a University of Costa Rica poll conducted January 12-16, 2026. Reuters reported that she had capitalized on Chaves’ 58% approval rating and that crime was the country’s top concern amid a homicide wave driven largely by drug-gang violence.

It is true that Chaves touted ties to Bukele and the Trump administration on anti-narcotics cooperation. But those ties were campaign accessories, not the core voter motivation. Costa Ricans were not principally voting on whether Marco Rubio liked their candidate. They were voting in a country where the traditional self-image of safety and institutional calm had been shaken by narcotics violence. Fernández’s promise of continuity was attractive because voters associated Chaves with action against elites and crime, not because of an imported U.S. ideological frame.

Washington Pressured Honduras

Honduras is the one case where Trump’s intervention was unusually explicit. He endorsed Nasry “Tito” Asfura days before the vote, threatened to cut aid if Asfura lost, and his comments generated accusations of interference. The Washington Post reported that Asfura ultimately won 40.27% to Salvador Nasralla’s 39.53%, with the ruling leftist LIBRE candidate Rixi Moncada far behind. Rubio congratulated Asfura and said the United States looked forward to working with him.

Yet even in Honduras, the domestic explanation is stronger than the Washington explanation. Before the vote, Americas Quarterly described jobs, security and corruption as the issues “top of mind” ahead of the November 30 election. Le Monde reported on election day that the campaign was marked by promises focused on the economy, and that an opinion poll found Hondurans’ top concern was no longer insecurity but the economy. Poverty had fallen during Xiomara Castro’s term but remained around 60%, still above its pre-pandemic level, while the economy became the central focus for candidates.

Trump’s late intervention may have affected the final margins. It certainly shaped media coverage and may have reinforced Asfura’s image as Washington’s preferred candidate. But the ruling party’s collapse cannot be reduced to Trump. LIBRE’s Moncada finished far behind because Hondurans were dissatisfied with economic conditions, corruption failures, political uncertainty and the limits of Castro’s governing record. A foreign endorsement can amplify an opposition mood; it rarely manufactures one from nothing.

Fed up with Peronism

Argentina’s 2025 midterms are also misread when treated as evidence of Trump’s command over regional politics. Trump backed Javier Milei, and the U.S. offered major financial support to Argentina. Reuters reported that Trump conditioned future support on Milei’s success and later congratulated him after La Libertad Avanza’s decisive midterm win. But the same report explained the result through Argentine voters’ fear of repeating past economic crises. Pollster Gustavo Córdoba said many voters were willing to give the government another chance, while investors were impressed by lower monthly inflation, fiscal surplus and deregulation.

Again, the causal chain begins at home. Argentina’s electorate did not need Washington to teach it to fear inflation, capital controls, fiscal disorder, debt crises or Peronist economic management. Those fears are deeply Argentine. Milei’s midterm recovery was not a referendum on Rubio. It was a referendum on whether voters preferred the pain of adjustment to the perceived danger of returning to the policies that produced chronic instability.

The Latent COVID Effect

Across these cases, the polling pattern is consistent.  Voters rejected worrisome declines in economic growth and opportunity, worsening personal security, stubborn inflation, and weak governance, reflected by rising corruption and deteriorated rule of law.  But, if Washington is not behind this regional pendulum shift, and if politics is truly local, how can we explain the simultaneous shift in the same rightward motion across so many different countries?

The answer begins with the impact of COVID, which initially generated a health crisis across Latin America’s highly urbanized population due to universal underinvestment in intensive care hospital infrastructure. The decision made by most technocratic governments in 2020 to enforce harsh and lengthy quarantines disproportionately punished informal workers (60% of LatAm’s workforce), exacerbating the region’s income disparity.  A health crisis thus became an economic one, and voters widely rejected centrist incumbent parties. By the start of 2023, leftist-populist presidents led the seven largest democracies in Latin America.

These populists arrived with grand plans to redesign their economies, but their efforts were frustrated by fiscal crises inherited after governments overspent and VAT-driven tax collection fell short as the service economies were suspended during COVID quarantines. Additionally, Latin American institutions proved surprisingly effective at limiting the damage that populist policies might have otherwise wrought upon their countries. Plurality in congress (except in Mexico) limited radical legislative change, while floating currencies punished poor policy that triggered capital flight, independent central banks controlled inflationary fiscal spending, and independent judiciaries protected constitutions that were frequently threatened.

In the end, four years of populism translated into four lame duck years for several populist presidents, neither destroying nor advancing their economies. In the latest political cycle, which began in 2025, voters are consistently rejecting these left-wing incumbents and embracing their most effective opponents.

All Politics Is Local

In the end, the old adage, “all politics is local” — coined by Tip O’Neill, former US Speaker of the House — is truly applicable the world over. The politics and leadership of other countries may generate media attention, but they rarely influence the political thinking of local voters. Instead, their concerns begin at home, literally, with the safety of their families, and their economic well-being predominate and radiate from there, including issues like public services: roads, schools, and healthcare.

This does not mean Washington is irrelevant. U.S. pressure, endorsements, aid, sanctions, migration policy, counternarcotics cooperation and financial support can influence political incentives. In a close election, such as Honduras or Colombia, outside signals may matter at the margin. But margins are not the same as mandates. In this political cycle, like many before it, the mandate came from domestic disappointment.

A more accurate formulation is this: Latin America is not moving right because Washington is powerful; Washington looks powerful because Latin America moved right for its own reasons. The region’s voters are punishing incumbents and recent governing parties for weak delivery, incumbents brought to power by an economically punished working class who responded to the anti-establishment messaging of left-wing candidates in 2021 and 2022.  Those left-wing populist governments presided over insecurity, weak investment, capital flight, corruption scandals or institutional disorder, so voters have now turned to candidates promising order, growth and private-sector confidence.

That conclusion is less dramatic than a story about Trump and Rubio remaking the hemisphere. But it is better supported by the evidence. Latin American voters have a long history of swinging against governments that fail to deliver. Today’s rightward shift is another turn of that anti-incumbent pendulum. Washington may cheer it, brand it and seek to organize it. But the votes were cast for local reasons: safer streets, better jobs, lower inflation, stronger currencies, less corruption and a chance to escape failed political experiments.

John Price is the Managing Director of Americas Market Intelligence. With 32 years of experience in Latin American market intelligence consulting, Price has supervised nearly 1,200 client engagements and advises clients in more than 20 countries across Latin America. He can be reached at jprice@americasmi.com 

Republished with permission from Americas Market Intelligence. 

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