When Trump assumed the presidency in 2025, the Pink Tide governments
in Latin America were losing ground. The approval rating of Brazil’s president Luiz
Inácio Lula da Silva reached the lowest of his three presidential terms while
that of Colombia’s Gustavo Petro was a mere 34 percent. Furthermore, in the
wake of the highly contested results of the July 2024 presidential elections in
Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro found himself isolated in the region.
Now, less than a year later, the political landscape has
shifted. Trump’s antics such as renaming the Gulf of Mexico, his weaponization
of tariffs, and military actions in the Caribbean and Pacific have revitalized Pink
Tide governments and the Left in general. Latin America has reacted to Trump’s
invocation of the Monroe Doctrine with a surge of nationalist sentiment, mass
demonstrations, and denunciations from political figures across most of the
spectrum—including some on the center-right.
While the United States appears as an unreliable and
declining hegemon, China positions itself as a champion of national sovereignty
and a voice of reason in matters of international trade and investment. When
Trump slapped a 50% tariff on most Brazilian imports in July, the Chinese
stepped in to help fill the gap for the nation’s all-important soybean exports.
Lula versus Trump
Different scenarios are playing out in different nations, but
with similar results: the strengthening of the Left and in some instances the
weakening of the Right. One case is Brazil and Mexico, where Lula and President
Claudia Sheinbaum have combined firmness with discretion, in contrast to
Petro’s confrontational rhetoric.
In July, Lula responded defiantly to Trump’s
attempt to strong-arm Brazil through punitive tariffs designed to secure the
release of his ally and former president Jair Bolsonaro, jailed for involvement
in coup and assassination plots. Unlike
other heads of state, Lula refused to reach out to Trump, saying “I’m not going to humiliate myself.” Instead, Lula declared “Brazil would not be tutored by anyone,”
at the same time that he recalled the 1964 Brazilian coup as a previous instance
of U.S. intervention.
The face-off
sparked mass pro-government demonstrations throughout the country which far
outnumbered those called by the Right demanding the freeing of Bolsonaro.
Lula’s supporters blamed the Right for the tariffs, and particularly
Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo who campaigned for them after moving to Washington. Lula called Bolsonaro a "traitor" and said he should face
another trial for being responsible for the so-called “Bolsonaro’s tax.” As a sign that Trump’s tariffs
were a game changer and a boost for the Left, the 80-year old Lula announced he
would run for reelection in October 2026, as his popularity reached the 50
percent mark.
Some
analysts faulted Lula for having failed to use his 30-minute videoconference with
Trump on October 6 to condemn Washington’s gunboat diplomacy in the Caribbean. According to this interpretation of the call, Lula displayed naivete and
gutlessness by combining “concern and
accommodation with US imperialism” and believing that “negotiations will be
guided by a ‘win-win logic.’”
In fact,
Lula has spoken out against the U.S. military presence as a “factor of
tension” in the Caribbean, which he calls a “zone of peace.”
Lula, though, undoubtedly could have gone further, as urged by the Landless
Workers’ Movement (MST) – which backed Lula’s last presidential bid – by explicitly
declaring solidarity with Venezuela.
But Lula
can hardly be accused of being submissive in his dealings with Trump.
Venezuela’s former Vice Minister for North America Carlos Ron told me that both
Lula and Sheinbaum have shown that they “know how to
handle Trump” as they have “gotten much
of what they wanted.” Indeed, at the same time that Trump retreated from his
tariff threats toward both nations, he took to praising the two heads of state.
A United Front in the Making
In Brazil and elsewhere in the
region, a new alignment is emerging, drawing in forces both to the right and
the left of the government in reaction to Washington’s posture. One notable
example was Lula’s appointment of homeless workers movement activist and former
presidential candidate Guilherme Boulos as Minister of
the Presidency in October. Boulos belongs to the Socialism and Liberty
Party, a leftist split-off from Lula’s Workers’ Party that endorsed Lula’s 2022
presidential candidacy but had ruled out holding positions in his government.
Boulos, who was instrumental in organizing the recent protests
against Washington’s tariff hikes, spoke of the significance of his designation:
"Lula gave me the mission to help put the government on the street… and
listening to popular demands." His appointment signals a leftist turn in
which, in the words of the Miami-based CE Noticias Financiera, “Lula showed that he is going into the
2026 election ready for war. A war in his own style, using the social
movements.”
Venezuela is another example
of political actors across much of the political spectrum converging on the
need for a broad front to oppose U.S. aggression in the region. No other Pink
Tide government has faced such a rapid succession of regime change and
destabilization attempts as Venezuela under the Chavista (followers of Hugo
Chávez) government of Maduro. The government’s response to these challenges has
at times deviated from democratic norms and includes concessions to business
interests, drawing harsh criticism from both moderate and more radical sectors
of the Left.
One leader in the latter category
is Elías Jaua, formerly a member of Chávez’s inner circle, whose leftist
positions on economic policy and internal party democracy left him marginalized
within the Chavista movement. In the face of the U.S. military threat in the
Caribbean, Jaua has closed ranks with Maduro and decried the “psychological war” being waged against the President. He
went on to say that in this critical moment it is necessary “to place the
tranquility of the people above any ideological, political, or ulterior
interest,” adding “the Homeland comes first.”
Other long-standing political
figures who have supported Maduro’s call for a national dialogue to face the
U.S. threat – while not letting Maduro off the hook for alleged undemocratic
practices – include some on the center
and even center-right of the political spectrum, including former presidential
candidates Henrique Capriles, Manuel Rosales and Antonio Ecarri.
Others are moderate leftists who
held important posts under Chávez and/or belonged to the moderate left party
Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) in the 1990s. One of the latter is Enrique Ochoa
Antich who presented a petition signed by 27 leading anti-Maduro moderates that
stated “it
is disheartening to see an extremist sector of the opposition” supporting
sanctions and other U.S. actions. Ochoa Antich
proposed a dialogue with government representatives “over
the best way to foment national unity and defend sovereignty,” while adding “being
realistic, I’m not going to ask that the party-state, which is the core of the Chavista
project, be abolished.”
This
stance, which views Maduro as a partner in resisting U.S. intervention, stands
in sharp contrast to that of the Communist Party (PCV), which broke with his
government in 2020 over its business-friendly orientation and its sidelining of
sectors of the Left. In the same breath that it denounces imperialist
aggression, the PCV points to the “authoritarian and
anti-democratic nature of Maduro’s government.”
While the PCV’s criticisms are worthy of debate, the party’s uncompromising
hostility toward Maduro undermines efforts to face U.S. aggression. Indeed, the
PCV’s position – supporting the Cuban government while denouncing Venezuela’s
as undemocratic – appears inconsistent.
In Argentina,
Trump came to the aid of the Right in what will most likely be a Pyrrhic victory.
On the eve of the October 2025 legislative elections, Trump offered to bail out
the Argentine economy to the tune of $40 billion but only under
the condition that the party of right-wing president Javier Milei emerge
victorious, which is precisely what happened. Trump’s blackmail was denounced
as such by politicians from Peronist leaders linked to former Pink Tide
governments to centrists who had been among their most vocal critics. Facundo
Manes, leader of the centrist Radical Civic Union, was an example of the
latter, declaring “the extorsion advances.” Meanwhile on the streets of
Buenos Aires, protest banners denouncing Milei were marked by anti-U.S. slogans
“Yankee go home” and “Milei is Trump’s mule,” as well as the burning of a U.S.
flag.
This convergence around the need to
confront Trump’s threats and actions creates an opportunity for progressives
across the continent to unite. The call for such unity was taken up by the São
Paulo Forum, a body that brings together over 100 Latin American leftist
organizations that Lula helped found in 1990. At the outset of Trump’s first
administration in 2017, the Forum drafted the document “Consensus for
Our America” as a response to the neoliberal Washington Consensus and
the escalation of U.S. interventionism in the hemisphere.
At the same time that it defended
the pluralism of progressive movements and avoided the term “socialism,” the Consensus
document foresaw the drafting of a more concrete set of reforms and goals. The
expected step forward, however, never materialized. More recently, the Cuban
ideologue Roberto Regalado lamented that, despite the urgent need for unity, “far
from consolidating and expanding,
the ‘Consensus for Our America’ has languished.”
Trump and the Latin American Right
Much of the Latin American right has tied its fortunes to President
Trump. The right-wing presidents of Argentina, Ecuador and Paraguay are Trump followers,
as are Bolsonaro, the Chilean presidential candidate José Antonio Kast and former
president Álvaro Uribe in Colombia. In Venezuela, right-wing opposition leader
María Corina Machado dedicated her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump.
Machado’s fellow Venezuelan rightist Leopoldo López co-founded the
National Liberty Congress in 2022 dedicated to regime change in nations that
happen to be considered adversaries by Washington. The idea is in line with the
idea of an International of the Right promoted by Trump strategist Steve Bannon,
among others. Bannon founded The Movement in 2016 to unite the European Right,
but it has been largely snubbed by much of the continent’s right-wing.
The “internationalism” on the right is even less likely to flourish in
Latin America. While in the U.S., Trump plays on patriotism – or a bogus form
of it – in the case of Latin America, nationalist sentiment and support for
Trump are oxymorons, specifically when it comes to tariffs, threats of military
invasion and the brandishing of the Monroe Doctrine. In Venezuela, for
instance, Machado’s popularity has declined and her opposition movement
fractured as a result of popular repudiation of Trump’s policies.
In the U.S., Trump plays to his fanatic supporters while his popularity
steadily declines. In Latin America the same is occurring, with the difference
being that his popularity couldn’t be much lower than it is. Pew Research Center reports that just 8 percent of Mexicans have
“confidence” in Trump.
Trump has contributed to a major shift in the Latin America’s political
landscape now marked by political polarization and leftist inroads. In many
countries, the Left—which for decades remained on the sidelines—has become a
major point of reference, rallying around the banners of national sovereignty,
if not, anti-imperialism.
In Chile, a Communist, Jeannette Jara, received a surprising
60.5 percent of the vote in the primaries to represent the main anti-rightist
bloc in the upcoming presidential elections. In spite of the cautious tone of
her discourse, Jara addressed Trump, saying “No U.S. soldiers will enter. Chile
is to be respected, and so is its sovereignty.” In Ecuador, despite harsh
repression, the followers of ex-Pink Tide president Rafael Correa have come
close to winning the last three presidential elections. And in Colombia,
Petro has reinvigorated his movement’s base through his forceful denunciations
of U.S. military operations and by leading a drive, begun in October, to secure
two million signatures for a national constituent assembly.
Polarization often refers to a scenario in which the extremes on both
sides of the political spectrum gain ascendancy. That is not what is happening in
Latin America – at least on the left. Instead, there is a convergence of
progressives of different political stripes both domestically and among Pink
Tide governments in their opposition to Trump and all that he represents. The
challenge now is to translate this convergence into organized forms of unity –
through united fronts at the national level as well as in the Community of
Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and other regional bodies.
This article was originally posted by Jacobin.
Steve Ellner is an associate managing editor of Latin American
Perspectives and a retired professor at the Universidad de Oriente in
Venezuela, where he lived for over forty years. He is the author of Rethinking
Venezuelan Politics: Class, Conflict and the Chávez Phenomenon.
https://jacobin.com/2025/11/trump-latin-america-left-opposition
