Mexico – In recent years, the extreme right has been remarkably organized, with distant country leaders sharing advisers, strategies and discussion points.
The conservative conference of political action, a rally of right-wing activists and elected officials who started in the United States, has become global, welcoming mega-events in Brazil, Argentina and Hungary. Foreign leaders, including the president of Argentina, Javier Milei and the president of Salvador, Nayib Bukele, ran the scene of the CPAC, slamming socialism, calling for more strict policies on crime and the balustrade against everything that is “awake”.
Elon Musk, on the left, receives a chain saw from the Argentinian president Javier Milei at the conservative political action conference, CPAC, in Oxon Hill, Md., In February.
(Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press)
Now the left tries to compete.
This week, political leaders, activists and strategists from a dozen countries across the Americas meet in Mexico City for what the organizers represent the “CPAC of the left”.
The second annual pan-American congress includes a diversified range of participants, of a Fi-Fixter who has become a politician of Colombia to American representatives Ilhan Omar (D-minn.) And Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).
The event program recognizes that the leftists have not been in conversation beyond the borders in the way the right took place and promises to “remedy this crisis in hemispherical coordination”.
During closed -door meetings and public events, participants will seek to tackle hemispherical themes such as migration, climate change and Trump’s pricing threats. And they will debate existential questions: with elections looming in the region, what are winning strategies for the left? And how can he fight against the growing influence of conservative populists and anti -establishments who are both inspired – and influencing the American right?
“We need solutions not only at the level of individual countries, but also at the continental level,” said Giorgio Jackson, an organizer of the event who was Minister of Social Development under Chilean President Gabriel Boric. “We need wide, democratic and progressive alliances.”
The next presidential election of Chile underlines how the ideological landscape of the Americas has changed. Just a few years ago, the left was ascending, with its candidates winning presidents in one country after another: Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Colombia and Brazil.
Boric, a former protest student who was only 36 years old when he took office, embodied the trend, that some baptized a “new pink tide”, comparing it to the period of the 2000s when the Luiz of Brazil in the regional policy of Hugo Chávez and the Bolivia policy at the Evo Morales of Venezuela and Bolivia.
Boric campaigned on a promise that Chile would be the “grave” of free market orthodoxy and promoted a new constitution which would consecrate gender equality, environmental protections and indigenous rights.
But a national referendum on the Constitution failed. And in a slow economy and growing fears concerning organized crime and the migration of high levels of neighboring Venezuela, its approval rating fell to less than 30%.
The presidential candidate of Chile, Jose Antonio Kast, of the Republican Party, speaks during an event in Santiago on May 14.
(Rodrigo Arangua / AFP Vitty Images)
Conservative José Antonio Kast, a acolyte Trump who has promised hard online security policies, now leads to the ballot box for the November presidential election in Chile.
Checking the fight against crime was a winning strategy for the right in the region, of the Ecuador, where the conservative president Daniel Noboa declared the war against organized crime, in El Salvador, where the mass incarceration of Bukele of members of alleged gangs brought down the violence even by showing concerns about human rights violations.
“Surveys in most countries suggest that populations want severe repression,” said James Bosworth, founder of Hxagon, a company that provides political risks in Latin America. A strong hand – “Main firm” -Is popular, he said.
The left, he said, must find an equally powerful message.
Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum speaks during a press conference at the National Palace in Mexico City, Tuesday, October 15, 2024.
(Fernando Llano / AP)
It is no coincidence that the conference takes place in Mexico, where leftist president Claudia Sheinbaum won the election last year in a landslide. His Party Morena has a majority in the two chambers of the congress and governs most of the states.
The founder of the party, former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, was an economic populist, denouncing the “mafia of power” who, according to him, controlled Mexico and promising to “put the poor first”.
Celeste Ascencio Ortega, a MIRENA MP for Michoacán’s state, said other countries should consider reproducing popular well-being programs in Morena, which surround state money to students and the elderly.
“We have to talk about an accumulation of wealth that benefits everyone, not just a few,” she said.
Economic populism has also proven to be a winning strategy in the New York town hall race, where Zohran Mamdani beat the candidates of the Establishment in the Democratic primary by focusing on poverty and affordability.
But the leftists entering into the hemisphere are now paralyzed by severe economic conditions.
Protesters carrying masks representing US President Trump and former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro participated in a demonstration in downtown Sao Paulo, Brazil, July 18.
(Nelson Almeida / AFP via Getty Images)
The goods boom has long disappeared which allowed Lula and others to spend generously. Today, inflation increases food and fuel prices and the threat of a global recession is looming.
The leftists also have to face the aggressive policy of global superpower in the region.
President Trump has suppressed migration and has repeatedly threatened countries through Latin America with prices, recently saying that he would preserve 50% of Brazil import taxes, citing a “witch hunt” against Jair Bolsonaro, the former far -right president, who is tried to have recovered a coup.
In Mexico, whose economy is largely based on exports to the United States, Trump threatens prices of 30% on Mexican imports unless the country no longer does to fight drug trafficking and migration.
The new taxes should come into force on Friday, just as the congress meets in Mexico City. Perhaps to avoid Antagoniser Trump by appearing alongside the eminent democrats, Sheinbaum will not participate in the event, although she can officially welcome her guests, and the eminent members of the Morena party will participate.
Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum greets her supporters at Zocalo, or Central Square, in Mexico City in March.
(Gerardo Vieyra / Nurphoto via Getty Images)
The left has undergone a number of losses recently. Kamala Harris lost against Trump. In Argentina, Firebrand, the far right, Milei has held a promise to privatize a large part of the government. Brazil surveys suggest that Lula is far from being as popular as she once went to the presidential vote next year. .
But if these changes reflect real ideological changes in the region are to be debated.
Many see the pendulum that swings from left to right as a characteristic of politics in the hemisphere, where voters often claim change. From 2018 until 2023, some two dozen national elections went against the outgoing party.
“For about 15 years now, there has been practically no government through the continent that has been re -elected,” said Jackson. “These are very difficult conditions for any part.”
Significantly, there will be no representatives during the event of this week in Venezuela, Nicaragua or Cuba, countries with leftist leaders who have taken authoritarian turns.
Bosworth said it was the responsibility of the left to address these repressive governments, especially Venezuela, where more than 6 million people have fled political, economic and humanitarian crises in recent years.
“Venezuela is the big failure of the left in Latin America, and it has trouble going beyond,” he said. “If this movement will do anything, they cannot ignore the fact that Venezuela exists.”
