The Washington Post has an interesting article about the political happenings going on in South America: "Gustavo's Petro's Win in Colombia Is Latest Leftward Shift in Latin America."
As the author of the article, Samantha Schmidt, relates, many of the recent presidential elections in Latin America are electing what most would consider liberal leaders.
Another big election to watch is the Brazil one, an election that will hopefully unseat a Covid nincompoop.
Schmidt provides the skinny: "All eyes are now on Brazil, the largest country in Latin America, where former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva leads polls to unseat President Jair Bolsonaro in October. A Lula victory would mean all of the largest countries in the region, including Mexico and Argentina, are led by leftist presidents. From Bogota to Santiago, many voters are no longer buying the argument that a swing to the left will mean a government run by the likes of Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro.
And Schmidt offers the differences between past candidates and these newer ones: "And that's partly because today's leftist leaders look and sound very different from those of the past, at least in the case of Petro and Boric. Instead of building an oil-rich economy -- the basis of neighboring Venezuela's ruinous socialist revolution -- they're looking to build a unified front against climate change. They're tried to distance themselves from the machismo of previous leftist eras, winning power by promising to protect the rights of women, LGBTQ people, and Afro-indigenous communities. And they're backed by a young, politically engaged electorate [who] took to the streets in massive numbers in recent years to protest inequality."
My hope is what is happening in Latin America spreads northward to the US. But with the number of campaign signs touting insane politicians I see on a regular basis, I'm not confident that it will happen.
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