'He won, BIG!" exulted Donald Trump on Truth Social, welcoming the victory of Abelardo De La Espriella, his preferred candidate for the presidency of Colombia, in the June 21 election. In fact, Mr De La Espriella won only very small, less than 1% ahead of his left-wing opponent in the popular vote, but he did win. But 1% is enough.
Meanwhile, in Peru, right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori won the vote count in Peru's presidential election. This leaves only four left-wing democratic governments still standing in all of Latin America, and two of them are very small: Uruguay and Guatemala. The 'pink tide' in the region's recent political history has definitely receded again.
Apart from the two giant hold-outs, Brazil and Mexico, Latin America is now almost wall-to-wall Trump-style populist regimes -- and Brazil's 80-year-old president, Luiz Inácio 'Lula' da Silva, could easily lose the presidential election in October. The polls consistently show him tied with right-wing populist Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the imprisoned former president.
