“New winds of freedom are sweeping through the world,” proclaimed Argentine far-right President Javier Milei following Donald Trump’s win in the United States election last year. Milei, a self-described “anarcho-capitalist” and vocal supporter of Trump, has implemented a brutal neoliberal assault that has plunged millions into poverty.
Trump’s presidential victory comes in the context of emboldened far-right governments in Latin America, which are looking to foster closer links with each other.
Newly-appointed US secretary of state Marco Rubio said last April that the US “must draw inspiration from the new generation of potentially pro-America leaders in the Western Hemisphere”, referring to countries like El Salvador, Ecuador, Argentina and Peru.
In El Salvador, Nayib Bukele is an example of how the far right can entrench themselves in power. He became president in 2019 and was re-elected at the start of last year, despite violating the country’s constitutional limits barring consecutive presidential terms.
Since 2022, he has ruled under emergency powers that suspend human rights and grant the police and military wide-ranging powers, such as arresting people as young as 12 without warrants. As a result, El Salvador now has the highest incarceration rate in the world — one in every 57 Salvadorans are now in prison, many without a proper trial or right of appeal.
Bukele’s regime has essentially taken control of or destroyed the country’s public institutions, and wiped out opposition through harassment, arbitrary detention, forced disappearances and torture.
In Ecuador, President Daniel Noboa — the son of the country’s richest person — has ruled under a “state of emergency” since the start of last year to purportedly combat the rise in narco-related violence.
The sweeping powers granted to the military and police are contributing to the criminalisation of poor people, land defenders and anyone opposing the government’s neoliberal, extractivist agenda, and have caused horrific human rights violations. In December, the Ecuadorian military kidnapped, tortured and murdered four children in Guayaquil, which Noboa has refused responsibility for.
Noboa also ceded the country’s sovereignty through a series of treaties that allow the US military to use the Galápagos Islands with impunity, despite significant environmental and social concerns.
In Argentina, Milei has slashed public spending, attacked LGBTIQ rights and expanded extractivism through the program called Incentive Regime for Large Investments, which aims to attract foreign transnationals by offering tax benefits and legal protections.
Milei’s austerity raised the poverty rate by more than 15% within the first year of his presidency, with nearly 60% of the country’s population now living in poverty.
His regime has deployed brutal police repression against anti-government mobilisations and has proposed a series of laws to imprison protesters and criminalise protests.
He signed a decree in December that allows the military to take custody of “strategic targets”, namely nuclear plants, power plants, dams and radars, which accompanies the deployment of military forces to proposed mining sites.
In Peru, the authoritarian coup government has expanded attacks on LGBTIQ rights, deployed the military and police to kill anti-government protesters and increasingly fostered links to organised crime groups that are responsible for widespread killings and extortion.
Mano dura
A common thread joining Latin America’s far-right governments is the normalisation of an increasingly militarised, criminalised approach to security, known as “mano dura” (“iron fist”). This is heavily supported by the US military-industrial complex, which is the biggest donor, equipper and trainer to Latin America’s militaries.
Given this context of far-right, authoritarian regimes in Latin America, what are the implications of Trump being at the helm of the world’s biggest military and economic power?
While the Joe Biden administration was undoubtedly a pro-capitalist, anti-worker government — and almost indistinguishable from Trumpist policies towards migration, unions and support for genocidal Israel — the election of Trump has already brought an escalation of harsh border policies, geopolitical aggression and attacks on migrants.
Trump signed a series of anti-migrant executive orders on January 20, the first day of his presidency, which seek to: ban birthright citizenship, which is already being legally challenged; deploy military resources for border policies; and reinstate his barbaric “Remain in Mexico” policy that forces asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while they await court hearings in the US.
The US government has already begun deporting planes full of migrants to Colombia and Honduras.
Trump’s threat to deport millions more Latin American refugees is a violation of the human right to seek asylum. Many have fled poverty, violence and suffering that is a direct result of US foreign policy in the region.
Laura Capote, secretariat member of ALBA Movimientos, blamed US imperialist policies for the migration crisis.
“The great phenomenon of migration to the United States is nothing more than the consequence of the impoverishment of living conditions in the regions of Central America,” she said, “as well as of an extractivist and violent economic policy through which coups d’état and private groups that caused terror among the local population are financed”.
The US government’s harsh sanctions, attempted coups and other forms of destabilisation, committed in the name of US imperial interests, continue to hang over Latin America. And the US government’s imperialist attitude towards its “backyard” hasn’t changed.
‘Manifest Destiny’
During his inaugural speech on January 20, Trump invoked the 19th-century colonial doctrine of “Manifest Destiny”, which is the belief in the inevitable expansion of US territory. It was first used to justify the western expansion of settler-colonialism and genocide of First Nations people, and later US imperialism in Latin America.
Trump also made several bellicose statements concerning Latin America, threatening that he would “take back” the Panama Canal and rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”. This triggered mobilisations by trade unions and social movements in Panama City denouncing Trump’s imperialist threats.
Much of Trump’s aggressive rhetoric is just that — and there is doubt that the US would be able to pull off a military invasion, as they did in 1885 to take control of the Panama isthmus, and again in 1989 to secure control of the canal.
However, the expected harsh escalation of existing sanctions against countries like Cuba and Venezuela will have devastating humanitarian impacts. US economic sanctions were responsible for an estimated 40,000 deaths in Venezuela in 2017‒18, along with causing food insecurity for millions.
More broadly, the election of Trump represents an emboldening of the far right in the Americas, which will seek to forge alliances to advance their agendas.
The US government’s huge economic power in setting the terms of global trade, particularly through its control of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, has the potential to bolster Trump’s allies and attack his enemies in Latin America.
Trump’s two closest allies in Latin America are Milei and Bukele — the only presidents from the region invited to his inauguration ceremony.
This month, Trump called Bukele a “model” for other countries in the Western Hemisphere, no doubt referring to his inhumane approach to crime.
Trump has called Milei his “favourite president”, and the right-wing press are already clamouring for the US government to follow his lead on economic policy.
“We have made ourselves available to President Trump … to share what we have learned,” Milei said this month, referring to his dismantling of more than 900 regulations and gutting of the public sector.
Grassroots resistance
Despite facing brutal repression, people have increasingly resisted far-right governments’ attempts to destroy their living conditions and human rights.
Argentines have continually taken to the streets in protest of Milei’s anti-people reforms, marking some of the biggest demonstrations in Argentina’s recent history. In particular, a million-strong student movement has mobilised against the Milei government’s slashing of the public university system.
Workers in Peru, defying police and military brutality, went on multiple strikes at the end of last year against the government’s criminalisation of the right to protest and links to organised crime and failure to take action against worsening extortion and violence.
Land defenders in Ecuador are resisting Noboa’s agenda of opening up new sites for extractivism, particularly for minerals and oil, as well as the protesting the government’s handling of the country’s energy crisis that resulted in up to 14-hour blackouts in some regions.
The protests across the US and the world following Trump’s inauguration show that people are willing to resist his far-right agenda.