LATIN AMERICA — When Colombians return to the polls on June 21, they will do more than choose a president. They may decide whether Latin America’s most consequential political realignment in a generation becomes irreversible.
Right-wing outsider Abelardo de la Espriella stunned the region on Sunday by winning Colombia’s presidential first round with 43.7% of the vote, setting up a runoff against leftist Senator Iván Cepeda. If de la Espriella wins, Colombia — the fourth-largest economy in Latin America — would join a sweeping regional shift that has systematically dismantled the left’s grip on power across the hemisphere.
The scale of what is happening is historic. Since April 2025, voters in Ecuador, Bolivia, Honduras, Chile, and Costa Rica have all elected right-wing or conservative leaders. Argentina’s midterm elections in 2025 further boosted far-right President Javier Milei’s party. In less than a year, five right-wing governments came to power across the region.
According to Latinobarómetro, the proportion of Latin Americans who identify as belonging to the center-right has been higher since 2024 than at any point in more than two decades. Political scientists speak of a possible “conservative turn” of historic proportions — comparable with earlier regional shifts such as the military dictatorships of the 1970s, the wave of democratization in the 1980s, and the left-leaning Pink Tide that began in the early 2000s.
Colombia, long a battleground between left and right, now stands at the center of that transformation.
The Domino Effect
A de la Espriella victory would produce a political map with no precedent in recent Latin American history. For the first time in over two decades, the three largest economies in South America — Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia — would simultaneously be governed by the political right.
An unbroken line of right-wing governments already runs from Ecuador south through Peru to Argentina. Colombia, along with Venezuela, Brazil, and Uruguay, currently sits on the other side of that divide. A Colombian swing to the right would dramatically extend that line northward and isolate the remaining left-wing governments in the region.
De la Espriella has openly modeled himself on Argentina’s Milei and El Salvador’s Bukele — two leaders who turned crime, economic frustration, and rejection of the traditional political system — or the partidocracia — into electoral dominance.
His platform of security-first governance, economic liberalization, and closer alignment with Washington follows the same script that has proven effective from Santiago to San Salvador.
Chile’s December 2025 election of right-wing candidate José Antonio Kast, with 58.2% of the vote, was described as reinforcing a regional trend marked by the erosion of progressive projects and the advance of right-wing alternatives campaigning on hardline positions on security, economic policy, and governance.
The Catalyst
Across country after country, the same three forces are powering the right’s rise: crime and insecurity, economic exhaustion, and the governance failures of the post-Pink Tide left.
In Colombia, all three are present in acute form. The Petro government’s “total peace” strategy — which sought negotiated ceasefires with armed groups — is widely seen as having strengthened criminal organizations rather than weakened them.
The Petro administration’s de-emphasis of coca eradication coincided with record cocaine production. The government’s ceasefire negotiations with illegally armed groups may have bolstered the power of such groups and fueled violence. Political violence marred the election campaign itself, with the crisis reaching a climax in a high-profile assassination of Senator and presidential candidate Miguel Uribe Trubay at a rally in June 2025.
The right’s rise stems from profound social discontent and growing rejection of hard-leftist models that for years governed in a populist, clientelistic, and in many cases authoritarian manner, à la Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. Petro’s tenure — marked by corruption scandals, deteriorating public order, a troubled health care overhaul, and strained international relations — has made it difficult for Cepeda to separate himself from his patron’s record.
Analysts had predicted Colombia’s shift was coming. “Colombia has historically had more right-wing governments than left-wing ones,” one analyst told UPI ahead of Sunday’s vote. “President Petro has been widely criticized, making it difficult for his political coalition to retain power.” Another added:
“Colombia’s government has been politically close to Maduro, and it is now paying the cost of that position.”
Brazil
The most consequential domino, however, has not yet fallen. Brazil — the largest economy in Latin America and the ninth largest in the world — holds its presidential election on October 2, 2026.
According to a recent study by consulting firm Atlas Intel, voters are split almost evenly between President Lula da Silva at 46.2% and Flávio Bolsonaro at 46.3 percent. The Trump administration’s designation of Brazil’s PCC and Comando Vermelho as foreign terrorist organizations — announced onThursday at the explicit request of Flávio Bolsonaro following a White House meeting — has already handed the right a potent campaign issue heading into October.
A D La Espriella win on June 21 would add further momentum to Bolsonaro’s campaign, reinforcing the regional narrative that the left’s era in South America is ending.
The Limits of the Trend
The right's regional dominance is not total, and the durability of the shift remains an open question.
Mexico, the region’s second-largest economy, remains firmly under the left. President Claudia Sheinbaum, who succeeded Andrés Manuel López Obrador, governs with strong approval ratings and a consolidated congressional majority.
Venezuela, under acting President Delcy Rodríguez, remains technically outside the democratic framework entirely. Uruguay’s left-wing Frente Amplio returned to power in 2024.
Brazil’s left-wing President Lula da Silva remains well-positioned despite the competitive polling, with analysts warning that U.S. interference in Brazil’s election could backfire.
There is also the question of whether right-wing governments can deliver on their central promise. Bukele’s security crackdown in El Salvador, widely celebrated regionally, has drawn sustained criticism from human rights organizations over mass detentions and due process violations. Milei’s economic shock therapy in Argentina has produced significant short-term hardship even as inflation has fallen. The model is popular — but its long-term democratic and economic sustainability remains contested.
June 21 & Beyond
De la Espriella enters the runoff as a heavy favorite. With Uribe’s Democratic Center and other right-wing factions consolidated behind him, the arithmetic strongly favors the challenger.
Cepeda, who trails by roughly 650,000 votes from the first round, faces the same structural disadvantage that has defeated the left across the region: a right-wing electorate that is motivated, unified, and angry.
If he wins, De La Espriella will not merely be Colombia’s next president. He will be the latest confirmation that Latin America’s political center of gravity has shifted — and that the Pink Tide, which once reshaped the hemisphere, has receded for a generation.
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