Our Monday Sociedad Media Now newsletter on the latest stories impacting regional Democracy in Latin America. From Peru’s controversial vote count — to Colombia’s upcoming presidential runoff. Here’s what’s next
Peru Is Still Counting — One Week After Presidential Election — And the Votes Are Close
LIMA, PERU — Five days after Peru’s June 7 presidential runoff — now eight days and counting — Keiko Fujimori leads Roberto Sánchez by just 600 votes out of 18 million counted, a margin that has changed hands multiple times, that election authorities warn could take until mid-July to certify, and that is playing out through the exact same geographic and institutional dynamics that produced six weeks of post-electoral crisis in 2021, as a country that has cycled through nine presidents in a decade waits to find out whether its tenth will be decided by ballots or by lawyers.
María Corina Machado Is Going Home — And Venezuela’s Democratic Future Goes With Her
Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado has announced she will return to Venezuelan before the end of 2026 and run for president — four months after the Trump administration sidelined her in favor of Maduro-era loyalist Delcy Rodríguez as interim president, declining to set any electoral timeline despite Machado’s argument that a free election could be organized in nine to ten months, leaving the hemisphere’s most consequential unresolved democracy story suspended between a Nobel laureate’s democratic mandate and a Washington calculation that prioritizes oil, stability, and migration management over the opposition leader whose people chose her by 70%.
How much longer will the Venezuelan people wait?
Six Days Before Colombia Votes, Here Is What Every Major Outside Power Wants
Six days before Colombia’s June 21 presidential runoff, every major external actor in the hemisphere is operating simultaneously on the outcome — Trump endorsed de la Espriella; Ecuador’s Noboa dropped a 100% tariff after a ten-minute phone call with the right-wing candidate; Russian disinformation infrastructure documented in 2022 remains active; Cuba faces the loss of its last South American diplomatic lifeline if de la Espriella wins; and Venezuela’s post-Maduro criminal network is calculating what each candidate means for cross-border impunity — as Colombia’s electoral institutions are asked to absorb all of it at once.
