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At the opening of the 2020s, Latin America appeared to be on an irreversible leftward trajectory. Fueled by widespread public anger over deep-seated systemic inequalities that were drastically worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, progressive leaders won power across most of the region’s largest economies, from Brazil and Chile to Colombia and Peru. But just a few years later, a sharp conservative political backlash is gaining momentum across the continent.

While overall homicide rates across most of Latin America have fallen compared to 10 years ago, sharp upticks in violent crime in key nations and a region-wide surge in non-violent offending, particularly gang-led extortion, have created a perfect political opening for right-wing populists. These candidates have mobilized voters by leaning into hardline, heavy-handed promises to crack down on both organized crime and irregular migration, borrowing a playbook popularized by El Salvador’s authoritarian President Nayib Bukele. Their inflammatory rhetoric framing migrants as inherent criminals has earned the public backing of former U.S. President Donald Trump, and energized alienated voter bases, even as human rights observers warn these policies risk widespread abuses and undermine democratic institutions.

Enrique Roig, vice president of the Washington-based non-profit Human Rights First and a former U.S. State Department official, notes that a new coordinated cross-regional right wing has emerged, aligned with the U.S. MAGA movement that has also weaponized public anxiety over crime to drive political mobilization. “It’s easier to sell locking people up than it is to deal with the reasons why mainly young men join gangs in countries like El Salvador,” Roig explained.

Adam Isacson, director of defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, points out that while populist politics have found traction across the ideological spectrum in recent years, only right-wing candidates have been able to offer short-term security fixes that promise voters they will “feel safer in six months” — even if that requires trading democratic norms and human rights protections. Left-leaning proposals, by contrast, center on long-term, structural solutions such as community violence intervention programs, improved police training, and comprehensive judicial and prison reform that take years to deliver tangible results.

“It’s absolutely what you’re supposed to be doing, but people’s patience runs out,” Isacson said. “So, there come the Bukeles of the world saying, ‘You want to feel better? We got this.’”

Across the region, right-wing candidates aligned with this tough-on-crime agenda have already surged to front-runner status or won office. In Colombia, where large swathes of rural territory have fallen back into armed conflict between government forces and rebel groups, pro-Trump businessman Abelardo de la Espriella has led polls ahead of the upcoming presidential runoff election, modeling his platform explicitly on Bukele’s agenda. In Peru, where extortion cases have grown fivefold over the past half-decade, Keiko Fujimori — daughter of disgraced authoritarian former President Alberto Fujimori — advanced to the June 7 presidential runoff on a hardline law-and-order platform, vowing to deploy the military to prisons and border regions. In Costa Rica, voters reeling from record drug-linked homicides elected conservative populist Laura Fernández in February on the same tough-on-crime platform, while in Honduras, businessman Nasry Asfura won December’s election after Trump endorsed him as a partner to fight “narco-communists.”

Data from InSight Crime, a think tank focused on organized crime across the Americas, shows that the combined average homicide rate for Latin America and the Caribbean dropped by more than 5% in 2025 compared to 2024, with the regional median rate hitting 17.6 per 100,000 people. But the trend masks dangerous exceptions in key cocaine-producing and transit nations. Colombia and Peru, the world’s two largest cocaine producers, along with neighboring Ecuador, which has become a key trafficking gateway to European markets, have all seen sharp spikes in drug-related killings. In 2025, Peru recorded 2,400 homicides and Colombia reported 14,780, the highest annual totals for both countries since at least 2020. Ecuador saw a staggering 31% year-over-year rise in killings, hitting 9,216 total homicides.

Much of this soaring violence in Ecuador stems from the expansion of transnational cartels from Mexico, Colombia, and the Balkans, which expanded their operations during the pandemic and recruited local gang members to control trafficking routes. Disputes over territory have even spilled into the country’s prison system, where more than 1,000 inmates have been killed in targeted attacks since 2021. While Ecuador recorded 16,100 reported extortion cases in 2025, down from 23,000 in 2024, experts widely note the crime is drastically underreported across the region.

In Chile, long considered one of Latin America’s most stable and safe countries, the shift in political tides has been particularly dramatic. Four years ago, voters rejected ultra-conservative candidate José Antonio Kast to elect Gabriel Boric, a young progressive former student activist who campaigned on addressing Chile’s long-standing social inequalities. But last year, widespread public fear over rising crime — amplified by popular narratives linking the surge to the country’s growing Venezuelan migrant population — handed Kast a historic victory.

Venezuelan transnational criminal groups such as the Tren de Aragua gang have exploited the mass migration wave out of Venezuela to expand human trafficking and extortion networks across the region following the pandemic. In Chile, this has led to an unprecedented surge in carjackings, kidnappings, and gang shootouts. Chile’s Interior Ministry data shows the national homicide rate rose 30% between 2021 and 2022, peaking at 6.7 per 100,000 people. While the rate has declined slightly since, it remains well above pre-pandemic levels, and other violent crimes continue to climb: kidnappings have risen nearly 180% over the past four years.

During his campaign, Kast visited Bukele’s notorious mega-prisons in El Salvador and adopted the Salvadoran leader’s hardline playbook, handily defeating his left-wing opponent in December. He pledged to build a massive border wall, toughen prison conditions for gang members, and deport hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants. Voters largely overlooked his hardline stances against abortion and same-sex marriage, as well as his public defense of Augusto Pinochet’s brutal military dictatorship, in exchange for his promise of rapid public safety gains.

In Peru, Keiko Fujimori has similarly leveraged public anxiety over rising violent crime to stage a political comeback, four years after she lost the presidency to left-wing leader Pedro Castillo, who is now imprisoned on corruption charges. Campaigning under the slogan “Peru with Order,” Fujimori won the largest share of the vote in April’s first round of voting, and entered the June 7 runoff in a technical tie with Roberto Sánchez, Castillo’s political heir.

Experts warn that growing public support for these authoritarian-leaning security policies — a tradition long tied to 20th-century right-wing dictatorships across the region — has grown alongside collapsing public trust in state institutions and rising disillusionment with democratic governance. Eduardo Moncada, director of the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University, explains the prevailing public mindset: “democracy hasn’t been able to keep me and my family safe, so maybe democracy is part of the problem.”

This shift poses a major existential challenge to the region’s left-wing governments, which have overseen sluggish economic growth, grappled with high-profile corruption scandals, and failed to deliver on landmark promises of social reform in recent years. Even progressive leaders have been forced to shift with the changing political tide: Chile’s progressive Jeannette Jara and Peru’s Sánchez have both softened their stances on security policy, while Uruguayan President Yamandú Orsi has called Bukele’s authoritarian security model “worthy of further study.” Guatemala’s center-left government declared a national state of emergency to crack down on gang violence this year and has accepted security assistance from the Trump-aligned U.S. administration targeting drug traffickers.

But for newly elected leaders who campaigned on rapid hardline security change, the realities of governing large, cash-strapped democracies have quickly tempered their ambitions — a reality that stands in stark contrast to Bukele’s El Salvador, where his ruling party holds a legislative supermajority that allows him to enact policy without opposition.

Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa, elected in 2023, campaigned on a promise to lock gang leaders in floating prison barges and build a network of mega-prisons. But after taking office, he abandoned the floating prison plan entirely, and it took his administration until November of last year to open the first mega-prison. Beatriz García Nice, a policy analyst at the Washington-based Stimson Center, explained that “Building mega-prisons hasn’t been that easy or that straightforward because the country is in a very bad state financially and because President Daniel Noboa still sees himself as a democrat.”

Nearly three months into Kast’s tenure as Chile’s president, public opinion has grown skeptical: most voters report they cannot see any difference between his security crackdown and the policies of his left-wing predecessor. After promising to immediately round up and expel the country’s more than 300,000 undocumented migrants, his government has only organized two deportation flights. Kast’s public rhetoric has softened noticeably, and he sparked widespread outrage last month when he described his mass deportation promise as “a metaphor.” Even during a June 1 address rolling out new security measures — including a ban on social benefits for people convicted of attacking police — he sought to lower supporters’ inflated expectations.

“Governing, as many of you know, means taking responsibility for reality, especially when it’s difficult,” Kast said. “I’m proceeding step by step because this isn’t something that happens overnight.”