Anti-Trumpism in Latin America

Donald Trump has achieved something quite significant: He has established himself as the central axis of politics in Latin America. Today, taking a position in favor of or against him and his ideas is the new criterion for grouping together the various political factions, as well as the preferences of citizens.

The distinctive thing about this plebiscite on the president of the United States is that it is distributed very unequally between the two sides. The great majority of people in Latin America reject his style of politics.

In the four most recent polls conducted in Latin America in Chile, Mexico, Bolivia and Ecuador by the Latin American Strategic Center for Geopolitics in the past two months, we have observed that no fewer than 70% of the residents in each of these countries have a negative image of Trump. These percentages are in line with another study, by the Washington-based Pew Research Center, for Argentina (almost 70%) and Brazil (60%).

Within each country, regardless of which disaggregation criterion we used, there is not much difference among social groups, with rare exceptions. In Chile, for example, in the population that self-identifies as right-leaning and sees itself as upper class, the level of rejection of Trump is lower (62%-64%). In Bolivia, among those who voted for the ultraright Luis Fernando Camacho, we also found that Trump’s image was not so negative (50%). In Ecuador, among the upper class, on the right and with those opposed to former Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa, the positive image of Trump is growing.

Beyond those rare exceptions, anti-Trumpism is a phenomenon that cuts across normal boundaries; it is a new common feeling permeating all of Latin America. In a short time, it has even succeeded in displacing other ordering principles that were very much present in previous years. His meddling stance, his supremacist personality, his belligerent language, his anti-immigration policies and his near lack of empathy, even contempt, toward Latin America, have provoked a strong backlash in the region.

However, this animosity is out of sync with the close relationship several presidents have with Trump. This is the case with Jeanine Áñez Chávez (Bolivia), Lenín Moreno Garcés (Ecuador), Sebastián Piñera Echenique (Chile), Mario Abdo Benítez (Paraguay) and Iván Duque Márquez (Colombia). This has given rise to a complex dilemma that the conservative governments of the region have to deal with: how to reconcile the great extent to which they depend on the president of the United States with what the majority of their citizens think.

We are faced with a new axis that is reorganizing the political field and, consequently, also the electoral field. In his own way, Trump has succeeded in bringing together a large group of Latin American citizens who, for any other reason, surely would not have found common ground. At times, in politics, and in the electoral area in particular, scenarios are created in which majorities form in opposition to a common enemy, rather than being united in support of something positive.

This does not mean that anti-Trumpism is strong enough to make it the significant organizing principle of every political or electoral movement, the way the anti-Macri movement, for example, was in Argentina, or the way the growing rejection of the Chilean economic model is today. It is true that the emerging anti-Trumpism in Latin America does not have that power, but we should not underestimate it, because it represents a key piece in the development of a field of discourse favorable to progressivism.

Trump is not just a controversial and eccentric figure; he is also the symbol of an inefficient model of public policy directed against the people; institutions with a very low degree of governance; a failure in terms of the management of COVID-19 and a matrix of reactionary values. He is the leading exponent of an economic, cultural and social project, and he exerts a great influence on the pattern of behavior of the conservative political class. What will the leaders of the Latin American right do? Imitate Trump? Will they want to have their photo taken with him? Or will they be inclined to distance themselves from him, in line with the preferences of the citizens of Latin America?