LATIN AMERICA VEERS RIGHT
Latin America, composed of South America, Central America and the Caribbean, is one of the major territorial and populational divisions of the world. But you wouldn’t know it from the news coverage it gets in the US, largely confined to US policy in the area, its natural resources, natural disasters, music, and football (soccer). US concerns are squarely focused on the temperate zones of the Americas, Europe and Asia.
In recent years, Latin American elections and politics have swung to the populist right, the emphasis being on a tough attitude toward crime, economic insuffi-ciencies, and friendliness to Trump’s US. Bukele’s El Salvador, with its teeming prisons and safe streets, is touted as an example for the right. Only the two most populous nations in Latin America, Brazil (pop.214 million) and Mexico (pop.133 million) have resisted the rightward trend, and Brazil is teetering.
The basic problems of Latin America have to do with extreme economic inequality, inadequate education systems, and lack of economic opportunity--all reasons, it should be noted, for Latin Americans to try to get to the US for a better standard of living. But the answer to Latin America’s problems is not filling prisons nor emigration to the US. It is social and economic reform.
Sources: New Lines, 8/5/26 and U. of Miami News @ The U, 7/20/26