Keiko Fujimori wins in Peru – and Latin America moves further to the right

The announcement was a weeks of head-to-head racing preceded: In the end, there were fewer than 50,000 votes between the two candidates – out of a total of 27 million eligible voters. Fujimori, who was first lady at the age of 19, will take office on July 28.

Shift to the right in the region

That fits the picture. With Fujimori’s victory in Peru, 13 of the past 16 presidential elections in Latin America have taken place Right-of-center candidates won. It wasn’t until the end of June that things started Colombia the right-wing candidate Abelardo de la Espriella after four years of left-wing government Ivan Cepeda through. Argentina, Paraguay and Ecuador have had right-wing presidents (again) since 2023, Chile, Bolivia and Honduras since 2025/26. The only exceptions are – apart from the left-wing dictatorships in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela – Brazil (where elections take place in autumn), Uruguay, Guatemala and Mexico.

The ideological spectrum of the heads of state ranges from moderate to radical. What many have in common is a strong focus on security policy and illegal migration. Often serves Nayib Bukeleautocratic president of El Salvadoras a role model. He describes himself as the “coolest dictator in the world” and, in the fight against gang crime in the small state, built mega-prisons and imprisoned tens of thousands of people without regular proceedings. Fujimori has also announced that he will take similar tough action against organized crime.

Many are also united by their loyalty to the US President Donald Trump: The Republican in the White House not only regularly speaks out in favor of right-wing candidates in Latin America. The proximity to Washington is also worthwhile militarily and economically: States in the region are heavily dependent on trade with the USA, and the fear of Trump’s tariff policy is correspondingly great. Allies can also hope for direct support: In Argentina, for example, a billion-dollar financial injection helped the president Javier Miley about the midterm elections.

Steven Levitskprofessor at the US elite Harvard University, speaks to the news agency Reuters of an “unusual star constellation for Trump,” who explicitly defines Latin America as a US area of ​​influence in the new National Security Strategy. Rarely have we seen “such a large number of governments that are as ideologically close to one another as they are at the moment.”

“Pendel-Continent”

However, some observers doubt that this represents a major ideological shift among voters. Latin America, that’s how it describes it Henning Suhr from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which is close to the CDU, remains a “pendulum continent”: “Voters often punish incumbent governments if they see them as failing – regardless of their ‘ideological color’.” But one thing is clear: polarization and personalization are increasing on the continent (as in other regions of the world). Many elections have been decided very narrowly between the far left and the far right, and traditional centrist parties are losing importance.

According to Latin America experts Christopher Sabatini There is great frustration that previous governments have failed to ensure better social systems, the fight against social inequality and more security, as he said in Foreign Policy analyzed. Corruption scandals have also damaged trust in established parties.

But new governments also quickly come under pressure. In Chile, the ultra-conservative president’s poll numbers are low José Antonio Kast crashed a few weeks after taking office. In Bolivia Citizens’ anger erupted just months after he took office Christian Democrat Rodrigo Paz in weeks of protests and blockades in the capital La Paz.

And for Fujimori, too, the signs point to turbulence: the political situation in Peru is characterized by a constant conflict between parliament and the government. It is not for nothing that the Andean country has had eight presidents in the past ten years.