Elections in Latin America and their impact on the future balance of power in the region
In 2025, many Latin American countries – Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Honduras and Bolivia - will hold presidential elections and Argentina will elect members of parliament. They will largely determine the political path of these countries for the next 4-5 years, especially on such important issues for the countries of the Latin American region as relations with the United States, orientation towards Brazil or Argentina, as well as cooperation with China against the background of increasing contradictions between China and the United States. At stake is a political orientation towards the right-wing circles of the US, which is supported by the liberal-conservative parties of Latin American countries, or deepening cooperation with the BRICS countries and China in particular, which is advocated by the leftist and progressive parties and their candidates.
Moreover, for more than 30 years, Latin America has remained an economically promising region that, however, has been unable to realize its full potential due to unstable governments, controversial economic decisions, and a lack of investment in industry and human capital. The current geopolitical environment may well be another chance for Latin American countries to stake their claim as major regional players capable of shaping their own policies.
Political situation in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Honduras and Chile before the elections
The problems of all Latin American countries are similar in many ways. Most South American countries have a history of authoritarian rule and militaristic dictatorships (especially Brazil and Argentina), are trying to find their own way, taking radical left or radical right paths, and are implementing contradictory economic reforms resulting in growing social stratification. On the foreign policy circuit, Latin American countries are considered to be the “fiefdom” or sphere of influence of the U.S., but over the past 30 years, many governments have tried to gain greater subjectivity in international affairs through cooperation, primarily with China and Russia, as well as with EU countries. It is also important to note that the internal political situation in all analyzed countries of Latin America is far from stable, with the exception of Chile, which, along with Uruguay, is one of the most prosperous countries in Latin America in terms of economic development and living standards.
This year, elections at various levels will be held in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Honduras and Chile. Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Honduras and Chile will elect a president. This time it will be the representatives of left-progressive political parties who will confirm the correctness of their course, since in Bolivia, Honduras and Chile the power is now in the hands of “leftist” presidents. In turn, right-wing political circles will confront the socialists and leftists in Ecuador and Argentina – in the latter in parliamentary elections, not presidential elections.
In Argentina, the parliamentary elections will essentially be a vote of confidence for President Javier Milei and his neoliberal economic course. Recent events in the country related to the alleged fraudulent activities of the country's President J. Milei in the cryptocurrency market could seriously deteriorate the political image of his coalition La Libertad Avanza (meaning “Freedom is coming” in Spanish). About a week ago, J. Milei faced accusations in the so-called “Libra Case”. Libra is a cryptocurrency which value skyrocketed shortly after a post published by Milei on platform X, in which he guaranteed millions of dollars in profits to investors. Libra's value collapsed shortly afterward, and defrauded investors even filed complaints with police departments across the country, including metropolitan ones in Buenos Aires. The opposition, representing various leftist, socialist and progressive parties, in turn, had the opportunity to score political points by criticizing Milei for his ties to the crypto community, which has a dubious reputation. Milei himself has promised an independent investigation that will involve anti-corruption authorities.
In Bolivia, the incumbent incumbent Luis Arce, a representative of the country's ruling party Movimiento al socialismo (MAS), is running for a second presidential term. This party has been in power for more than 15 years, and its most prominent member was (and is) former Bolivian President Evo Morales (2006-2019).
In 2019, amid protests and unrest in the country that began after the presidential election, E. Morales recognized numerous violations and fraud and was forced to resign from the presidency. At the same time, several criminal cases were opened against Morales, accusing the former president of sedition as well as trafficking in minors. The Constitutional Court disqualified Morales from running for the presidential elections three times in a row, but the latter is not refusing to run this time as well. In addition, he is still an influential figure in MAS and has many supporters throughout Bolivia, who are sympathetic to ideas about social equality, redistribution of the capitals of the richest people in Bolivia and the fight against neoliberals.
The factor of Morales and his highly controversial image (he is still popular among the people and is considered the “people's” president) weakens the position of the incumbent president, which gives a chance to representatives of right-wing and center-right political circles. Thus, the main opposition to MAS from the right-wing circles is the “Unity Bloc”, which was created by former presidents Jorge Quiroga and Carlos Mesa together with businessman Samuel Doria Medina – the Bloc's candidate for president. S. Medina favors privatization of state-owned companies, constitutional reform, and entry into development and aid programs under the auspices of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Given these positions, it is not surprising that Medina and the Bolivian right are highly sympathetic to Argentine’s President J. Milei.
Manfred Reyes Villa, the former mayor of Cochabamba, one of Bolivia's largest cities, has also confirmed his participation in the presidential election. Villa does not consider himself a follower of either left-wing or right-wing views. He insists on the transition from a socialist economy to a mixed model, and calls for order in the country (protests and clashes organized by supporters of E. Morales still continue in Bolivia). At the same time, Villa is skeptical of the idea of the right-wing to accept the terms of the World Bank or IMF in exchange for loans.
In Chile, the president is elected for a four-year term without the possibility of immediate re-election. Against the background of violent confrontations between supporters of different coalitions in neighboring countries and their authoritarian past and, of course, Chile, the ban on immediate re-election for the incumbent president slightly reduces the heat of controversy and ensures a more measured transit of power regardless of which party gets the presidency.
The ban on immediate re-election means that an incumbent president cannot run for election twice in a row. However, he can become a presidential candidate again after four years. Thus, Michelle Bachelet, representative of the left-wing coalition, held the office from 2006 to 2010 and from 2014 to 2018.
The incumbent president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, is now facing a drop in ratings amid slowing economic growth in the country. Although Boric is not facing a second term, high approval ratings are important for his center-left coalition ahead of the November elections. Therefore, at the moment there are active discussions in left-wing political circles regarding a promising candidate.
Against the backdrop of some decline of leftist parties in Chile, candidates from center-right and liberal parties are standing out. The conservative Republican Party of Chile has nominated Antonio Kast as its candidate. He had already run in the 2021 elections, but lost to G. Boric. Now, amid some failures of the leftist government and the rise to power in the United States of Donald Trump, interest in Kast's candidacy has intensified, with Chilean political media calling him one of the potentially strongest candidates. Like Trump, Kast is characterized by harsh statements, and over the past four years has become committed to extreme right-wing positions, especially in the social sphere.
The Liberal Party's nominee is Evelyn Matthei, a former member of Chile's Chamber of Deputies, Senate, and former head of Providencia, a commune (district) in Chile's capital Santiago. Her father was once an associate of Augusto Pinochet, and after Pinochet's defeat in the 1988 elections, helped ensure a peaceful transit of power. Matthei is less radical than Caste and is favored by young and middle-class voters. Matthei’s candidacy does not cause rejection among the older generation and wealthy citizens, as her program emphasizes the fight against organized crime.
In Honduras, presidential elections will be held at the end of November. In addition to voting for the future head of state, residents will vote for parliamentarians and mayors. Among the main contenders for the presidency are incumbent Defense Minister Rixi Moncata of the Liberty and Revival (Libre) party and Ana Garcia, wife of former Honduran President Juan Hernandez (2014-2022). Like her husband, she represents the National Party and right-wing conservative forces.
Currently in power is Xiomara Castro of the Liberty and Restructuring (Libre) party, which can be characterized as left-socialist. As president, Х. Castro moved toward rapprochement with China, practically breaking relations with Taiwan, and supported the election of N. Maduro as president of Venezuela. On the issue of recognizing the government of N. Maduro, Honduras is one of the few Latin American states that maintains relations with Venezuela and recognizes the results of the presidential election held in July 2024.
Х. Castro's policy is an irritant to the United States, which opposes Chinese expansion in the Southern Hemisphere. Also, with the arrival of D. Trump and Republican control of Congress, the campaign to deport illegal migrants, some of whom enter the United States from Honduras, has intensified in the United States. At the same time, Honduras, one of the poorest countries in Latin America, is heavily dependent on humanitarian aid from the U.S. and investment from China, but it is likely that Honduras will have to cooperate with the U.S. one way or another on the migrant issue. Without U.S. aid, the country risks sliding into civil war, which, combined with the highest levels of poverty and crime, could plunge Honduras into a state of humanitarian disaster.
Finally, Ecuador will hold a runoff presidential election on April 13. In a country with a highly charged domestic political situation and rampant crime and violence, the campaigning of both candidates has been fierce, and one of the presidential candidates, Fernando Villavicencio, has been assassinated.
The confrontation will be between current President Daniel Noboa, a right-wing advocate of cooperation with the U.S., and leftist Magdalena Gonzalez Alcivar. She previously worked with President Rafael Correa, who is currently in political flight, taking refuge in Belgium. Ecuador's current president D. Noboa is considered an advocate of liberal market reforms. His family fortune is earned from the fruit trade, mainly bananas, as Ecuador is the leading supplier of bananas to the world market.
It is worth noting that despite ideological differences, all 16 candidates running in the first round promised to fight hard against crime, the main problem for Ecuador. The country periodically imposes states of emergency and curfews, and various criminal groups linked to the drug mafia are operating in the country. Therefore, the main request of voters is to ensure a more or less acceptable level of security and protection from gangs.
Change in the balance of power after the elections
Based on the results of the analysis of the internal political situation in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador and Honduras, it can be concluded that the political orientation of these countries after the elections will mainly depend on the arrival of leftist or rightist forces, with the exception of Argentina, where a right-wing and libertarian president is already in power, and Chile, where the political and ideological predisposition of the authorities in general is not an obstacle to cooperation with both Western countries and the Global South.
In these contexts, the question of continuing the economic or infrastructure projects that were initiated in these countries under previous governments often arises. In these conditions, perhaps the most interesting is the fate of the Russian-Bolivian lithium mining project, which could change if more pro-American forces come to power in Bolivia and want to establish a dialog with the Republican administration in the White House, which is now obsessed with the idea of reviving American industry and gaining a foothold in the microelectronics market.
Both require lithium to expand production capacity in high-tech sectors of the economy, and Bolivia is a country with rich lithium deposits. In December 2023, Bolivian President Luis Arce signed a $450 million deal with Russian state-owned Uranium One Group to produce key components for batteries and electric vehicles. Under the terms of the agreement, the Russian company's parent company, Rosatom, will invest in Bolivia over two years by building a lithium plant in the south of the country. China is also interested in Bolivian lithium and is also willing to participate in the project. In general, the cost of the Russian-Bolivian project is estimated at $1 billion.
23 million tons are the approximate reserves of lithium in Bolivia. Together with Argentina and Chile, Bolivia forms the so-called “lithium triangle” - as the main lithium reserves in South America are concentrated on the territory of these countries
The Bolivian government plans to export 50,000 tons of lithium carbonate per year to make the country an important player in the global lithium supply chain, especially for electric vehicle batteries. The only theoretically possible threat to the project is a change of ideological vector in Bolivia, which now tends to favor Russia, BRICS, China and the multipolar world in general, and a blatantly expansionist policy on the part of the U.S., which has recently been hatching plans to accumulate cheap resources from dependent countries.
As for the other countries, Honduras and Ecuador have sought to expand economic cooperation with China over the past two years. This may now be jeopardized or curtailed amid US demands. The U.S. undoubtedly has many levers of pressure on these countries, ranging from humanitarian aid to the possibility of military intervention.
With the arrival of D. Trump, the attention of the U.S. administration to the problematic countries of the Latin American continent has increased: both Honduras and Ecuador have long played the role of transshipment points for drug mafia, gangs and other participants of the shadow market. In addition, waves of illegal migration to the U.S. are coming from these countries, which is now being fiercely fought by trampists. If China does not increase its pressure on Ecuador and Honduras, but prefers to follow a more cautious policy, the current U.S. administration may take this as a sign of weakness and increase its pressure. Even with the prospect of a theoretical “partition of the world” between the U.S. and China, as political analysts have recently begun to talk about, the U.S. is unlikely to tolerate China's active presence in its zone of influence.
Elections in Latin American countries this year will show in which direction the society and elites of these countries wish to move - toward a multipolar world or predominantly in the U.S. zone of influence. The best chances of maintaining the multipolar vector of development can be predicted in Bolivia, where lithium projects with the participation of Russia and China are beneficial for the local population. At the same time, one should not discount the possibility of political instability in Bolivia, given the highly controversial legacy of former President Evo Morales, who is currently under investigation.
Ecuador and Honduras are examples of classically unstable Latin American countries, where the situation is complicated by uncontrolled crime rates, humanitarian crises and mass migrations of local residents. New forces coming to power there may provoke a new round of political instability, regardless of whether these forces are pro-American or not. It is possible that indirect intervention of the Americans could even help to quell crime, since the U.S. is now campaigning against crime and illegal migration, and this requires control in countries that are not direct sources of this migration. Most likely, the U.S. will actively push back China here.
Argentina already has a kind of admirer of right-wing and libertarian ideas in power, and as long as right-wing forces are in power in the US, Milei's policies are likely to receive some outside support. A similar situation is highly likely to play out in Chile, where leftist parties are now on the sidelines, and the main presidential candidates are at least not opposed to increased cooperation with the U.S., but also do not seek to close themselves off from the Global South.
