Donald Trump has made no secret of his admiration for elected, populist autocrats, such as President Recep Erdogan in Turkey or President Victor Orban in Hungary. That affinity for elected strongmen extends to Latin America as well.
In some cases, as with former president of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro, it includes extensive connections with his family and advisors. Bolsonaro has been sure to maintain links with Trump while out of power, participating in 2024’s annual pro-Trump Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
Also attending that event was right-wing president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele. Trump has both praised and criticized Bukele, but his pick for US attorney general, Matt Gaetz, visited El Salvador in June with Donald Trump Jnr, lauding Bukele’s approach.
Argentine President Javier Milei, long an admirer, was the first president to visit Trump following his November election victory. Milei’s withdrawal of negotiators from the COP29 summit (he has called climate change a ‘socialist lie’) is the kind of signal of which the president-elect will approve.
As Trump begins his new term of office, he is likely to look to these leaders as the fulcrum around which his administration builds its policy, not just in the region but also toward China and perceived threats to US dominance. That network will also likely extend not just to existing presidents but also to emerging leaders and movements formed in the same mould as Make America Great Again.
Trump’s close relations with these presidents and politicians will be ideological and personal, shifting White House policy to partisan support for outsider, nationalist populists inspired by him. In Latin America and the Caribbean, a region scarred by US meddling, Washington’s intervention will now likely be in the service of a personalistic and narrowly ideological vision.
Birds of a feather
It is ironic that a region often – offensively – characterized as a political culture that embraces the ‘man on horseback’ is now mimicking a modern version of it made in the US.
The list of outsider, populist autocrats from both left and right in Latin American history is a long one: Porfirio Díaz in Mexico, Juan Perón in Argentina, Getúlio Vargas in Brazil, Fidel Castro in Cuba, Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Alberto Fujimori in Peru, Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, or Evo Morales in Bolivia, to name just a few.
The ‘Trumpista’ wave in the Americas will be different. For one, there is a loosely shared parallel trajectory, beyond any personal or ideological affinities. Whether it’s Milei, Bolsonaro or Bukele their arrivals on the political scene have all been remarkably similar.
Like Trump, all came from outside the traditional political elite, tapping into and defining a wave of popular discontent. Like Trump, they rail against the supposed mainstreaming of leftist ideology and mainstream media. All have been inspired by Trump’s mastery in using media, both traditional and modern, to project their personalities and outsider status to a frustrated populace.
Dangerous forces
The dangers to democracy and justice they present are real. At the last count, El Salvadoran President Bukele had arrested more than 81,000 citizens, after the government declared a state of siege in 2022. More than 1 per cent of the population remains behind bars. The crackdown was made possible when Bukele marched the military into the country’s legislature to intimidate the congress to pass his draconian security laws.
The popularity of his iron fisted strategies led to the election of his party, Nuevas Ideas, to a majority in the congress and the packing of the Supreme Court. The court swiftly approved a constitutional amendment to allow Bukele to run for a second term. Attacks against independent media have become standard – operators of online investigative site Faro, for example, were forced to flee for fear of repression.
In Argentina, President Milei has enjoyed early success in beginning to tame the country’s raging inflation. For now that has maintained his popularity, and he has demonstrated a surprising willingness to negotiate with opposition legislators to pass his reforms. But he also has a history of assailing the media and political opponents, threatening to crack down on protests, and even to rule by emergency decree if the national congress blocks his proposed economic reforms.
The greatest Trump acolyte south of the US border is likely Bolsonaro, president of Brazil between 2019 and 2022. Bolsonaro railed against LGBTQI and indigenous rights and mocked feminists. After losing the election in 2022 he denounced the results as fraudulent, mobilizing his supporters for an insurrection in attempt to overturn his defeat at the ballot box, echoing the events of 6 January 2021.
Though out of power and banned from competing in the next elections in 2027, Bolsonaro’s party has gained ground in local elections and remains a powerful force in Brazil’s Congress.
A cohesive alliance?
The one view that all these Trumpista leaders share is a disregard for national and international checks on executive power. The resulting risk is that the White House under Trump, following the president’s transactional approach, overlooks human rights violations and consolidation of power by leaders to whom it is sympathetic – especially if they cooperate on issues like migration.
In the process a new Trump administration threatens to help undermine regional institutions intended to defend citizens’ rights, such as the Organization of American States (OAS) and its Inter-American Human Rights System.
Both have evolved over decades to become strong, vocal defenders of civic and political rights. In the 1990s they acted in concert to challenge governments to respect checks on executive power, freedom of expression and the rule of law. The OAS and other bodies were previously under attack by populists of the left. Now it is populists of the right that are the biggest threat, quite possibly with the tacit or vocal support of the Trump administration.
