The second incarnation of the Latin American left international – the Puebla Group, which came to take over from the Sao Paulo Forum which was losing momentum – was seriously affected with elections held throughout 2025 in the region.
At the beginning of the year, Koreanism again calmed down in Ecuador; then in Bolivia and Honduras, the respective Bolivarian versions suffered collapse; For his part, in Argentina, Milei shook Kirchnerism in the mid-term, while polls point to a possible defeat of the communist candidate in Chile next Sunday.
At the beginning, it was the Sao Paulo Forum. The attempt of the Latin American left to take power by force through guerrilla warfare has failed, in a sort of “international” encouraged by Fidel Castro (the revolution did not triumph until 1959 in Cuba and 1979 in Nicaragua, at the beginning and almost the end of more than two particularly turbulent decades), with the arrival of democracy, the left coordinated to obtain power through the ballot box. The host was the Brazilian Lula da Silva and his Workers’ Party, which began to bring together related forces, articulate mutual aid and agree on road maps.
The victories of Chávez in Venezuela and the Kirchners in Argentina gave momentum to this fraternity, extended with Morales in Bolivia, Correa in Ecuador, Ortega in Nicaragua, Lionel Fernández in the Dominican Republic, Zelaya in Honduras and the FMLN in El Salvador. Chavismo’s suitcases of dollars, amid the regional economic boom of the 2003-2013 period, traveled in many directions, and Lula’s transnational leadership was established, notably in South America, with initiatives such as the Unasur organization.
But the collapse of Venezuela managed by MaduroMacri’s arrival at Casa Rosada in 2015 and, definitively, the start of Bolsonaro’s mandate in January 2019 left the Sao Paulo Forum without momentum. Unasur itself imploded and was unable to reconstitute itself as a regional entity.
With Lula in prison for corruption, the leadership of the Latin American left was taken by the Mexican López Obrador, who launched the Puebla Group in July 2019, led in particular by Alberto Fernándezwho had defeated Macri and sought to distance himself from his vice-president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
This reincarnation of the left front in the region was not articulated only from political parties like the Sao Paulo Forum, which continues to exist, but from individuals, in a list to which Spanish politicians also joined, giving the organization a clear Ibero-American character. THE radicalization of the PSOE with Zapatero and Sánchez and the importance of Podemos fueled the agenda and debates of the Puebla Group.
LATIN AMERICA
The second wave of left-wing governments recovered some of the lost ground, but it was no longer as widespread.
However, whether or not one says that the second parts were never good, the truth is that the electoral impact of this reissue was minor: the second wave of left-wing governments recovered some of the lost ground, but it was no longer as widespread, and what was considered the “Bolivarian cycle” can now be considered completely closed.
Logically, left-wing formulations can win in the next elections, which in reality are much more marked by protest vote against the ruling party than by the ideological vote itself, but formulas like that of Bukele in El Salvador, difficult to insert into the political spectrum, beyond its populism, or the triumph of the libertarian approaches of Milei and perhaps the right-right of Kast suggest that politically the region has entered another stage.
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