The left made its transition toward the center first

Leaning against Chávez?

Is Latin America moving to the right? Several recent elections seem to point in that direction.

Chile, in January, inaugurated a right-of-center businessman, Sebastian Pinera, as president. Costa Rica recently elected its first woman president, Laura Chinchilla, who, like her predecessor Oscar Arias, is a moderate conservative. And on June 20, Colombia overwhelming elected Juan Manuel Santos, a close ally of conservative president Alvaro Uribe, to the presidency by a margin of more than 40 percent. These three join several other right-of-center presidents, including Ricardo Martinelli of Panama, Alan García of Peru, Francisco Calderón of Mexico and Porfirio Lobo of Honduras.

The growing presence of a democratic right in Latin America indicates that the distance between the region’s left-of-center and right-of-center democratic politicians and parties has finally narrowed.

The left made its transition toward the center first: Former Marxists accepted democratic rules of the game and began combining neoliberal economic policies with innovative social policies. It took the right somewhat longer to make this transition because the military regimes that had taken power to fight the Marxist threat had relinquished power more recently...more

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