Exploring History

Exploring History is a publication about history. Instead of focusing on any particular time period of history, we explore anything about the past that helps our readers understand the world they live in today. We pay special attention to historiographical rigor and balance.

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What Led to Latin America’s Record Year of Leftwing Election Victories

Colin M.
13 min readApr 26, 2023

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Colomia’s current president, Gustavo Petro, speaking at a climate justice rally in 2015 CC-BY-NC 2.0

Not a lot of people in the US know, or care to know, what is happening in Latin America. This is very tragic, because US foreign policy has had a tremendous(ly bad) impact on Latin America for generations, and it still does.

Last year, five Latin American countries elected left-wing governments. For historical reasons, the election of a left government in Latin America is widely seen as a rebuke of US influence.

These elections also come hot on the heels of major social upheavals that shook Ecuador, Chile, Colombia and Bolivia. Nothing happens in isolation.

We’ll proceed in chronological order.

November 21st 2021, Venezuela

The PSUV government of Venezuela is easily the US ruling class’ least favorite government in Latin America. The US foreign policy elite hate the PSUV government so much that they actually stopped recognizing them as the government of Venezuela. Instead, from 2018 to 2023, the US officially recognized a politician named Juan Guaido as the President of Venezuela.

If this sounds absurd, that’s because it is.

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Exploring History
Exploring History

Published in Exploring History

Exploring History is a publication about history. Instead of focusing on any particular time period of history, we explore anything about the past that helps our readers understand the world they live in today. We pay special attention to historiographical rigor and balance.

Colin M.
Colin M.

Written by Colin M.

Someone who likes learning and sharing what we learn.

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