Latin American left-wing parties are increasingly less successful at the polls. Their decline began in 2023 when Argentina elected the libertarian Javier Milei, and both Paraguay and Ecuador took a turn to the right.
This was followed by a cascade of conservative victories: José Raúl Mulino in Panama, Luis Abinader in the Dominican Republic, and the arrival of right-wingers in Bolivia, Honduras, Chile, and most recently Costa Rica.
The comfort of progressive governments, until now, had been that they governed the majority of the Latin American population. However, this may change in 2026. The contests in Peru, Brazil, and Colombia have competitive conservative parties. Without these three strongholds, the left will be reduced to Mexico, Guatemala, and Uruguay, meaning it will lead barely a quarter of the Latin American population.
It is clear that self-criticism is urgently needed within the left, and the Progressive Summit in Barcelona provided a space to achieve it.
The results, however, were heterogeneous.
Perhaps the most visible problem is that Ibero-American left-wing parties seem stuck on superficial diagnoses. For example, both Pedro Sánchez of Spain and Gustavo Petro of Colombia focused a significant part of their diagnosis on complaining about digital ungovernability and false information.
Indeed, no one can deny that the right has been astute in exploiting legal loopholes to criticize progressive governments with deceitful and fallacious messages. However, if anyone should be held responsible for this, it is precisely the left-wing governments that, out of fear, have avoided regulating digital magnates, implementing wealth taxes, and thereby funding quality journalism.
Sánchez, rightly, proposed advancing a multilateral digital regulation agenda, but unfortunately, the Summit, like many others, failed to achieve anything concrete. On the contrary, in many forums, leftists were perceived as defensive, as victims of a right that has been more capable than them of using disinformation. There is much to ponder about why.
Fundamentally, the problem is that left-wing parties must learn to accept that their weakness stems less from communication and more from operation.
The left loses elections because progressivism, as Gabriel Boric, former president of Chile, mentioned to EL PAÍS, “can only aspire to endure if it is capable of transforming people’s living conditions.” It is the lack of results that empowers the right, and a left that only knows how to assign blame is doomed to defeat.
Fake news and lawfare exist and have strongly affected left-wing parties. Perhaps the two most evident examples are Guatemala and Colombia, where a militant judiciary has orchestrated harsh blows against progressive policies.
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However, if these phenomena are visible, left-wing parties must move from criticism to action. One only needs to look at Mexico, the most successful left-wing government in Latin America, which, as a victim of lawfare, decided to completely reform the judiciary.
Today, the new Mexican Supreme Court, operating since 2025, faces many criticisms, many of them very valid, but at least, it can no longer be said to be an ideological bloc constantly fighting against progressive measures.
It is precisely because of Mexico’s relevance to international progressivism that it was so missed that the Mexican president had a substantive participation in the Progressive Summit. Claudia Sheinbaum gave a tangential speech, focused on Mexico’s cultural greatness and not on what left-wing parties most needed: a series of tips to understand what Mexico has done to become a left that wins elections.
Mexican success is undoubtedly centered on its results. Sheinbaum’s main source of voters are people who benefited from the minimum wage increases promoted by her party since 2018. The president has a 75% approval rating largely thanks to her social agenda and her way of negotiating with Trump, both widely recognized by the electorate.
Mexico is also rethinking a change in its economic growth model, towards one focused on industrial policy, and has implemented a new security policy. Industrial policy is progressing slowly and with errors, and Mexico urgently needs fiscal reform, but in the last 18 months, Sheinbaum has gained sympathy by achieving a 41 percent reduction in homicides.
Inspired by his own experience and perhaps partly by the Mexican experience, Brazil’s Lula da Silva was the most scathing and articulate of the speakers. Lula was clear: the debacle of the Latin American left is due to the fact that it has frequently become “the administrator of neoliberalism.”
Left-wing parties have had successes in advancing the agenda of labor rights, gender, and race, but not in confronting economic orthodoxy. On the contrary, Lula mentioned, in the name of promoting governability, left-wing parties have decided not to confront inequality. The right has fed on this error.
The next Progressive Summit will be held in Mexico. By then, the Mexican left will be disputing its majority in a federal election, and Latin America, perhaps, will have shifted even further to the right. Self-criticism will be as necessary as it is now, but more urgent.