The Contemporary Latin American Left: Changes and Continuities

The political landscape for the Latin American Left has changed substantially in the past decades. In the last 10 years, newly formed left-wing parties or coalitions have managed to win their respective governments in Colombia, Chile, Guatemala, Honduras, Perú and México, pushing back both right-wing contenders, but also mainstream leftist parties. Some of these newly formed left-wing parties, despite sharing some similarities with their predecessors, have also contributed to diversifying the ideological profile of the Latin American Left. Nevertheless, most of the current studies on the Latin American Left are still restricted to the “Pink Tide”, a period that spans from the early 2000s to mid-2010s when several left-wing parties and coalitions won their respective governments almost simultaneously in most of the region. As a result of the different styles of government that emerged in the context of the Pink Tide, a considerable part of the literature has divided the progressive and left-wing governments of the period into two broad groups. On the one hand, those governments of a populist or radical nature, irresponsible in their economic management, and, on the other, those of a social democratic nature, responsible and respectful of macroeconomic balances and liberal democracy. In addition, much of the related literature has also tended to omit from the analysis those parties on the Left that did not succeed in achieving their respective governments in the context of the Pink Tide, but, nevertheless, have achieved greater notoriety in recent years. Finally, the contemporary literature on the Latin American Left has not yet been able to integrate into its analysis the multiple parties that have attracted notoriety in recent years, including Chile's Frente Amplio, Colombia Humana, the Honduran Libertad y Refundación and Mexico's Movimiento Regeneración Nacional. This article aims to address some of the shortcomings of the literature on the contemporary Latin American Left through two contributions. First, this article offers an updated typology of the Latin American Left based on its ideological stance with respect to three dimensions: the economy and the role the state should have in the society; the stance of parties on socio-cultural issues (i.e., gender equality, environmentalism, minority rights); and a third dimension designed to capture the populist profile of parties. The typology introduced in this article supports the argument that the contemporary Latin American Left cannot be reduced to a binary typology based on the existence of a populist and a social democratic Left. In second place, this article also aims to explain the shifts in the balance of power among left-wing or center-left parties within certain countries. Specifically, it seeks to explore why in Chile, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala, new leftist parties have emerged and displaced other progressive parties that, in some cases, were protagonists through the "Pink Tide". These six countries were selected because in all of them new left-wing parties, created less than a decade ago, have managed to win their respective presidencies at the expense of more established progressive parties.