Turning pink again

Writing in April 2022, Jorge Castañeda a former Mexican foreign minister and now an academic at New York University, said that a second pink tide may have begun in 2018 with the election in Mexico of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) followed by the election of Alberto Fernández in Argentina (2019), the election of Luis Arce in Bolivia (2020), Pedro Castillo in Peru (2020), and Gabriel Boric in Chile (2021). In his view the paradigm shift that this represented could spread further if left winger Gustavo Petro were to win in Colombia (something that happened in June 2022) followed by a further victory for Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil (where polls are due October 2022). Supporters of the idea of a second wave of the pink tide believe it can re-focus governments on the need to reduce poverty and inequality after the devastation and regression caused by the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Critics of the pink tide tend to see it in Cold War terms, as a renewed geopolitical challenge to the United States at a time when Russia and China are both trying to raise their profile in the region.

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