MEXICO CITY — When President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January last year, a daunting political map awaited him in Latin America.
Left-wing leaders controlled a swath of the hemisphere — Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Honduras, Mexico and Venezuela — and few seemed inclined to accommodate the militarized regional policies of the brash U.S. president.
Gustavo Petro, who was president of Colombia, refused entry to two U.S. military planes carrying deported immigrants from the United States. Then-Honduran president Xiomara Castro threatened to eject the U.S. military from the country. Bolivia’s Luis Arce condemned deadly strikes by the U.S. military targeting suspected drug boats.
What a difference two years have made.
In election after election, left-wing politicians have fallen across the region, giving rise to a cadre of right-leaning presidents who flaunt their proximity to the White House and have been endorsed and boosted by MAGA operatives. Their ascension has changed the political landscape, opening pathways for U.S. military action in the Trump administration’s campaign against “narco-terrorist” groups.
The next country with the potential to go MAGA is Brazil, where voters on Sunday will decide between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — the leftist incumbent who has lambasted the U.S. military’s growing presence in the region — and Flávio Bolsonaro, who last year said he was “envious” of the U.S. military boat strikes.
“I heard there are boats like this here in Rio de Janeiro, in Guanabara Bay, flooding Brazil with drugs,” he wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on X. “Wouldn’t you like to spend a few months here helping us fight these terrorist organizations?”
Bolsonaro, the son of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, won the first round of the presidential election earlier this month, besting Lula by two points. If elected Sunday, he has vowed to add Brazil to the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition, created by the Trump administration in March to coordinate a transnational military response to criminal groups, and — according to what Hegseth has said is its motto — “do bad things to bad people.”
It’s not unusual for Latin America to oscillate between right and left. But this latest iteration marks a novel political evolution, according to political and security analysts, and current and former U.S. officials.
“The left had failed, the right had failed, so what was going to come next?” said Doug Farah, president of IBI Consultants, a Washington-headquartered Latin America research firm. “I did not expect it to be MAGA.”
Not all of the freshmen Latin American presidents are alike, and each was propelled to power by local dynamics. But their inaugurations have highlighted the political project by the Trump administration to tilt the electoral map in its favor and burrow the U.S. military deep into Latin America.
The Trump administration, in a sharp break from diplomatic norms, has openly advocated for Latin American politicians whom perceives could advance its interests.
Trump supported Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella and Honduran President Nasry Asfura, and his administration signaled a preference for Chilean President José Antonio Kast.
The State Department planned to send two Trump officials to Brazil to question its electoral system, echoing unfounded allegations by the Bolsonaros over alleged voting fraud. MAGA-aligned political operatives have fanned out across the region to bolster and shepherd right-wing leaders to power.
A senior U.S. State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said it’s not unusual for administrations to have favored candidates. But he said he’s been surprised over how overtly the administration has pushed for right-wing politicians.
“What was remarkable was the energy behind it,” the official said. “It was like, ‘We have to do a lot in a hurry to help our preferred people in Latin America, and that was the kind of general guidance that I was receiving.’”
The result has been the growing ranks of the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition — and tightening alliance between MAGA and the Latin American right in both politics and aesthetic.
In Colombia, which joined the alliance five days after Espriella’s inauguration, the new president has repeatedly deployed the term “narco-terrorist” to describe both political opponents and criminal groups.
In Bolivia, MAGA-aligned political strategist Fernando Cerimedo — who is incarcerated for allegedly ordering a hit on his pregnant paramour — used the term often against former president Evo Morales. In a recent debate against Lula, Bolsonaro declared he would declare war on “narco-terrorism.”
The U.S. military has steadily ramped up its operational activity in the region. It removed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in an overnight raid, launched land strikes in multiple countries, killing Tren de Aragua’s leader, Héctor “El Niño” Guerrero, and is now conducting ground raids in Ecuador. The military, amid the specter of troop deployments, has started moving its feared MQ-9 Reaper drones — known as “hunter-killers” — into the region.
Last month, the Trump administration announced it would funnel $52 million to the region to help it combat “narco-terrorism.”
“After years of neglect, President Trump established the ‘Donroe Doctrine’ to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere,” said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly. “His efforts have been a tremendous success — our southern border is secure, Latin American countries are working with us to defeat the cartels, and illegitimate dictator Nicolás Maduro is facing justice for his crimes in the Southern District of New York — ushering in historic economic cooperation with Venezuela.”
Whether the increased military pressure through boat strikes will deter drug trafficking remains unclear. Assessments by the Drug Enforcement Administration have found that the boat strikes and removal of Maduro — facing drug trafficking charges in New York federal court — have failed to slow the entry of narcotics into the United States.
“You’re going to have the appearance of close cooperation and performative blows against criminal groups, but none of it will succeed in debilitating these groups,” said Benjamin Gedan, an analyst of Latin American affairs at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank. “None of it will produce long-term progress in promoting the rule of law.”
He called the shared military project to “do bad things to bad people” a squandered opportunity.
“It’s very rare to have so many presidents aligned, and instead the U.S. is only taking advantage of this moment to generate content for X,” he said.
Pedro Arnulfo Sánchez Suárez, Colombia’s defense minister until de la Espriella’s inauguration, offered a different assessment in an interview with The Washington Post. He called drug trafficking groups a “global mafia” that requires a global response.
“Every country that’s doing its own thing will simply push the crime into neighboring countries,” he said. “For as long as nations don’t come together, the criminals win.”
Brazil, he said, arguably the region’s most important country by several measures — which shares a border with nearly every South American country and operates as a transit point for drugs bound for European ports — could be next to join.
“I see the entry of Brazil, regardless of the electoral results, as playing a fundamental role in the fight against drugs,” he said.
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