Pink Tide
The pink tide (Spanish: marea rosa; Portuguese: onda rosa), or the turn to the left (Spanish: giro a la izquierda; Portuguese: virada à esquerda), is a political wave and turn towards left-wing governments in Latin America throughout the 21st century. As a term, both phrases are used in political analysis in the news media and elsewhere to refer to a move toward more economically progressive or socially progressive policies in the region. Such governments have been referred to as "left-of-centre", "left-leaning", and "radical social-democratic". They are also members of the São Paulo Forum, a conference of left-wing political parties and other organizations from the Americas.
The Latin American countries viewed as part of this ideological trend have been referred to as pink tide nations, with the term post-neoliberalism or socialism of the 21st century also being used to describe the movement. Elements of the movement have included a rejection of the Washington Consensus. At the same time, some pink tide governments, such as those of Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela, have been varyingly characterized as being anti-American, prone to populism, as well as authoritarian, particularly in the case of Nicaragua and Venezuela by the 2010s, although many others remained democratic.
The pink tide was followed by the conservative wave, a political phenomenon that emerged in the early 2010s as a direct reaction to the pink tide. Some authors have proposed that there are multiple distinct pink tides rather than a single one, with the first pink tide happening during the late 1990s and early 2000s and a second pink tide encompassing the elections of the late 2010s to early 2020s. A resurgence of the pink tide was kicked off by Mexico in 2018 and Argentina in 2019 and further established by Bolivia in 2020, along with Peru, Honduras, and Chile in 2021, and then Colombia and Brazil in 2022, with Colombia electing the first left-wing president in their history. In 2023, centre-left Bernardo Arévalo secured a surprise victory in Guatemala. In 2024, Claudia Sheinbaum won the Mexican presidency in a landslide, a continuation of Andrés Manuel López Obrador's left-wing government, and Yamandú Orsi's victory in Uruguay marked a return to power for the Broad Front. However, during the mid-2020s the second pink-tide has been dissipating, with countries such as Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Honduras and Panama, electing right-leaning governments, leading to some believing a "second conservative wave" is now ongoing. The new trend was cemented by the strikes on Venezuela and the capture of president Nicolas Maduro in January 2026, along with threats from US president Donald Trump towards Colombian president Gustavo Petro.
Change My Mind
- 2025-02-02T00:00:00.000000Z
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