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      Could the Next Republican President Take Us to War With Mexico?

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      As president, Donald Trump reportedly floated the idea of shooting “missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs.” When his defense secretary, Mark Esper, raised various objections, he recalls that Mr. Trump responded by saying the bombing could be done “quietly”: “No one would know it was us.”Well, word got out and the craze caught on. Now many professed rebel Republicans, such as Representatives Mike Waltz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, along with several old G.O.P. war horses, like Senator Lindsey Graham, want to bomb Mexico. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said he would send special forces into Mexico on “Day 1” of his presidency, targeting drug cartels and fentanyl labs. In May, Representative Michael McCaul, another Republican, introduced a bill pushing for fentanyl to be listed as a chemical weapon, like sarin gas, under the Chemical Weapons Convention. This move targeted Mexican cartels and Chinese companies, which are accused of providing the ingredients to the cartels to manufacture fentanyl.Of course, the United States is already fighting, and has been for half a century, a highly militarized drug war — in the Andes, Central America and, yes, Mexico — a war as ineffective as it has been cruel. Hitting fentanyl labs won’t do anything to slow the bootlegged versions of the drug into the United States but could further destabilize northern Mexico and the borderlands, worsening the migrant refugee crisis.Addiction to fentanyl, a drug that is 50 times stronger than heroin, affects red and blue states alike, from West Virginia to Maine, with overdoses annually killing tens of thousands of Americans. It’s a bipartisan crisis. Yet in our topsy-turvy culture wars, there’s a belief that fentanyl is targeting the Republican base. J.D. Vance rose to national fame in 2016 with a book that blamed the white rural poor’s cultural pathologies for their health crises, including drug addiction. In 2022, during his successful run for Ohio’s Senate seat, Mr. Vance, speaking with a right-wing conspiracy theorist, said that “if you wanted to kill a bunch of MAGA voters in the middle of the heartland, how better than to target them and their kids with this deadly fentanyl?” Mr. Vance’s poll numbers shot up after that, and other Republicans in close House and Senate races took up the issue, linking fentanyl deaths to Democratic policies on border security and crime and calling for military action against Mexico.The Mexican government is in fact cooperating with the United States to limit the export of the drug, recently passing legislation limiting the import of chemicals required for its production and stepping up prosecution of fentanyl producers. And even some of the cartels have reportedly spread the message to their foot soldiers, telling them to stop producing the drug or face the consequences. Still, in a show of Trumpian excess, Mexico is depicted as the root of all our problems. Bombing Sinaloa in 2024 is what building a border wall was in 2016: political theatrics.The United States is no novice when it comes to bombing Mexico. “A little more grape,” or ammunition, Gen. Zachary Taylor supposedly ordered as his men fired their cannons on Mexican troops. That was during America’s 1846-48 war on Mexico, which also included the assault on Veracruz, killing hundreds. Washington took more than half of Mexico’s territory during that conflict.Conservative politicians have used Mexico to gin up fears of an enemy to the south ever since the Mexican American War, which made Zachary Taylor a national hero. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionReactionaries have fixated on the border for over a century, since before the Civil War, when Mexico provided asylum for runaway slaves. Over the years, newspapers and politicians have regularly demanded that Mexico be punished for any number of sins, from failing to protect property rights to providing refuge for escaped slaves, Indian raiders, cattle rustlers, bootleggers, smugglers, drug fiends, political radicals, draft dodgers and Japanese and German agents. There was a touch of evil about Mexico, as Orson Welles titled his 1958 film set on the borderlands.Long before the Russian Revolution, hostility directed at the Mexican Revolution, which started in 1910, gave rise to a new, more militant, ideological conservatism. U.S. oilmen invested in Mexico blamed Jews for financing the revolution and raised money from U.S. Catholics to fund counterrevolutionaries, some of whom were fascists. From 1910 to 1920, private vigilante groups like the K.K.K., local police departments and the Texas Rangers conducted a reign of terror across the border states that killed several thousand ethnic Mexicans, some of whom were trying to organize a union or trying to vote.Trumpism’s ginned-up racism against Mexicans flows from this history. It remains to be seen whether calls to bomb Mexico’s fentanyl labs will play well in the coming election cycle. Yet the rhetoric itself is a dangerous escalation of an old idea: that international narcotics production, trafficking and consumption can be deterred through military means.Today’s Republican renegades say they represent a break from the “globalist” bipartisan consensus that governed the country through the Cold War and the decades that followed. But aside from some opposition to military aid to Ukraine, Republicans largely toe the line when it comes to the use of military force abroad. Few Republican dissidents dare question the establishment consensus on ongoing military aid to Israel, especially in light of its current siege of Gaza. In this sense, calls to bomb Mexico are a distraction, blowing smoke to hide the fact that the G.O.P. offers nothing new. Republicans certainly aren’t the peace party, as some of Mr. Trump’s isolationist backers would have us believe. All they offer is a shriller war party.(As if to illustrate the point, as Republicans shout about Mexico, the Biden administration has quietly struck a deal with Ecuador that will allow the United States to deploy troops to the country and patrol the waters off its coast, the Washington Examiner recently reported.)Even bombing another country in the name of fighting drugs is hardly innovative. In 1989, George H.W. Bush used the U.S. military to act on the federal indictment of Manuel Noriega, Panama’s ruler, for drug trafficking. In Operation Just Cause, the United States dropped hundreds of bombs on Panama City, including on one of its poorest neighborhoods, El Chorrillo, setting homes ablaze and killing an unknown number of its residents.Bombing another country in the name of fighting drugs is hardly innovative. As early as 1989, the United States was dropping hundreds of bombs on Panama, leaving burned cars and destroyed buildings in their wake.Steve Starr/Corbis, via Getty ImagesFor all their posturing on how they represent a break with the past, today’s bomb-happy Republicans are merely calling for an expansion of policies already in place. Republicans have introduced legislation in the House and Senate that would in effect bind the war on drugs to the war on terrorism and give the president authority to strike deep into Mexico. Mr. Graham also says he wants “a Plan Mexico more lethal than Plan Colombia.”Calls to inflict on Mexico something more lethal than Plan Colombia should chill the soul. Initiated by Bill Clinton in 1999, Plan Colombia and its successor strategies funneled roughly $12 billion into Colombia, mostly to security forces who were charged with eliminating cocaine production at its source. Their campaign included, yes, the aerial bombing of cocaine labs.Conflict in Colombia is a longstanding phenomenon, but Plan Colombia helped kick off a wave of terror that killed tens of thousands of civilians and drove millions from their homes. The Colombian military murdered thousands of civilians and falsely reported them as guerrillas, as a way of boosting its body count to keep the funds flowing. Massacre followed massacre, often committed by the Colombian military working in tandem with paramilitaries. At the end of last year, Colombia had the fourth-largest population that was internally displaced because of conflict and violence, behind only Syria, Ukraine and the Democratic Republic of Congo.For what? More Colombian acreage was planted with coca in 2022 than in 1999, a year before the start of Plan Colombia. Colombia remains the world’s largest cocaine producer.Even after years of attempts to fumigate and destroy cocaine plantations in Colombia, the country remains the world’s largest cocaine producer. Olga Castano/Getty ImagesPlan Colombia did weaken Colombian drug producers and disrupt transportation routes. But it also incentivized Central American and Mexican gangs and cartels to get in the game. Drug-related violence that had largely been confined to the Andes blasted up through the Central American isthmus into Mexico.Then in 2006, with support from the Bush administration, Mexico’s new president, Felipe Calderón, did what today’s Republican would-be bombardiers want Mexico to do: declare war on the cartels. Again, the result was catastrophic. Estimates vary, but by the end of Mr. Calderón’s six-year term, about 60,000 Mexicans had been killed in drug-war-related violence. By 2011, an estimated 230,000 people had been displaced, and about half of them crossed the border into the United States. Tens of thousands of Mexicans, including social activists, were disappeared, or had gone missing. The cartels, meanwhile, grew more profitable and powerful.In the wake of this failure, the current Mexican government, led by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has de-escalated the conflict to focus more on policing and prosecution. Other Latin American leaders, across the political spectrum, want to call off the war on drugs altogether and begin advancing decriminalization and treating excess drug use as a social problem.If the drug war is escalated, it would lead to more corruption, more deaths and more refugees desperate to cross into the United States. Jose Luis Gonzalez/ReutersFor now, calls to bomb Mexico are mostly primary-season bluster. But if a Republican were to win the White House in 2024, he or she would be under pressure to make good on the promise to launch military strikes on Mexico. Those efforts are not just bound to fail; they also could even make matters worse. Fentanyl labs are hardly complicated operations — with a couple of plastic drums and a pill press, one cook in a hazmat suit can turn out thousands of doses in a day. Trying to eliminate them with drones and missiles would be as effective as bombing bodegas in the Bronx. Hit one lab and five more pop up, perhaps in more populated areas.Further militarizing Mexico’s drug war would lead to more corruption, more deaths, more refugees desperate to cross the border. And those displaced, if Republicans had their way and Mexican cartels were classified as terrorist organizations, would have a better shot at claiming asylum, since they would be fleeing a formally designated war zone.With each escalation of the drug war, its horrors have inched closer to the United States. Now war mongering threatens to destroy the fragile movement among U.S. policymakers toward a more humane approach to drug use, that possession and use of drugs shouldn’t bring draconian prison sentences and that addiction should be treated as an illness, rooted in class inequality. Republican calls to go hard against narcotics below the border can’t but rebound above it, leading back to a callous public policy that treats addicts as enemies. As Martin Luther King Jr. once said of another war, the bombs we drop there explode here.Greg Grandin (@GregGrandin) is a professor of history at Yale and the author of seven books, most recently, “The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America,” which won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Ecuador conmocionado por el asesinato de Fernando Villavicencio

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      Los 12 disparos efectuados el miércoles por la tarde, que acabaron con la vida de un candidato presidencial ecuatoriano cuando salía de un acto de campaña, han marcado un punto de inflexión dramático para una nación que hasta hace apenas unos años parecía una isla de seguridad en una región violenta.Un video del instante previo al asesinato del candidato, Fernando Villavicencio, comenzó a circular en línea incluso antes de que se confirmara su muerte. Para muchos ecuatorianos, esos disparos resonaron con un mensaje sombrío: su país había cambiado para siempre.“Siento que representa una pérdida total de control para el gobierno”, dijo Ingrid Ríos, politóloga de la ciudad de Guayaquil, “y para los ciudadanos también”.Ecuador, un país con 18 millones de habitantes en la costa occidental de Sudamérica, ha sobrevivido a gobiernos autoritarios, crisis financieras, protestas masivas y al menos un secuestro presidencial. Sin embargo, nunca había sido sacudido por el tipo de conflicto relacionado con las drogas que ha plagado a la vecina Colombia, el cual ha desatado una violencia que ha matado a miles, erosionando la democracia y enfrentando a los ciudadanos entre sí.Hasta ahora.La sede del partido político de Villavicencio. El candidato fue asesinado frente a una escuela donde estaba realizando un evento de campaña.Johanna Alarcón para The New York TimesHoras después del asesinato del candidato, el presidente Guillermo Lasso declaró el estado de emergencia y suspendió algunas libertades civiles para ayudarlo a lidiar con la creciente delincuencia, según dijo.El jueves por la tarde, el ministro del Interior de Ecuador, Juan Zapata, afirmó que los seis sospechosos detenidos en relación con el asesinato de Villavicencio eran de nacionalidad colombiana, lo que le añade una nueva dimensión a una historia que ya parecía haber sido importada de otro lugar.En los últimos cinco años, el narcotráfico ha ganado un poder extraordinario en Ecuador, a medida que las mafias extranjeras de la droga se han aliado con las pandillas locales de las calles y las prisiones. En solo unos años han transformado regiones enteras del país, extorsionando negocios, reclutando jóvenes, infiltrándose en el gobierno y matando a quienes los investigan.Las similitudes con los problemas que afectaron a Colombia en las décadas de 1980 y 1990, cuando los grupos narcotraficantes asumieron el control de grandes zonas del país y se infiltraron en el gobierno, se han vuelto casi imposibles de ignorar para los ecuatorianos.El jueves, algunos comenzaron a comparar el asesinato de Villavicencio con el de Luis Carlos Galán, un candidato presidencial colombiano que fue asesinado a tiros durante la campaña en 1989. Al igual que Villavicencio, Galán fue un duro crítico de la actividad ilegal de las drogas.La muerte de Galán aún resuena en Colombia como símbolo de los peligros de denunciar al poder criminal y de la incapacidad del Estado para proteger a sus ciudadanos.En términos más generales, Colombia sigue lidiando con los efectos del narcotráfico, que sigue influyendo en los procesos electorales y es responsable de la muerte y el desplazamiento de miles de personas cada año.El jueves, un grupo de personas se reunió frente a una morgue en la capital ecuatoriana, Quito, donde se encontraba el cuerpo de Villavicencio. El aire se llenó de llantos desesperados. Irina Tejada, una maestra de 48 años, habló entre lágrimas.“Nos arrebataron a nuestro héroe”, dijo. Luego, refiriéndose a los políticos corruptos, afirmó: “¿Por qué no se ponen de parte de nuestro pueblo, no de esos narcos criminales? ¡Qué dolor, indignación!”.Irina Tejada, maestra, de luto frente a la morgue donde se encontraba el cuerpo de Villavicencio.Johanna Alarcón para The New York TimesPoco después, el coche fúnebre plateado que transportaba el cuerpo de Villavicencio salió de la morgue y la multitud comenzó a aplaudir, primero con tristeza y luego con rabia frenética.La gente le gritó a la escolta policial que rodeaba el cuerpo.“¡Ahora lo protegen! ¡Cuando ya es demasiado tarde!”, gritó una mujer.Villavicencio, quien había trabajado como periodista, activista y asambleísta, figuraba en las encuestas en una posición intermedia en el grupo de ocho candidatos para las elecciones presidenciales que se celebrarán el 20 de agosto. Fue uno de los que más denunció abiertamente el vínculo entre el crimen organizado y los funcionarios gubernamentales.El miércoles por la tarde, Villavicencio llegó a una escuela en Quito, la capital, donde estuvo en un escenario frente a una multitud y se pronunció “en contra de las mafias que han sometido a esta patria”. Luego, cuando salía de la escuela bajo una enorme pancarta que mostraba su rostro junto a la palabra “presidente”, se realizaron los disparos.El presidente Lasso inmediatamente culpó de la muerte al “crimen organizado”. La Fiscalía General del Estado rápidamente dijo que un sospechoso había muerto y otros seis habían sido arrestados.Al día siguiente, Lasso informó que había solicitado la ayuda del FBI, órgano que accedió a ayudar en la investigación del caso.Con un chaleco antibalas, Andrea González, compañera de fórmula de Villavicencio, ofreció una conferencia de prensa el jueves.Johanna Alarcón para The New York TimesJusto después de la muerte de Villavicencio, Carlos Figueroa, un miembro de su campaña que presenció el tiroteo, habló con el Times, con voz temblorosa.“Las mafias son demasiado poderosas”, afirmó. “Se han tomado nuestro país, se han tomado el sistema económico, la policía, el sistema judicial”.“Estamos desesperados”, continuó. “No sabemos el futuro de nuestro país. En manos de quién, por quién va a ser asumido”.Villavicencio, de 59 años, ganó prominencia como opositor del correísmo, el movimiento de izquierda del expresidente Rafael Correa, quien gobernó desde 2007 hasta 2017 y aún tiene poder político en Ecuador.En los días previos al asesinato, Villavicencio había aparecido en televisión afirmando que había recibido tres amenazas específicas de miembros de un grupo criminal llamado Los Choneros.En una primera amenaza, dijo, representantes de un líder de Los Choneros llamado Fito visitaron a un miembro del equipo de Villavicencio “para decirle que si yo sigo mencionando el nombre de Fito, mencionando los Choneros, me van a quebrar. Efectivamente, eso fue. Y mi decisión fue continuar con la campaña”.Oficiales de policía custodiando la caravana que transportaba el cuerpo de Villavicencio, el jueves.Johanna Alarcón para The New York TimesEl asesinato de Villavicencio afecta una elección presidencial ya de por sí polémica, y que continuará según lo planeado. La candidata que cuenta con el respaldo de Correa, Luisa González, lidera las encuestas.Sin embargo, como Villavicencio fue un crítico tan duro de Correa, algunos ecuatorianos han comenzado a culpar a los candidatos correístas por la muerte de Villavicencio. No hay evidencia de su participación.“Ni un solo voto para el correísmo”, coreó una mujer afuera de la morgue.Otros votantes dijeron que iban a comenzar a apoyar a Jan Topic, un candidato y exsoldado de la Legión Extranjera Francesa cuyo enfoque ha sido adoptar una línea dura en materia de seguridad y quien se ha hecho eco de las promesas del presidente de El Salvador, Nayib Bukele. La línea dura de Bukele contra las pandillas, incluidos los encarcelamientos masivos, ha ayudado a reducir la violencia, pero también ha generado que lo acusen de violar las libertades civiles.Germán Martínez, un médico forense que estaba en la morgue donde estuvo el cuerpo de Villavicencio el jueves, dijo que después del asesinato había decidido cambiar su voto a Topic.“¿Dónde estamos como ecuatorianos?”, preguntó. “Ya tenemos que dejar de andar con la frente al sueño. Tenemos que enfrentar a los criminales. Necesitamos una mano firme”.Genevieve Glatsky More

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      Ecuador Reels From Assassination of Fernando Villavicencio

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      The 12 shots fired on Wednesday evening, killing an Ecuadorean presidential candidate as he exited a campaign event, marked a dramatic turning point for a nation that a few years ago seemed an island of security in a violent region.A video of the moments just before the killing of the candidate, Fernando Villavicencio, began circulating online even before his death had been confirmed. And for many Ecuadoreans, those shots echoed with a bleak message: Their nation was forever changed.“I feel that it represents a total loss of control for the government,” said Ingrid Ríos, a political scientist in the city of Guayaquil, “and for the citizens, as well.”Ecuador, a country of 18 million on South America’s western coast, has survived authoritarian governments, financial crises, mass protests and at least one presidential kidnapping. It has never, however, been shaken by the kind of drug-related warfare that has plagued neighboring Colombia, unleashing violence that has killed thousands, corroded democracy and turned citizens against one another.Until now.The headquarters of Mr. Villavicencio’s political party. He was assassinated outside a school where he was holding a campaign event.Johanna Alarcón for The New York TimesHours after the candidate’s killing, President Guillermo Lasso declared a state of emergency, suspending some civil liberties, he said, to help him deal with growing crime.And on Thursday afternoon, Ecuador’s interior minister, Juan Zapata, said that six suspects arrested in connection with Mr. Villavicencio’s killing were all Colombian, adding a new dimension to a story line that already seemed to be imported from another place.In the past five years, the narco-trafficking industry has gained extraordinary power in Ecuador, as foreign drug mafias have joined forces with local prison and street gangs. In just a few years, they have transformed entire swaths of the country, extorting businesses, recruiting young people, infiltrating the government and killing those who investigate them.The similarities to the problems that plagued Colombia in the 1980s and ’90s, as narco-trafficking groups assumed control of broad parts of the country and infiltrated the government, have become almost impossible for Ecuadoreans to ignore.On Thursday, some began to compare Mr. Villavicencio’s killing to that of Luis Carlos Galán, a Colombian presidential candidate gunned down on the campaign trail in 1989. Like Mr. Villavicencio, Mr. Galán was a harsh critic of the illegal drug industry.Mr. Galán’s death still reverberates in Colombia as a symbol of the dangers of speaking out against criminal power and of the inability of the state to protect its citizens.More broadly, Colombia is still grappling with the effects of the drug-trafficking industry, which continues to hold sway over the electoral process and is responsible for the deaths and displacement of thousands of people each year.On Thursday, mourners gathered outside a morgue in the Ecuadorean capital, Quito, where Mr. Villavicencio’s body was being held. The air filled with desperate cries. Irina Tejada, 48, a teacher, wept as she spoke.“They’ve stolen our hero,” she said. Then, addressing corrupt politicians, she went on: “Why don’t they side with our people, not with those criminal narcos? The pain and outrage!”Irina Tejada, a teacher, mourning outside the morgue where Mr. Villavicencio’s body was being held.Johanna Alarcón for The New York TimesSoon, the silver hearse carrying Mr. Villavicencio’s body left the morgue, and the crowd began to clap, at first mournfully, then with a rapid anger.People screamed at the police escort surrounding the body.“Now you protect him, when it is too late!” a woman shouted.Mr. Villavicencio, who had worked as a journalist, activist and legislator, was polling near the middle of a group of eight candidates in a presidential election set for Aug. 20. He was among the most outspoken about the link between organized crime and government officials.On Wednesday evening, he arrived at a school in Quito, the capital, where he stood on a stage in front of a packed crowd and spoke out “against the mafias that have subjugated this homeland.” Then, as he exited the school under an enormous banner that bore his face and the words “presidente,” the shots were fired.Mr. Lasso, the president, immediately blamed the death on “organized crime.” The national prosecutor’s office quickly said that one suspect had been killed and six others arrested.The following day, Mr. Lasso said he had requested the help of the F.B.I., which agreed to assist in investigating the case.Wearing a bulletproof vest, Andrea González, Mr. Villavicencio’s running mate, held a news conference on Thursday.Johanna Alarcón for The New York TimesJust after Mr. Villavicencio’s death, Carlos Figueroa, a member of his campaign who had witnessed the shooting, spoke to The Times, his voice wobbly.“The mafias are too powerful,” he said. “They have taken over our country; they have taken over the economic system, the police, the judicial system.”“We are desperate,” he continued. “We don’t know our country’s future, in which hands, or by whom, it will be taken over.”Mr. Villavicencio, 59, gained prominence as an opponent of correísmo, the leftist movement of former President Rafael Correa, who served from 2007 to 2017 and still holds political power in Ecuador.In the days before the assassination, Mr. Villavicencio had appeared on television, saying that he had received three specific threats from members of a criminal group called Los Choneros.In an initial threat, he said, representatives of a Choneros leader named Fito visited a member of Mr. Villavicencio’s team “to tell them that if I keep mentioning Fito’s name, mentioning the Choneros, they’re going to break me. That’s how it was. And my decision was to continue with the electoral campaign.”Police officers guarding the motorcade carrying Mr. Villavicencio’s body on Thursday.Johanna Alarcón for The New York TimesMr. Villavicencio’s killing casts a pall on an already-contentious presidential election, which will go on as planned. A candidate who has Mr. Correa’s backing, Luisa González, is leading in the polls.Yet, because Mr. Villavicencio was such a harsh critic of Mr. Correa, some Ecuadoreans have begun to blame correísta candidates for Mr. Villavicencio’s death. There is no evidence of their involvement.“Not a single vote for correísmo,” one woman chanted outside the morgue.Other voters said they were turning toward Jan Topic, a candidate and former soldier in the French Foreign Legion whose focus has been taking a hard line on security, and who has been mirroring the promises of El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele. Mr. Bukele’s hard line on gangs, including mass imprisonments, has helped drive down violence, but he has also been accused of violating civil liberties.Germán Martínez, a coroner who happened to be at the morgue where Mr. Villavicencio’s body lay on Thursday, said that after the killing, he had decided to switch his vote to Mr. Topic.“Where are we, as Ecuadoreans?” he asked. “We can’t remain with our heads low. We need to fight criminals. We need a strong hand.”Genevieve Glatsky More

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      Nicolás Maduro Is President of Venezuela Whether the U.S. Likes It or Not

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      When the United States arranged an exchange of prisoners with President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela last week — sending home two nephews of Mr. Maduro’s wife who had been convicted of drug trafficking in a swap for seven Americans held in Venezuelan jails — it exposed the incoherence of U.S. policy toward Venezuela.Even as it negotiates with Mr. Maduro, the White House continues to insist that Juan Guaidó, an opposition politician, is the real president of Venezuela. The United States has no formal diplomatic relations with the Maduro government, and the embassy in Caracas has been closed since early 2019, shortly after President Donald Trump recognized Mr. Guaidó as president in an unsuccessful, long-shot bid to force Mr. Maduro from power.It is time for the Biden administration to accept that the Guaidó gambit has failed and that most Venezuelans, and most of the international community, have moved on. The White House needs a Venezuela policy based on fact, not fiction. And the fact is that Mr. Maduro is president of Venezuela and Mr. Guaidó is not.Accepting reality will have many potential benefits — not least to the Venezuelan opposition, which is in the midst of a turbulent effort to remake itself.After Mr. Trump announced his support for Mr. Guaidó in January 2019, dozens of other countries followed Washington’s lead. But today, only a dwindling handful continue to recognize Mr. Guaidó as Venezuela’s president, and, like the United States, eschew direct diplomatic ties with Mr. Maduro’s government.And that list is getting shorter.Gustavo Petro, the newly elected leftist president of Colombia, moved quickly after taking office in August to abandon his country’s recognition of Mr. Guaidó and reopen its embassy in Caracas. That change is crucial because Colombia has long been Washington’s most important ally in South America and a key supporter of Mr. Guaidó.Brazil, another powerful backer of Mr. Guaidó, could be next, if Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva retakes the presidency in a runoff election later this month.Mr. Guaidó was always president in name only — he had no government and no power to act inside Venezuela. He showed courage when he defied Mr. Maduro’s repressive regime, but he never had a viable plan, beyond vague hopes for a military coup or for U.S. intervention. And he was wedded to Mr. Trump’s sanctions-heavy approach, which exacerbated Venezuela’s economic crisis.Mr. Guaidó’s claim to an alternate presidency rested on his role as head of the National Assembly, but his legislative term ended last year, and at that point many of his supporters inside and outside of Venezuela gave up on the notion.Today, Mr. Maduro is stronger than he was three years ago, and the opposition is in disarray.Dropping the pretense that Mr. Guaidó is president would set U.S. policy on a rational foundation but would not be an endorsement of Mr. Maduro. It could facilitate talks with Mr. Maduro over key areas, including the wave of Venezuelan refugees entering the United States and possible changes to economic sanctions related to oil exports. A resumption of consular activities would make it possible for citizens to obtain or renew visas and passports.One of the greatest beneficiaries could be the Venezuelan opposition, which is in a turbulent, and necessary, state of flux. The opposition has been harshly repressed by a Maduro government committed at all costs to staying in power; while the opposition has made many missteps, it is the primary political force in the country committed to democracy and the defense of human rights, and it is therefore critical to finding a solution to the country’s crisis.Over the last two years, most mainstream Venezuelan opposition parties have been thrown into crisis, hemorrhaging activists, splitting apart in leadership squabbles or watching once-loyal voters defect.The government has frequently stepped in to stir the pot, using the courts or electoral authorities to order the takeover of parties by substitute leadership that is considered suspect by the rest of the opposition. But in most cases, the divisions were there to be exploited.Venezuelans are fed up with opposition parties that often seem more interested in fighting with each other than in improving the country’s fortunes.At the same time, new parties have emerged, organizing around new leaders.The political changes were evident in elections held last November. The opposition won a third of the mayorships around the country, after previously holding fewer than one in ten. And although the opposition won just four governorships out of 23, it received a majority of votes in all but a few states. The reason it didn’t win more governorships was that multiple opposition candidates split the vote, essentially handing victory to candidates allied with Mr. Maduro.The lessons of November were powerful. The election showed that Venezuelans still see the ballot box as a way out of the nation’s troubles. It unmasked the weakness of the government party among voters. It demonstrated, once again, that lack of unity is the opposition’s Achilles’ heel.And it revealed gains for the nontraditional opposition, with about half of total opposition votes going to candidates outside the coalition led by the four mainstream parties, according to Eugenio Martínez, a journalist who specializes in election analysis.Venezuelan politics are now aimed at a presidential election that will take place in 2024.Will the opposition come together to choose a single candidate, or will it remain divided? The United States has urged Mr. Maduro and the opposition to resume negotiations that could lead to improved electoral conditions. But who will sit across the table from Mr. Maduro’s negotiators?So far, Washington has thrown its weight behind the Unitary Platform, a rebranded coalition led by Mr. Guaidó and the traditional parties, which is seeking to steer the choice of a 2024 candidate and which controls the team that would negotiate conditions with Mr. Maduro.But by continuing to uphold the fiction that Mr. Guaidó is president of Venezuela, the administration makes it harder for the opposition to go through the necessary process of reforming itself. The United States must acknowledge reality — as it relates to who actually governs in Venezuela and the need for Venezuelans to fashion the opposition that they choose. That is the only way that Washington can play a constructive role in solving Venezuela’s crisis.William Neuman is a former New York Times reporter and Andes region bureau chief, and the author of “Things Are Never So Bad That They Can’t Get Worse: Inside the Collapse of Venezuela.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Colombia’s First Black Vice President Spotlights Afro-Caribbean Fashion

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      The wardrobe of Francia Márquez, Colombia’s first Black vice president, is the creation of a young designer at the center of an Afro-Colombian fashion explosion.CALI, Colombia — At a premier fashion event in the coastal city of Buenaventura this year, a pair of towering models strutted down the boardwalk, one in a red minidress with a fluted top inspired by an open seashell and the other wearing a blue-and-gold gown fit for a modern queen.The models were Black and the fabrics imported from Africa — unusual for a major fashion show in Colombia. But what most distinguished them was the designer himself: Esteban Sinisterra Paz, a 23-year-old university student with no formal design training who is at the center of an Afro-Colombian fashion explosion.“Decolonization of the human being,” is the aim of his work, he said, along with showing the world an expansive view of “the elegance of identity.”Mr. Sinisterra is the man behind the wardrobe of Francia Márquez, an environmental activist and lawyer who on Sunday will become Colombia’s first Black vice president.The wardrobe of Francia Márquez, who on Sunday will become Colombia’s first Black vice president, is largely designed Mr. Sinisterra, a 23-year-old social work student with no formal design training who is at the center of an Afro-Colombian fashion explosion.Federico Rios for The New York TimesIn a nation where race and class often define a person’s status, Ms. Márquez, 40, has made a remarkable leap from profound poverty to the presidential palace, emerging as the voice of millions of poor, Black and Indigenous Colombians.In a matter of months, she has not only pushed racism and classism to the center of the national conversation, she has also revolutionized the country’s political aesthetic, rejecting starched shirts and suits in favor of a distinctly Afro-Colombian look that she calls a form of rebellion.Natural hair. Bold prints. Dresses that highlight her curves.But Ms. Márquez and Mr. Sinisterra are just the most visible ambassadors of an Afro-Colombian aesthetic boom that proponents say is part of a larger movement demanding greater respect for millions of Black Colombians.Mr. Sinisterra with some of the pieces that he uses to create a distinctly Afro-Colombian look.Nathalia Angarita for The New York TimesIn a nation where 40 percent of households live on less than $100 a month — a percentage that has grown during the pandemic — Afro-Colombians are among the poorest groups, with the regions where they predominate, including the Pacific Coast, some of the most neglected by generations of politicians.Officially, Black Colombians make up between 6 to 9 percent of the population. But many say that is an undercount that perpetuates a lack of recognition.“Colonization tried to erase Black people,” said Lia Samantha Lozano, 41, who began outfitting her hip-hop and reggae band, Voodoo Souljahs, in African fabrics more than a decade ago, positioning her as a pioneer in the movement.In 2014, she became the first Black woman with a runway show at Colombiamoda, the country’s biggest fashion event. Today, politically oriented Afro-descendant brands have proliferated on the internet, and in shops across Cali, a major hub of Afro-Colombian culture, with Black celebrities, models, politicians and activists increasingly using clothing as a political tool. And the Petronio Álvarez Festival, an annual celebration of Afro-Colombian culture that draws hundreds of thousands of people to Cali, has emerged as the movement’s fashion week. Ms. Lozano now sells a bright, hip-hop inspired line at a major shopping mall in the capital of Bogotá.“A big part of the plan was to make us feel ashamed of who we are, of our colors, of our culture, of our features,” she went on. “To wear this every day, not as ‘fashion,’ not to dress up for a special occasion, but as a way of life, as something you want to communicate every day — yes, it is political. And, yes, it is a symbol of resistance.”Mr. Sinisterra at a fashion show in Buenaventura with a model wearing one of his designs, which he called “Royal Imperialism.”Augusto GalloAmong the movement’s signatures are bright patterned fabrics called wax, which are wildly popular across West, East and Central Africa and famous for telling stories and sending messages through their pictures and designs. (Prints can celebrate everything from pop culture to religion and politics, featuring tubes of lipstick, the faces of religious figures or portraits of politicians and celebrities.)Afro-Colombian aesthetic often references nature — Mr. Sinisterra has a dress with sleeves like wings inspired by Colombia’s famous butterflies — and can incorporate elaborate beaded jewelry and woven bags by artists from Colombia’s many Indigenous communities.The movement’s leaders include not just Ms. Márquez, but also Emilia Eneyda Valencia Murraín, 62, a mentor of Mr. Sinisterra’s who in 2004 started Weaving Hope, a multiday celebration of Black hair in Cali.Emilia Eneyda Valencia Murraín, 62, is a mentor of Mr. Sinisterra’s.Nathalia Angarita for The New York TimesColombia’s sartorial moment is years, many would say centuries, in the making, drawing on activism in Latin America, Africa and the United States; the baggy street style of hip-hop and the sparkly astral vibes of Afrofuturism; the turbans of Colombian market women; the mermaid silhouettes of Senegal and Nigeria; and even the influence of Michelle Obama, who famously used clothing to make political statements.The aesthetic is also expansive and fluid, including everyday clothing — like tunics from the brand Baobab by Consuelo Cruz Arboleda — and showpieces like Mr. Sinisterra’s Royal Imperialism, a tight, ruffled strapless gown whose grandeur he said embodies the modern-day cultural empire that the descendants of Africa have constructed in the Colombian Pacific.“We are transforming the image that we have of power,” said Edna Liliana Valencia, 36, a popular Afro-Colombian journalist, poet and activist.Edna Liliana Valencia is an Afro-Colombian journalist, poet and activist.Nathalia Angarita for The New York TimesMr. Sinisterra is among this movement’s newest stars. Born into a poor family in the small town of Santa Bárbara de Iscuandé, near the Pacific Ocean, his family was forcibly displaced by armed men when he was 5, among the millions of Colombians victimized by the country’s decades-long internal conflict.In the nearby town of Guapi, and later in the port city of Buenaventura, Mr. Sinisterra learned to sew from his aunt and grandmother, whom he called “the designers of the neighborhood.”“Esteban African,” he said of his clothing line, “began out of a necessity to bring money home.”Mr. Sinisterra wanted to study fashion, but his father thought that was only for girls, so he entered university as a social work student.But he began building a name designing increasingly elaborate pieces for a growing list of customers, finding inspiration online and selling his work on Instagram and Facebook. Then, in 2019, Ms. Márquez called. She had been referred to him by a mutual friend and needed an outfit. Mr. Sinisterra is in his seventh of eight semesters at university. When he’s not in class, he sews the vice president’s outfits in a windowless room in his small apartment in Cali. His boyfriend, Andrés Mena, 27, is a former nurse who switched careers to become general manager of Esteban African.Mr. Sinisterra with his boyfriend, Andrés Mena, left.Nathalia Angarita For The New York TimesAmong the brand’s best known items are two pairs of earrings. One features the map of Colombia, etched with its 32 departments. A second looks like two gold orbs meant to evoke the mining pans Ms. Márquez used as a child miner in the mountains of Cauca, near the Pacific Coast, long before she became a household name.Ms. Márquez once slept on a dirt floor beside her siblings. She later worked as a live-in maid to support her children, went to law school and eventually won a prize known as the environmental Nobel.In an interview, she called Mr. Sinisterra’s work a critical part of her political identity. “He’s showing young people that they can succeed, using their talent, they can get ahead,” she said.Mr. Sinisterra has never been to Africa. A visit is his dream, along with studying fashion in Paris and “building a school where the children of the Pacific can have alternatives,” he said, “and their parents, unlike mine, will not think that sewing and cutting and making clothes is only for girls.”Today, he said, his father is proud of his work.Lately, he has been barraged by media and customer requests, and he manages his newfound fame by working around the clock.One day in July, barefoot and sweating, he laid a pair of fabrics on the floor, cut them freehand, then stitched them together using a new Jinthex sewing machine he’d bought with his now improving wages. He was making another dress for Ms. Márquez.On Election Day in June, he outfitted her in kente cloth, a Ghanaian print whose interlocking lines evoke basket weavings, to symbolize vote collection.Ms. Márquez wearing a kente cloth dress on Election Day in June.Federico Rios for The New York TimesThe dress had a ruffle down the front, representing the rivers in Ms. Márquez’s home region, and the jacket on her shoulders, all white, symbolized peace, he said, “in this country so torn up by political postures.”He’s made three outfits for inauguration day. “Whichever she chooses is fine with me,” he said.As he ironed the newly stitched piece, he said he was both excited and anxious about Ms. Márquez’s ascension to power.In the last few months, he has come to feel like a part of her political project, and she has made enormous promises to transform the country after decades of injustice.“The responsibility is going to grow,” he said.“My responsibility, Francia’s responsibility, backing this process so that the people — our people — don’t feel betrayed.” More

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      Francia Márquez lleva la moda afro a Palacio en Colombia

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      El guardarropa de Francia Márquez, la primera vicepresidenta negra del país, es creación de un joven diseñador que protagoniza la explosión de la moda afrocolombiana.CALI, Colombia — En un destacado evento de moda en la ciudad costera de Buenaventura este año, un par de altísimas modelos se lucían en la pasarela ataviadas con un minivestido de torso acanalado inspirado en una concha marina abierta y un atuendo azul marino con dorado digno de una reina moderna.Las modelos eran negras y las telas habían sido importadas de África, algo inusual para un gran evento de moda en Colombia. Pero lo que más destacaba era el diseñador: Esteban Sinisterra Paz, un estudiante universitario de 23 años sin formación profesional en diseño que protagoniza la explosión de la moda afrocolombiana.El objetivo de su trabajo es la “decolonialidad del ser”, dijo Sinisterra. Así como mostrarle al mundo una visión más amplia de “la elegancia de la identidad”.Sinisterra es el hombre detrás del guardarropa de Francia Márquez, la abogada y activista ambiental que el domingo se convertirá en la primera vicepresidenta negra de Colombia.El guardarropa de Francia Márquez, que se convertirá en la primera vicepresidenta negra de Colombia, es diseñado en gran medida por Sinisterra, un estudiante universitario de 23 años que no tiene formación en diseño y que protagoniza la explosión de la moda afrocolombiana.Federico Rios para The New York TimesEn un país donde la raza y la clase a menudo definen el estatus de una persona, Márquez, de 40 años, ha dado un notable salto de la pobreza profunda al palacio presidencial para convertirse en la voz de millones de colombianos pobres, negros e indígenas.En cuestión de meses, no solo ha llevado el racismo y el clasismo al centro del debate nacional, también ha revolucionado la estética política del país al rechazar las blusas y sastres almidonados en favor de un look distintivamente afrocolombiano que ella considera una forma de rebelión.Pelo natural. Estampados audaces. Vestidos que destacan sus curvas.Pero Márquez y Sinisterra solo son los embajadores más visibles del auge de una estética afrocolombiana que, según sus partidarios, se inserta en un movimiento más amplio que exige respeto para millones de colombianos negros.Sinisterra con algunas de las piezas que usa para crear una apariencia distintivamente afrocolombiana.Nathalia Angarita para The New York TimesEn un país donde 40 por ciento de los hogares vive con menos de 100 dólares al mes —un porcentaje que ha crecido durante la pandemia— los afrocolombianos se ubican entre los grupos más pobres, y las regiones donde predominan, entre ellas la costa Pacífico, son algunas de las más olvidadas por los políticos.Oficialmente, los colombianos negros constituyen entre el 6 y el 9 por ciento de la población. Pero hay quienes dicen que se trata de un sub registro que perpetúa la falta de reconocimiento.“La colonización pretendía acabar con la gente negra”, dijo Lía Samantha Lozano, de 41 años, quien empezó a vestir a su banda de hip-hop y reggae, Voodoo Souljahs, con textiles africanos hace más de una década, posicionándose como pionera del movimiento.En 2014 se convirtió en la primera mujer negra con un desfile de pasarela en Colombiamoda, el principal evento de moda del país.Hoy abundan en internet las marcas afrodescendientes de orientación política y en boutiques por todo Cali, un gran centro de cultura afrocolombiana. Cada vez hay más celebridades, modelos, políticos y activistas negros que usan el guardarropa como una herramienta política. Y el Festival Petronio Álvarez, una celebración anual de la cultura afrocolombiana que atrae a cientos de miles de asistentes a Cali, se ha convertido en la principal semana de la moda del movimiento.Lozano ahora ofrece una línea colorida de inspiración hiphopera en un gran centro comercial de la capital, Bogotá.“Y gran parte de ese plan era que nosotros mismos nos sintiéramos avergonzados de lo que somos, de nuestros colores, de nuestra cultura, de nuestros rasgos”, continuó. “Llevar esto todos los días, no por una moda, no por disfrazarse para un evento especial, sino como un estilo de vida, como parte de lo que quieres comunicar todos los días, sí lo hace político. Y sí es un símbolo de resistencia”.Sinisterra en un desfile de moda en Buenaventura con una modelo ataviada con uno de sus diseños, “Imperialismo Real”.Augusto GalloEntre los elementos insignia del movimiento está el wax, esos textiles de patrones radiantes, tremendamente populares en África Oriental, Occidental y Central, y conocidos porque cuentan historias y envían mensajes a través de sus diseños e imágenes. (Los estampados pueden homenajear de todo: desde la cultura pop hasta la religión y la política y mostrar labiales, rostros de figuras religiosas o retratos de políticos y celebridades).La estética afrocolombiana a menudo hace referencia a la naturaleza —Sinisterra tiene un vestido con mangas como alas, inspiradas en las famosas mariposas colombianas— y puede incorporar joyería intrincada de chaquiras y bolsos tejidos elaborados por artistas de las muchas comunidades indígenas de Colombia.El liderazgo del movimiento no solo recae en Márquez, sino también en Emilia Eneyda Valencia Murraín, de 62 años y mentora de Sinisterra, quien en 2004 lanzó Tejiendo Esperanzas, una celebración del pelo negro que tiene lugar en Cali y dura varios días.Emilia Eneyda Valencia Murraín, de 62 años, mentora de SinisterraNathalia Angarita para The New York TimesEste momento sartorial en Colombia venía gestándose desde hace años, muchos dirán siglos, y se nutre del activismo en América Latina, África y Estados Unidos; del estilo holgado y urbano del hiphop y las ondas astrales brillantes del afrofuturismo; los turbantes de las mujeres en los mercados colombianos; las siluetas de sirena de Senegal y Nigeria e incluso de la influencia de Michelle Obama, quien célebremente usó su vestimenta para expresar posturas políticas.La estética también es amplia y fluida e incluye ropa de diario —como las túnicas de la marca Baobab de Consuelo Cruz Arboleda— y piezas de fantasía como Imperialismo Real, un vestido de noche creación de Sinisterra strapless, ajustado y con volantes cuya grandeza, según él, encarna el imperio cultural moderno que los descendientes de África han construido en el Pacífico colombiano.“Estamos transformando la imagen que tenemos del poder”, dijo Edna Liliana Valencia, de 36 años, una popular periodista, poeta y activista afrocolombiana.Edna Liliana Valencia, activista, poeta y periodista afrocolombianaNathalia Angarita para The New York TimesSinisterra está entre las más nuevas estrellas de este movimiento. Nacido en una familia pobre en la pequeña ciudad de Santa Bárbara de Iscuandé, cerca del océano Pacífico, su familia fue desplazada a la fuerza por hombres armados cuando él tenía 5 años, al igual que tantos millones de víctimas del prolongado conflicto interno del país.En el cercano pueblo de Guapi, y más tarde en la ciudad portuaria de Buenaventura, Sinisterra aprendió a coser con su tía y su abuela, a las que llamaba “las diseñadoras del barrio”.“Esteban African”, dijo sobre su línea de ropa, “nace de esa necesidad de poder aportar ingresos a mi casa”.Sinisterra quería estudiar moda, pero su padre pensaba que eso era solo para chicas, así que entró a la universidad como estudiante de trabajo social.Pero comenzó a hacerse de un nombre al diseñar piezas cada vez más elaboradas para una lista creciente de clientas, encontrando inspiración en internet y vendiendo su trabajo a través de Instagram y Facebook. Entonces, en 2019, Márquez lo llamó. Una amistad en común se lo había recomendado y necesitaba un traje.Sinisterra cursa el séptimo de ocho semestres en la universidad. Cuando no está en clases, cose los trajes de la vicepresidenta en una habitación sin ventanas de su pequeño apartamento en Cali. Su novio, Andrés Mena, de 27 años, es un exenfermero que cambió de profesión para convertirse en director general de Esteban African.Sinisterra con su  novio, Andrés Mena, a la izquierdaNathalia Angarita para The New York TimesEntre los artículos más conocidos de la marca hay dos pares de aretes. Uno de ellos muestra el mapa de Colombia, con sus 32 departamentos grabados. El segundo simula dos orbes de oro, concebido para evocar las bateas mineras que Márquez usaba de niña en las montañas del Cauca, cerca de la costa del Pacífico, mucho antes de convertirse en una figura conocida.Márquez alguna vez durmió en un suelo de tierra junto a sus hermanos. Más tarde trabajó como empleada doméstica para mantener a sus hijos, estudió derecho y acabó ganando un premio conocido como el Nobel del medio ambiente.En una entrevista, calificó el trabajo de Sinisterra como una parte fundamental de su identidad política. “Le muestra a la juventud que se puede”, dijo, “usando su talento se puede salir adelante”.Sinisterra nunca ha estado en África. Sueña con ir, así como estudiar moda en París y “montar una escuela donde los jóvenes del Pacífico tengan alternativas”, señaló, “y los papás, no como el mío, no piensen que solamente coser, cortar y hacer ropa es de chicas”.Hoy, contó, su padre está orgulloso de su trabajo.Últimamente, los medios de comunicación y los clientes lo bombardean, y él gestiona su nueva fama trabajando las 24 horas del día.Un día de julio, descalzo y sudoroso, puso un par de telas en el suelo, las cortó a mano alzada y luego las hilvanó con una nueva máquina de Jinthex que había comprado con sus mejorados ingresos. Estaba haciendo otro vestido para Márquez.El día de las elecciones, en junio, la vistió con tela kente, un estampado ghanés cuyas líneas entrelazadas evocan los tejidos de las cestas, para simbolizar la recolección de los votos.Márquez con un vestido en kente el día de las elecciones presidencialesFederico Rios para The New York TimesEl vestido tenía un volante en la parte delantera, que representaba los ríos de la región natal de Márquez, y la chaqueta sobre los hombros, toda blanca, simbolizaba la paz, explicó, “en este país que está tan desintegrado por las posturas políticas”.Ha confeccionado tres trajes para el día de la toma de posesión. “La que ella decida para mí está bien”, aseguró.Mientras planchaba la pieza recién ensamblada, dijo que estaba a la vez emocionado y ansioso por el ascenso de Márquez al poder.En los últimos meses, ha llegado a sentirse parte de su proyecto político, y ella ha hecho enormes promesas para transformar el país tras décadas de injusticia.“La responsabilidad va a crecer”, dijo.“Mi responsabilidad, la de Francia, respaldando el proceso en que la gente —nuestra gente— no se sienta engañada”.Julie Turkewitz es jefa del buró de los Andes, que cubre Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Perú, Surinam y Guyana. Antes de mudarse a América del Sur, fue corresponsal de temas nacionales y cubrió el oeste de Estados Unidos. @julieturkewitz More

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      As Latin America Shifts Left, Leaders Face a Bleak Reality.

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      All six of the region’s largest economies could soon be run by presidents elected on leftist platforms. Their challenge? Inflation, war in Europe and growing poverty at home.BOGOTÁ, Colombia — In Chile, a tattooed former student activist won the presidency with a pledge to oversee the most profound transformation of Chilean society in decades, widening the social safety net and shifting the tax burden to the wealthy.In Peru, the son of poor farmers was propelled to victory on a vow to prioritize struggling families, feed the hungry and correct longstanding disparities in access to health care and education.In Colombia, a former rebel and longtime legislator was elected the country’s first leftist president, promising to champion the rights of Indigenous, Black and poor Colombians, while building an economy that works for everyone.“A new story for Colombia, for Latin America, for the world,” he said in his victory speech, to thunderous applause.After years of tilting rightward, Latin America is hurtling to the left, a watershed moment that began in 2018 with the election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico and could culminate with a victory later this year by a leftist candidate in Brazil, leaving the region’s six largest economies run by leaders elected on leftist platforms.A combination of forces have thrust this new group into power, including an anti-incumbent fervor driven by anger over chronic poverty and inequality, which have only been exacerbated by the pandemic and have deepened frustration among voters who have taken out their indignation on establishment candidates.During the height of a coronavirus wave in Peru last year, people waited to refill oxygen tanks for loved ones on the outskirts of Lima. Marco Garro for The New York TimesBut just as new leaders settle into office, their campaign pledges have collided with a bleak reality, including a European war that has sent the cost of everyday goods, from fuel to food, soaring, making life more painful for already suffering constituents and evaporating much of the good will presidents once enjoyed.Chile’s Gabriel Boric, Peru’s Pedro Castillo and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro are among the leaders who rode to victory promising to help the poor and disenfranchised, but who find themselves facing enormous challenges in trying to meet the high expectations of voters.Unlike today, the last significant leftist shift in Latin America, in the first decade of the millennium, was propelled by a commodities boom that allowed leaders to expand social programs and move an extraordinary number of people into the middle class, raising expectations for millions of families.Now that middle class is sliding backward, and instead of a boom, governments face pandemic-battered budgets, galloping inflation fed by the war in Ukraine, rising migration and increasingly dire economic and social consequences of climate change.In Argentina, where the leftist Alberto Fernández took the reins from a right-wing president in late 2019, protesters have taken to the streets amid rising prices. Even larger protests erupted recently in Ecuador, threatening the government of one of the region’s few newly elected right-wing presidents, Guillermo Lasso.“I don’t want to be apocalyptic about it,” said Cynthia Arnson, a distinguished fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “But there are times when you look at this that it feels like the perfect storm, the number of things hitting the region at once.”Protesters in Santiago, Chile, in 2019, demanding economic changes to address systemic inequality. The country’s new president, elected last year, has become deeply unpopular among Chileans angry over rising prices.Tomas Munita for The New York TimesThe rise of social media, with the potential to supercharge discontent and drive major protest movements, including in Chile and Colombia, has shown people the power of the streets.Beginning in August, when Mr. Petro takes over from his conservative predecessor, five of the six largest economies in the region will be run by leaders who campaigned from the left.The sixth, Brazil, the largest country in Latin America, could swing that way in a national election in October. Polls show that former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a fiery leftist, has a wide lead on the right-wing incumbent, President Jair Bolsonaro.New leaders in Colombia and Chile are far more socially progressive than leftists in the past, calling for a shift away from fossil fuels and advocating for abortion rights at a time when the United States Supreme Court is moving the country in the opposite direction.But taken together, this group is extremely mixed, differing on everything from economic policy to their commitment to democratic principles.Mr. Petro and Mr. Boric have vowed to vastly expand social programs for the poor, for example, while Mr. López Obrador, who is focused on austerity, is reducing spending.What does link these leaders, however, are promises for sweeping change that in many instances are running headlong into difficult and growing challenges.Gustavo Petro and his running mate, Francia Márquez, celebrated their victory in June in Colombia’s national election. They will lead a country where 40 percent of the people lives on less than half of the monthly minimum wage.Federico Rios for The New York TimesIn Chile late last year, Mr. Boric beat José Antonio Kast, a right-wing establishment politician associated with Chile’s former dictator, Augusto Pinochet, by pledging to jettison the neoliberal economic policies of the past.But just months into his term, with an inexperienced cabinet, divided Congress, rising consumer prices and unrest in the country’s south, Mr. Boric’s approval ratings have plummeted.Ninety percent of poll respondents told the polling firm Cadem this month that they believed the country’s economy was stuck or going backward.Like many neighbors in the region, Chile’s yearly inflation rate is the highest it has been in more than a generation, at 11.5 percent, spurring a cost-of-living crisis.In southern Chile, a land struggle between the Mapuche, the country’s largest Indigenous group, and the state has entered its deadliest phase in 20 years, leading Mr. Boric to reverse course on one of his campaign pledges and redeploy troops in the area.Catalina Becerra, 37, a human resources manager from Antofagasta, in northern Chile, said that “like many people of my generation” she voted for Mr. Boric because Mr. Kast “didn’t represent me in the slightest.”Students taking part in an anti-government protest in June in Santiago.Javier Torres/Agence France-Presse, via Getty Images“But I wasn’t convinced by what he could do for the country,’’ Ms. Becerra added. “He has not achieved what he said he would.”In September, Chileans will vote on a remarkably progressive constitution that enshrines gender equality, environmental protections and Indigenous rights and that is meant to replace a Pinochet-era document.The president has bound his success to the referendum, putting himself in a precarious position should the draft be rejected, which polls show is for now the more likely outcome.In neighboring Peru, Mr. Castillo rose last year from virtual anonymity to beat Keiko Fujimori, a right-wing career politician whose father, former President Alberto Fujimori, governed with an iron fist and introduced neoliberal policies similar to those rejected by Chilean voters.While some Peruvians supported Mr. Castillo solely as a rejection of Ms. Fujimori, he also represented real hopes for many, especially poor and rural voters.As a candidate, Mr. Castillo promised to empower farmers with more subsidies, access to credit and technical assistance.But today, he is barely managing to survive politically. He has governed erratically, pulled between his far-left party and the far-right opposition, reflecting the fractious politics that helped him win the presidency.Supporters of Peru’s leftist presidential candidate Pedro Castillo during a protest against his rival’s effort to annul votes in 2021. Mr. Castillo won the election but is barely managing to survive politically. Marco Garro for The New York TimesMr. Castillo — whose approval rating has sunk to 19 percent, according to the Institute of Peruvian Studies — is now subject to five criminal probes, has already faced two impeachment attempts and cycled through seven interior ministers.The agrarian reform he pledged has yet to translate into any concrete policies. Instead, price spikes for food, fuel and fertilizer are hitting his base the hardest.Farmers are struggling through one of the worst crises in decades, facing the biggest planting season of the year without widespread access to synthetic fertilizer. They normally get most of it from Russia, but it is difficult to obtain because of global supply disruptions related to the war.Eduardo Zegarra, an investigator at GRADE, a research institute, called the situation “unprecedented.”“I think this is going to unfold very dramatically, and usher in a lot of instability,” he said.In a poor, hillside neighborhood in Lima, the capital, many parents are skipping meals so their children have more to eat.“We voted for Castillo because we had the hope that his government would be different,” said Ruth Canchari, 29, a stay-at-home mother of three children. “But he’s not taking action.”In Colombia, Mr. Petro will take office facing many of the same headwinds.President Gabriel Boric of Chile flashed a victory sign after his swearing-in ceremony at Congress in Valparaiso in March.Esteban Felix/Associated PressPoverty has risen — 40 percent of households now live on less than $100 a month, less than half of the monthly minimum wage — while inflation has hit nearly 10 percent.Still, despite widespread financial anxiety, Mr. Petro’s actions as he prepares to assume office seem to have earned him some support.He has made repeated calls for national consensus, met with his biggest political foe, the right-wing former president Álvaro Uribe, and appointed a widely respected, relatively conservative and Yale-educated finance minister.The moves may allow Mr. Petro to govern more successfully than, say, Mr. Boric, said Daniel García-Peña, a political scientist, and have calmed down some fears about how he will try to revive the economy.But given how quickly the honeymoon period ended for others, Mr. Petro will have precious little time to start delivering relief.“Petro must come through for his voters,” said Hernan Morantes, 30, a Petro supporter and environmental activist. “Social movements must be ready, so that when the government does not come through, or does not want to come through, we’re ready.”Julie Turkewitz More

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      ¿Qué prometió Gustavo Petro?

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      Durante su campaña, el candiato de izquierda Gustavo Petro propuso importantes reformas. Después de ganar las elecciones del domingo tendrá que demostrar que es capaz de implementar esos cambios.BOGOTÁ — En un estadio repleto de Bogotá, en medio de una explosión de confeti y debajo de un cartel que decía “Colombia ganó”, Gustavo Petro celebró el domingo su victoria como el primer presidente de izquierda que ha sido elegido en Colombia.“Llegó el gobierno de la esperanza”, dijo el exguerrillero y veterano senador, en medio de una cascada de aplausos y vítores.Durante décadas, Colombia ha sido uno de los países más conservadores de América Latina, donde la izquierda se ha asociado con una insurgencia violenta y algunos candidatos presidenciales de izquierda anteriores fueron asesinados durante sus campañas electorales.En ese contexto, la victoria de Petro fue histórica, una señal de la frustración de los votantes con el establecimiento político de derecha que, según muchos, no logró atender los problemas de generaciones que vivieron en condiciones de pobreza y desigualdad que solo empeoraron durante la pandemia.El hecho de que Petro eligiera como compañera de fórmula a Francia Márquez, una activista ambiental que será la primera vicepresidenta negra del país, hizo que la victoria fuese aún más excepcional. Algunas de las tasas de participación electoral más altas se registraron en varias zonas de las regiones más pobres y abandonadas del país, lo que sugiere que muchas personas se identificaron con los llamados repetidos de Márquez a la inclusión, la justicia social y la protección del medioambiente.Como candidato, Petro prometió cambiar algunos de los sectores más importantes de la sociedad colombiana en una nación que se encuentra entre las más desiguales de América Latina.Pero ahora que ocupará el palacio presidencial, pronto tendrá que convertir esas promesas, algunas de las cuales los críticos califican como radicales, en acciones.“Hay un programa de transformaciones muy profundas”, dijo Yann Basset, profesor de ciencias políticas en la Universidad del Rosario en Bogotá. “En todos esos temas va a necesitar de un apoyo importante del Congreso, lo que promete ser bastante difícil”.Simpatizantes de Petro en Bucaramanga, Colombia, el domingo.Nathalia Angarita para The New York TimesPetro ha prometido ampliar los programas sociales, proporcionar un subsidio significativo para las madres solteras, garantizar trabajo y un ingreso para las personas desempleadas, reforzar el acceso a la educación superior, aumentar la ayuda alimentaria, cambiar el país a un sistema de salud controlado públicamente y rehacer el sistema de pensiones.Dice que los fondos para esos cambios, en parte, se obtendrán de aumentar los impuestos a las 4000 familias más ricas del país, eliminando algunos beneficios fiscales corporativos, aumentando algunos aranceles de importación y atacando a los evasores de impuestos.Una parte central de su plataforma es un plan para pasar de lo que él define como la “vieja economía extractivista” de Colombia, basada en el petróleo y el carbón, a una enfocada en otras industrias, en parte para luchar contra el cambio climático.Algunas de las políticas de Petro podrían causar tensión con Estados Unidos que ha invertido durante las últimas dos décadas miles de millones de dólares en Colombia para ayudar a sus gobiernos a detener la producción y exportación de cocaína, con poco éxito. Petro ha prometido rehacer la estrategia del país contra las drogas, alejándose de la erradicación de los cultivos de coca, el producto base de la cocaína, para enfatizar el desarrollo rural.Washington ya ha comenzado a moverse en la dirección de priorizar el desarrollo, pero Petro podría chocar con los funcionarios estadounidenses por su visión precisa sobre ese tema.Petro también se ha comprometido a implementar por completo el acuerdo de paz de 2016 con el grupo rebelde más grande del país, las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, o FARC, y a frenar la destrucción de la Amazonía colombiana, donde la deforestación ha alcanzado nuevos máximos en los últimos años.Uno de los mayores desafíos de Petro será financiar su ambiciosa agenda, especialmente encontrar nuevos ingresos para compensar la pérdida de dinero del petróleo y el carbón mientras se expanden los programas sociales.Recientemente, otros dos políticos de izquierda, Gabriel Boric en Chile y Pedro Castillo en Perú, asumieron la presidencia con promesas de extender los programas sociales, pero su popularidad se desplomó, entre otros factores, en medio de la creciente inflación.Colombia recauda menos impuestos en proporción de su producto interno bruto en comparación con casi todos los demás países de la región.El país ya tiene un déficit elevado, y el año pasado, cuando el presidente actual, Iván Duque, intentó impulsar un plan fiscal para ayudar a bajarlo, cientos de miles de personas salieron a las calles a protestar.“Las cifras presupuestarias simplemente no cuadran”, escribió James Bosworth, fundador de Hxagon, una firma de consultoría de riesgo político en Bogotá, en un boletín enviado el lunes. “Es probable que los costos de los programas sociales propuestos por Petro consuman el presupuesto y dejen un déficit que crecerá con rapidez”.“Para el segundo o tercer año de su gobierno”, continuó Bosworth, “tendrá que tomar decisiones difíciles debido a las restricciones financieras y eso terminará molestando a una parte de la coalición que lo eligió”.Mauricio Cárdenas, exministro de Hacienda, dijo que el primer paso que debe dar Petro es anunciar un ministro de Hacienda con experiencia que pueda sosegar los temores del mercado y de los inversionistas al asegurarle a la gente que no incentivará un gasto descontrolado o una intervención gubernamental excesiva.Otro reto importante podría ser trabajar con el Congreso. La coalición de Petro, Pacto Histórico, tiene la mayor cantidad de integrantes en la legislatura. Pero no tiene una mayoría, que necesitará para impulsar su agenda. Ya se ha acercado a líderes políticos fuera de su coalición, pero no está claro cuánto apoyo obtendrá y si la formación de nuevas alianzas lo obligará a renunciar a algunas de sus propuestas.“Yo creo que tendrá que abandonar ciertas partes de este programa”, dijo Basset. “De todos modos, yo creo que no tiene una mayoría para implementar todo lo que ha prometido”.Petro también heredará una sociedad profundamente polarizada, dividida por clase, raza, región y etnicidad y marcada por años de violencia y conflicto.Durante décadas, el gobierno de Colombia luchó contra las FARC, y el conflicto armado se convirtió en un enfrentamiento intrincado entre grupos guerrilleros de izquierda, paramilitares de derecha y militares, todos los cuales han sido acusados de abusos contra los derechos humanos.A pesar del acuerdo de paz de 2016 con las FARC, muchas de las líneas divisorias del conflicto continúan, y han sido amplificadas por las redes sociales, que permitieron que los rumores y la desinformación circularan.Las encuestas previas a las elecciones mostraban una desconfianza en aumento en casi todas las instituciones importantes.“En mi opinión, esta elección es, por mucho, la más polarizada que hemos visto en Colombia en muchos años”, dijo Arlene B. Tickner, politóloga de la Universidad de Rosario. “Creo que será un desafío clave el solo hecho de calmar las aguas y hablarle en particular a los votantes y sectores de la sociedad colombiana que no votaron por él y que tienen temores considerables sobre la presidencia de Petro”.Una de las tareas más difíciles de Petro podría ser abordar la violencia en el campo.A pesar del acuerdo de paz, los grupos armados han seguido creciendo, especialmente en áreas rurales, alimentándose del narcotráfico, la industria ganadera, el tráfico de personas y otras actividades.Los homicidios, las masacres y los asesinatos de líderes sociales aumentaron en los últimos años, y el desplazamiento interno sigue siendo alto: 147.000 personas fueron obligadas a huir de sus hogares el año pasado, según datos del gobierno.Muchas personas afectadas por esta violencia votaron por Petro y Márquez, quien nació en el Cauca, una de las zonas más afectadas de Colombia.El plan de Petro para enfrentar la violencia incluye una reforma agraria que desalentaría con impuestos la propiedad de grandes parcelas de tierra y otorgaría títulos de propiedad a los pobres, cuya falta de recursos a menudo los obliga a unirse a grupos armados.Pero, presidencia tras presidencia, los intentos de emprender una reforma agraria han sido obstaculizados, y Petro admitió en una entrevista de este año que puede ser “lo más duro” de cumplir de sus promesas de campaña.“Es alrededor del tema en el que en Colombia se han hecho las guerras”, dijo.Megan Janetsky More