After seventeen months in office, Peruvian President Pedro Castillo was this month deposed by a right-wing parliamentary coup hidden behind the facade of an official and legal impeachment process. The impeachment vote came just hours after Castillo announced that he planned to dissolve Congress, hold new elections, redraft the constitution and place Peru under a state of emergency. His vice-president, Dina Boluarte, has assumed the presidency while Castillo is held by police on charges of “rebellion” and has been ordered to remain in prison for the next eighteen months.
A wave of mass struggle has surged in Haiti, anti-regime riots and protests washing over the country over the last nine weeks. Sparked by fuel price increases, the protests have linked dire living conditions to the unelected Prime Minister Ariel Henry.
More than 150 million Brazilians went to the polls to elect a president and members of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies on 2 October. The election was a showdown between the two heavyweights of Brazilian politics, pitting former president and leader of the Workers’ Party (PT), Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, against the far-right incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro.
The Chilean population has voted overwhelmingly to reject a proposal for a new constitution to replace the current document, written under the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. The shockingly strong “reject” vote of 62 percent comes just two years after an explosion of street protests and strikes forced conservative President Sebastian Piñera to promise the drafting of a new constitution.
It has been generations in the making but, on 19 June, the first ever leftist president of Colombia was elected. Gustavo Petro defeated his right-wing opponent, Rodolfo Hernández, in a second-round run-off with 50.4 percent of the vote against 47.3 percent. The traditional conservative and centre-left coalitions were both defeated in the first round, winning 24 percent and 4 percent of the vote respectively.
As the sun began to fall in Santiago, Chile, on Sunday, the streets of the capital filled. Thousands celebrated the victory of 35-year-old former student leader Gabriel Boric over his extreme right-wing opponent, José Antonio Kast, in the second round of the country’s presidential election.