The pink tide (Spanish: marea rosa; Portuguese: onda rosa), or the turn to the left (Spanish: giro a la izquierda; Portuguese: virada à esquerda), was 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, Colombia, Honduras, Panama, and Peru 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 Nicolás Maduro in early January 2026, along with threats from US president Donald Trump towards Colombian president Gustavo Petro.
History
Rise of the left: 1990s and 2000s
Following the third wave of democratization in the 1980s, the institutionalisation of electoral competition in Latin America opened up the possibility for the left to ascend to power. For much of the region's history, formal electoral contestation excluded leftist movements, first through limited suffrage and later through military intervention and repression during the second half of the 20th century. The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War changed the geopolitical environment, as many revolutionary movements vanished, and the left embraced the core tenets of capitalism. In turn, the United States no longer perceived leftist governments as a security threat, creating a political opening for the left. In the 1990s, as the Latin American elite no longer feared a communist takeover of their assets, the left exploited this opportunity to solidify their base, run for local offices, and gain experience governing on the local level. At the end of the 1990s and early 2000s, the region's initial unsuccessful attempts with the neoliberal policies of privatisation, cuts in social spending, and foreign investment left countries with high levels of unemployment, inflation, and rising social inequality. This period saw increasing numbers of people working in the informal economy and suffering material insecurity, and ties between the working classes and the traditional political parties weakening, resulting in a growth of mass protest against the negative social effects of these policies, such as the piqueteros in Argentina, and in Bolivia indigenous and peasant movements rooted among small coca farmers, or cocaleros, whose activism culminated in the Bolivian gas conflict of the early-to-mid 2000s. The left's social platforms, which were centered on economic change and redistributive policies, offered an attractive alternative that mobilized large sectors of the population across the region, who voted leftist leaders into office.
The pink tide was led by Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, who was elected into the presidency in 1998. National policies among the left in Latin America are divided between the styles of Chávez and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, as the latter not only focused on those affected by inequality but also catered to private enterprises and global capital. Lucio Gutiérrez imitated Chávez, staged a coup d'état in 2000 and was elected in 2002 on a leftist platform but by 2003, the Indigenist Pachakutik and CONAIE withdrew their support seeing him as a traitor and in 2005, protests led to his removal from power. In 2006, Rafael Correa was elected president. In Bolivia, Evo Morales unexpectedly came second in the 2002 presidential election and was elected by a large margin in 2005. In 2006, Daniel Ortega returned to power in Nicaragua. Commenting on the rise of left-wing governments in the region, one observer in a 2007 study noted that “Now anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist governments such as Venezuela (Chavez), Cuba (Castro), Bolivia (Morales) and Ecuador (Correa) have been joined by nationalist centre-left governments such as Brazil (Lula da Silva), Uruguay and Argentina.”
Commodities boom and growth
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
