LIMA, Peru—This country has had six presidents in five years, the latest taking power last month and igniting protests that have cost 42 lives and paralyzed many of Peru’s highland cities.
In Mexico, President
Andrés Manuel López Obrador
has taken measures that undermine the country’s independent electoral agency, while thousands of supporters of former Brazilian President
Jair Bolsonaro,
many of them who said his opponent had rigged the October presidential election, last week ransacked the country’s presidential palace, the Congress and the Supreme Court.
Across Latin America, democracy is being tested in a way it hasn’t in years, say Latin American pollsters, political analysts and citizens. Protests, sometimes violent, are regular. More than half of Latin Americans think corruption is on the rise and consider most elected officials to be corrupt, according to Transparency International, the global anticorruption watchdog. Several counties have seen political parties from the center crumble, replaced by fringe or antiestablishment movements.
In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, poverty and hunger have shot up in several countries. Violent gangs trafficking everything from cocaine to methamphetamines to fentanyl have expanded.
Ecuador, which was lauded just a few years ago for lowering crime and becoming a magnet for U.S. retirees, has seen homicides shoot up by nearly 300% from 2019 to 2022, according to Ecuador’s national police.
“More than dying from hunger, we’re dying of terror, and we’re afraid of even going to the store,” said JaKelin Patrón, a maid with three children in coastal Guayaquil. “The kids are so frightened we don’t want to send them to school. I am losing hope.”
Migrants waiting to request asylum in El Paso, Texas. Record numbers of migrants have made it to the southwest border.
Photo:
JOSE LUIS GONZALEZ/REUTERS
The U.S. has felt the effects, with record numbers of migrants searching for a…
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