On June 23, 2026, Keiko Fujimori's victory in Peru became all but certain, with 99.88% of the vote counted and a margin of roughly 44,000 votes. With that, three countries this year, Chile, Colombia, and Peru, have in quick succession chosen right-leaning, conservative governments, sharpening a trend that has run since Argentina in late 2023. The phrase "Latin America's conservative wave" is not a passing buzzword; it is increasingly borne out in the numbers, as the choice voters have made over the last 18 months.
The Map Drawn by Four Countries' Choices
Javier Milei took office as Argentina's president in December 2023. By early 2024 he had chosen shock therapy, slashing government spending in the name of fiscal balance to bring inflation under control. In Chile, as Gabriel Boric's leftist government faced a verdict of "sagging approval and worsening security," Jose Antonio Kast won the presidential election in January. In Colombia, in the June 21 runoff, Abelardo de la Espriella defeated Gustavo Petro's chosen successor by less than a point, sealing a change of government. Peru's Fujimori, on her fourth attempt, won a runoff for the first time.
What all four share is the context that "deteriorating security moved the vote." In Colombia, frustration built against a Petro government that had promised "total peace" with armed groups. In Peru, everyday street crime and political chaos produced a vote by process of elimination. In Chile, migration and violent crime drove support toward Kast.
Rethinking What "Conservative" Really Means
Yet lumping these four together as a single "rightward shift" calls for caution. Milei's libertarian small-government creed and Kast's law-and-order conservatism point in quite different directions on economic policy. Fujimori's banner of "stability and order" is a pragmatism that prioritizes crime control, and it sits at some distance from an ideological right in the usual sense.
What voters in each country shared was less an embrace of the right than a "no" rooted in accumulated experience: "we trusted the left, and life did not get better." Set against Chile's Boric, Colombia's Petro, Peru's Castillo (removed by Congress in 2022), and Brazil's Lula, it is telling that only Lula has held on to relatively high approval. Brazil has not, for now, been swept up by the wave, and how support for Lula moves in the presidential election at the end of 2026 will be the region's next focal point.
Into the Stage Where Policy Is Tested
An election win is only a starting point. Colombia's Espriella has declared his country will join the U.S.-led "Shield of the Americas," making security-focused cooperation with Washington a pillar of his government. Peru's Fujimori is pushing mining- and export-led growth, but dialogue with a Congress of tangled blocs will not be easy. Each now enters the stage of crossing the wide gap between "winning an election" and "running a government."
This kind of conservative return is also a pattern that has recurred throughout Latin American political history. A leftist government sets out to narrow inequality, then loses support over fiscal strain and corruption, and the pendulum swings right; many scholars point to that back-and-forth as a root of the region's democratic instability. Whether this wave is a mere reversal of the cycle, or whether it produces a new answer to the "safety and stability" voters demand, will be revealed not by the election results but by the policies still to be made.
My Perspective
Lining up the four results, the first thing I feel is that reading this as a simple "ideological swing to the right" is premature. On economic policy, Milei, Kast, and Fujimori are different animals; if there is a common language, it lies more in "security" and "discontent with the status quo." Voters were not so much enchanted by right-wing ideals as they were ordering an exit for a present they could not feel improving. Each of these razor-thin results seems to reflect an air closer to elimination than to enthusiasm.
That is exactly why I want to watch the years ahead with a cool head. Governments that won by a hair stand atop divided legislatures and split publics. If they cannot meet voters' expectations on security and the economy within a short span, the pendulum will swing back, something Latin American political history has shown again and again. Rather than taking sides with any party, I want to verify, over time rather than by the result, whether the promised "stability and order" takes root as an institution or ends as the starting point of the next cycle.
Glossary
balotaje (runoff) = a second round of voting held between the top two candidates when no one wins a majority in the first round; used in presidential elections in Peru and Colombia. giro a la derecha (turn to the right) = an expression for the phenomenon of public opinion or election results leaning conservative or right-wing. Escudo de las Américas (Shield of the Americas) = a regional security framework described as U.S.-led, here referring to the cooperation with Washington that Colombia's new government has declared it will join.
The conservative turn in four countries shows that voters chose change; what change they expect is, if anything, only now being put to the test.
References
- Chile, Colombia, and Peru Go Conservative: What's Next for Latin America? | The Media Line — themedialine.org
- REACTION: Peru Runoff Is Too Close to Call (Again) | Americas Quarterly — americasquarterly.org
- A razor-thin victory, a divided nation: What awaits Peru's next president? | Atlantic Council — atlanticcouncil.org
- Latin America and the Caribbean Overview: June 2026 | ACLED — acleddata.com
※ This article is the author’s commentary based on public information. Please confirm the latest figures, dates and procedures with governments and primary sources. Quotations are kept minimal and sources are cited.