Editor’s Note: Lucrecia Fernández, a member of the Frente Popular Darío Santillán (Darío Santillán Popular Front) in Argentina and a journalist for the National Network of Alternative Media Argentina, will be penning articles on Latin American politics for Sendika.Org. In her first article for Sendika.Org, Fernández analyzes the advance of the right in Latin America.

Latin America probably understands more than ever that the flapping of a butterfly in China can result in a hurricane in the western hemisphere. The right is on the move in Latin America, much as imperialism is deepening war and death in the Middle East

On 17 April, Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies moved forward with impeachment proceedings against Dilma Rousseff, the country’s current president.

Everything suggests that the removal of the president by the most conservative sectors is inevitable. The undeniable fact is that right-wing political parties and large corporations, mainly the Federation of Industries of Sao Paulo (FIESP) and Rede Globo, are spearheading the impeachment-come-soft coup.

The proponents of expelling Rousseff were characterized by their reactionary pronouncements, with many in parliament defending the dictatorship or voting in the name of God, the Armed Forces, the family or the church.

The next phase occurred on 12 May in the Brazilian Senate, which stated that Dilma Rousseff was being impeached for tax fraud in drawing up the budget. Some 55 senators voted in favor of impeachment versus 22 against, resulting in the president’s suspension for 180 days. Her position will be filled on an interim basis by Vice President Michel Temer, who belongs to a conservative sector to the right of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), which was the one that orchestrated the coup alongside the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB). Temer has a history of repression against social protest amid worries that such fears will again be realized amid the large popular protests that have erupted against the soft coup in Brazil.

This attempt to destabilize democracy in Brazil is not isolated, and it is necessary to view it within the context of the rest of Latin America, since the right-wing and imperialist countries of the region are attempting – as they have done historically – to curb the recent achievements of the left, mainly with the Bolivarian process.

In Venezuela, there has been one attempt after another to destabilize the Bolivarian government, but the elections on 6 December 2015 were a setback for the Bolivarian revolution, as the opposition swept the elections, winning a parliamentary majority for the first time in 15 years. This choice was not random but was the result of the “economic war,” which has caused shortages and induced inflation, opening the way for discontent among Chavistas. The Nicolas Maduro government’s ineffectiveness against this economic war, coupled with the high level of corruption that became evident last year within the Chavista government, has presented a complex series of problems that the presidency is trying to solve.

The case of Argentina has also created trouble. On 10 December 2015, Mauricio Macri, a candidate of the conservative right, business leaders and neoliberals, was elected president. His election translates into rise in inflation, 150,000 job losses, an agreement with the vulture funds that surrender the country’s economic sovereignty to corporations and international organizations and the closure of many social development, education and health programs in the public sphere. Macri’s victory with close to 50% of the vote was not the only salient detail, as the opposition candidate in the last election, Daniel Scioli, a candidate for Kichnerismo, was also characterized as a right-wing candidate.

These facts altered the Latin American map, strengthening the right in the region. Macri tried to expel Venezuela from Mercosur, accusing Maduro’s government of terrorism and violence while openly declaring his support for the situation in Brazil in affirming the “constitutional processes” that have ousted the president in Brazil. A similar course over recent months is evident in other Latin American countries.

Two years ago, Colombia began a long-awaited peace process between the Álvaro Santos government and the FARC, but the atmosphere surrounding the peace process in general and this stage of negotiations with the guerrillas in particular, is the violent criminalization, persecution, repression and extermination against social movements and human rights defenders which has been intensified – paradoxically – during the last two years by the same government (138 social leaders killed in the last 18 months is scandalous and unacceptable, regardless of whether or not there are any negotiations). To this one can add the prevailing skepticism in the common sense of the majority with respect to the future of the country, which is linked to a historical weariness mediated by political violence, corruption and the degradation of war, but also thanks to the strong media manipulation of large corporations, which was reflected in municipal elections last year in Bogota, where the left lost after 12 consecutive in charge of the city.

The string of presidencies won by the right in Latin America has not ceased, and the list will soon add Peru, where the first round of the 10 April presidential elections occurred, giving 39% to Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of former dictator Alberto Fujimori and the president of Popular Forces. Second place went to Pedro Pablo Kuczynski with 21% of the vote. The two will face off in a runoff on 5 June.

While 22 leftist candidates entered Congress for the first time, the scenario for the presidency remains bleak, as both candidates are from the ultra-conservative right, and both candidates have been partners in the past on several occasions. Keiko Fujimori is very conservative and is allied with the most backward sectors of the Catholic and Evangelical churches. Meanwhile, her father, Alberto Fujimori, is currently serving 25 years in prison for crimes against humanity. Not only is she his daughter, she is also the president of his party and was the first lady during the period of dictatorship in Peru when torture and forced disappearances occurred. She was an accomplice to the forced sterilization of more than 272,000 women during the dictatorship on the orders of her father.

Kuczynski, meanwhile, was the economy minister in the government of Alejandro Toledo between 2005 and 2006, during which he ceded the Camisea gas at very low prices to Mexico. During the era of dictator Juan Velasco Alvarado in the 1960s, he fled the country in the trunk of a car because after helping the Petroleum Company remove money from Peru following an expropriation by the dictator.

Clearly this candidate also represents the right, and the only thing that remains unclear is which rightist candidate will assume power in the coming years in the country.

The list could go on to include Honduras following the murder in March of Berta Caceres, an indigenous social activist of international recognition, or the deployment of roughly 500,000 military troops in Chile to protect the interests of foreign companies amid a struggle by the Mapuche to recover their ancestral lands.

The truth is that with the current situation set to remain for several years, the left in Latin America must conceive of new organizational strategies, new scenarios of struggle and, why not, new alliances. Latin America probably understands more than ever that the flapping of a butterfly in China can result in a hurricane in the western hemisphere. The right is on the move in Latin America, much as imperialism is deepening war and death in the Middle East.