December 2025
Today, Latin America is at a crossroads reminiscent of historical cycles of instability, but in this regard, a new chapter is opening in which populism not only shapes public policy, but also redefines the boundaries of the social contract and institutional legitimacy, while protests and geopolitical turns become a measure of the real depth of the crisis, which goes beyond the ordinary dysfunction of the government and moves into a paradigm of constant political tension and securitization of everyday life. In 2025, we see how traditional perceptions of left, right, and centrist options are increasingly disintegrating under the pressure of economic crisis, identity culture, and international influences, which combined to create an environment that can be described as a controlled chaos of a continental dimension.
The wave of protests in Peru during 2025 clearly illustrated this dynamics, as on October 10 the parliament removed President Dina Boluarte after mass protests against state policies and violence escalated to the point where the legitimacy of the executive power became questionable, and citizens took to the streets again and again to demand profound changes in the way the state regulates public security and social cohesion, noting that violence linked to rising crime is only one symptom of a much deeper system. tension. That episode shows that Latin America is not only affected by a set of global trends, but that problems within countries are reproduced and intensified, often leading to institutional blockage and erosion of trust in democratic mechanisms, without which the political system loses its ability to adapt without escalating violent confrontations.
Regarding this, the situationn in Venezuela represents an especially complex case, since the Nicolas Maduro regime is using the combination of harsh repression, control of judiciary, and a narrative of retro development towards foreign threats to justify its internal politics of supression of the opposition space, which was additionally backed by geopolitical tensions and criticism of the international environment revolving around alleged violations of human rights and pressures on the civil society. This model of authoritarian adaptation clearly shows how the ruling elites use the ideological narratives and the security discourse to maintain control, whereas the 2024-2025 protests, even though strong and numerous, still did not succeed in destroying the structures that perpetuate the exclusion and polarization.
At the same time, the success of the radical right-wing and populist figures at elections, as is the case of the victory of Jose Antonio Kast at Chilean presidential elections at the end of 2025 (which brough along the support for more harsh attitudes towards crime and migrations), signal the change in the configuration of the political will in the region which is, even much more than before, caught up in the two-way currents that reflect the frustrations of the citizens with traditional political narratives, as well as a simultaneous striving towards a powerful state that can guarantee order and economic perspectives. This mixture of populist promises and heightened rhetoric about “regaining control“ enables competition between narratives, which are increasingly often using the discursive polarization and security rhetoric to mobilize voters through fear, dissatisfaction, and the promise of everyday experiences.
The protests in Mexico begun mid-2025, after the assassination of the mayor of Uruapan and the escalation of dissatisfaction with the failure of the Government to deal with crime and corruption additionally show that protests no longer remain limited to demands of short-term politics, but enter the field of permanent pattern of mobilization, that includes the Generation Z and wider social energies into the new phase of public expression, which is often perceived by the government as a threat to stability, and thus respond to it by forced measures.
Regarding this, the phenomenon of protest movements in Paraguay at the end of September 2025 also points to the same turning point, because the protesters succeeded in influencing the political agenda of the Government regarding the issue of relocation of the Institute for Indigenous Rights, which suggests that even smaller countries can occasionally overcome institutional inertia if protests succeed in articulating clearly formed demands and cause legitimate adjustment of policies.
These regional manifestations of violence and mobilization cannot be viewed in isolation from the broader global picture in which populism and polarization hang over democratic institutions like a constant shadow, and economic uncertainties only further fuel the sense of crisis. Economic stagnation, a decline in trust in institutions, and the perception that the elite serve their own interests rather than the public’s, lead to conflicts becoming an everyday act of political action, and even the securitization of everyday issues, such as fuel prices, security responses to crime, and access to public resources. In this sense, the analytical depth of the crisis does not lie only in the number of protests or changes in government, but in the structural decline of the social contract that increasingly results in unpredictable and dynamic patterns of mobilization.
Geopolitical turns in Latin America, including antecedental pressures from great powers and regional initiatives of conservative alliances that seek to counter populist governments, are another layer of this complex picture, as external forces and global discourses additionally influence the dynamics of conflict and legitimacy, which calls into question traditional alliances and opens space for new regional configurations of power. In this regard, we cannot look at Latin America in isolation: it is a collision course of global interests, local identities, and an increasingly intense rivalry between narratives that strive for greater citizen involvement and those that rely on authoritarian tendencies to overcome the current fragmentation of political life.
In short, Latin America today stands on the edge between institutional reconfiguration and chronic instability, because populism and protests not only shape the political landscape, but also redefine the limits of normative expectations and political possibilities, whereby the state and society remain in a constant dialogue of conflict, which often crosses the border of a peaceful transition and enters the field of permanent questioning of the legitimacy, power and future of democracy in the region.
Author: Miljan Petrović