South America
June 27, 2026 — Bill Glahn
Conservative candidate Keiko Fujimori, age 51, appears to have won election for the Presidency of Peru. She leads her left-wing opponent by around 50,000 votes, out of more than 18 million cast. Her lead appears to be larger than the number of uncounted votes remaining. That should make her the winner, shouldn’t it? Elsewhere, Wikipedia lists her as President-Elect, expected to assume office in late July. Reuters reports, Keiko Fujimori’s
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June 21, 2026 — Bill Glahn
From Bloomberg, Conservative lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella narrowly won the preliminary vote count in Colombia’s presidential election, likely sweeping aside Gustavo Petro’s leftist movement and realigning Bogotá with the US. There is a mandatory recount that will occur over the next few days, but Wikipedia, for what it’s worth, has already awarded Espriella the victory. I’ve been following the presidential election in Peru, where the “far-right” candidate Keiko Fujimori
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June 11, 2026 — Bill Glahn
As predicted, with the vote count continuing in the Peruvian presidential election, right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori has retaken the lead from her left-wing opponent, Roberto Sanchez. With more than 98 percent of the total vote counted, Fujimori leads by fewer than 600 votes, out of more than 18 million cast. Polymarket favors a Fujimori win over 96 percent.
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June 8, 2026 — Bill Glahn
The final round of the Peruvian presidential election took place yesterday. Early signs were looking good for the conservative candidate, Keiko Fujimori. She appeared to lead in exit polls and in the election-night vote tabulations. Following an all-too-familiar pattern, as the votes continued to be counted the day after, her lead continued to shrink until she eventually fell behind her leftist opponent, Roberto Sanchez. With about 95 percent counted, she
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December 14, 2025 — Bill Glahn
From the BBC, Chile elects far-right José Antonio Kast as next president. Every sentence of the BBC report is better than the last, Chile has elected the far-right wing José Antonio Kast to be its next president, after an election campaign that was dominated by themes of security, immigration and crime. Kast won decisively with more than 58% of the vote in his third attempt at running for president. A
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October 27, 2025 — Bill Glahn
From BBC News, Argentina’s Milei wins big in midterms with ‘chainsaw’ austerity. The BBC reports that Pres. Javier Milei’s party won 41 percent of the vote, taking 64 of 128 seats up for election in the lower house and 13 of 24 up in the Senate. Every two years, one-half of the legislature is up for election. In the run up to yesterday’s election, Milei was just hoping to win
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August 19, 2025 — Bill Glahn
On of the stories I’ve been following is the rise of right-wing (conservative, free-market, whatever you prefer) parties and governments across the world. From the U.K. Guardian, Bolivia’s presidential election will go to a runoff for the first time, with two rightwing candidates competing for the presidency – marking the end of nearly 20 years of dominance by the leftist Movimiento al Socialismo (Mas). The New York Times describes the leading candidate,
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January 18, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Niall Ferguson recommends that we take in the whole of the speech given by Argentina’s President Javier Milei yesterday to the assembled globalistas at Davos. Ferguson characterizes the speech as “a magnificent defense of individual liberty and the free market economy.” These must have sounded like fighting words: “Today I’m here to tell you that the western world is in danger…because those who are supposed to defend the values of
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August 14, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Argentina’s political history is tortured, marked by incompetence and corruption and with a lingering yearning for Juan Peron’s brand of leftism. But maybe the times are changing: Reuters reports that libertarians have taken a surprising lead in Argentina’s primary elections: Argentine voters punished the country’s two main political forces in a primary election on Sunday, pushing a rock-singing libertarian outsider candidate into first place in a huge shake-up in the
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February 19, 2019 — Scott Johnson
President Trump has rejected the status quo ante in American foreign policy. He has rededicated the United States to the support of Israel. He has withdrawn the United States from the disgraceful deal with Iran. He has tightened the sanctions regime with the intent of disabling the mullahs. He has shaken up matters with the North Korean regime in the interest of putting their nuclear weapons program on the path
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December 13, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Alberto Nisman was about to present the findings of his investigation of the cover-up of Iranian responsibility for the 1994 bombing of the Buenos Aires Jewish community center when he died in January 2015 under mysterious circumstances. The bombing was an act of mass murder; it killed 85 people. Was Nisman himself murdered in turn? We covered the attempts to unravel the circumstances behind his death in a series of
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May 16, 2015 — Scott Johnson
The Wall Street Journal devotes a good page-one story to a review of the mysterious death of Alberto Nisman. By Taos Turner and Reed Johnson, the story is “A body, a pistol, and few answers in Argentina” (accessible here via Google). It is an extraordinary and maddening case. The Journal story derives in part from the independent investigation of Nisman’s death commissioned by Nisman’s former companion, Judge Sandra Arroyo Salgado.
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February 23, 2015 — Scott Johnson
Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro is pushing his countrymen into a Castroite abyss of tyranny and impoverishment. Give up your freedom and Maduro will throw in immiseration too. It’s a left-wing package deal. Simnon Romero and Girish Gupta don’t put it quite that way in their New York Times story this morning. The intelligent reader, however, may be able to draw his own conclusions: Let’s take it from the top: For
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January 26, 2015 — Scott Johnson
The death of Alberto Nisman under suspicious circumstances has rocked Argentina and raised serious doubts about the government. The AP roundup from Buenos Aires reports that “Death of prosecutor shakes faith in president, government institutions in Argentina.” Journalist Damian Pachter broke the story of Nisman’s death last week. In the most recent chapter of the story, Pachter has fled Argentina for Israel out of concerns for his safety. Haaretz has
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January 25, 2015 — Scott Johnson
The death of Alberto Nisman in his Buenos Aires apartment continues to give rise to troubling revelations something other than the suicide that appeared to be the cause of his death. Nisman was of course the Argentine prosecutor who charged the Iranian regime with the bombing of the 1994 Jewish community center; 85 Argentinians were killed in the bombing, the worst terror attack in the country’s history. Nisman was killed
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January 23, 2015 — Scott Johnson
The news related to the death of Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman this past Sunday is arriving in torrent. Nisman was killed under suspicious circumstances on the eve of the explosive testimony he was to give regarding his government’s complicity with Iran to suppress the investigation of the 1994 Jewish community center bombing; the suspicious circumstances include the staging of his death as an apparent suicide. The New York Times reports
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January 20, 2015 — Scott Johnson
Circumstantial evidence suggests that Alberto Nisman committed suicide at his Buenos Aires apartment on Sunday. Within Argentina, however, this circumstantial evidence has been treated with substantial skepticism. The New York Times conveys the suspicions in an article by Jonathan Gilbert and Simon Romero: “Puzzling death of a prosecutor grips Argentina.” Christopher Dickey’s Daily Beast article puts Nisman’s death in the context of the ongoing war between Israel and Iran. Next
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