At first glance, this year’s annual LatinoBarometro report appears to contain good news for Latin America. The survey, which polled citizens in 17 Latin American countries in late 2024, shows that support for democracy has increased, while support for authoritarianism has fallen. Latin America’s publics are slightly more optimistic about their economic prospects, too. More citizens view their democratically elected governments as having delivered for them in 2024 than in recent years. A greater number of families define themselves as middle class and say their family is getting ahead economically.
Going country by country, in most cases, the data matches the conventional wisdom. Uruguayans, who just finished a peaceful election cycle and are in the midst of a normal transition of power, are quite happy with democracy. On the other end of the spectrum, Peruvians feel massive discontent with their country’s democracy amid a spate of scandals that would seem to justify their anger—just last week, it was reported that a member of Peru’s Congress was running a prostitution ring in a sex-for-votes exchange racket.
Yet, two countries stand out in this year’s survey because the public perception of their democracies differs markedly from the direction in which analysts see those democracies heading: El Salvador and Mexico. In question after question of the LatinoBarometro survey, respondents from those two countries stand out as being happier with both their governments and the performance of democracy in general. For example, the survey results show that 62 percent of Salvadorans say they are satisfied with democracy in their country, a statistical tie with Uruguay at 63 percent. And in third place is Mexico at 50 percent. The Latin American average on that question is 33 percent, with Bolivia and Peru bringing up the rear with 10 percent each.