Guatemalan voters turned out in large numbers yesterday to elect Bernardo Arevalo as their president. Arevalo’s victory is a chance for positive change in Guatemala, but it’s still a troubling sign that traditional parties and systems are failing in the region.
Many observers have attributed the victory of Javier Milei, a libertarian economist who rails against the “political caste” and promises to drastically reduce the size of the state, in Argentina’s presidential primaries to anger and anti-establishment sentiment. That is not only a mistake, but also an underestimation of Argentine voters.
Reducing deforestation in the Amazon is good policy, but as last week’s summit bringing together leaders of the Amazonian countries demonstrated, it can make for difficult politics. Instead of arriving at regional solutions, the summit exposed divisions in South America on a topic that is high on the global environmental agenda.
