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In yet another sign of Latin America’s dramatic political shift, another right-wing government has been elected south of the border. This is the sixth Latin American nation to elect right-wing governments in the past year, along with Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Honduras and Chile. Brazil, Colombia, Haiti and Peru are all scheduled to hold presidential elections this year.
Right-wing Laura Fernández was elected the new president of Costa Rica with almost 50 per cent of the votes on Sunday. Her party, the PPSO, also secured a comfortable majority in parliament, meaning that the 39-year-old political scientist's plans can probably be implemented in the coming term without major obstacles.
While much attention has focused on Javier Milei’s remarkable turnaround of Argentina’s economy after years of collapse under decades of socialism, the big issue in Costa Rica’s election was crime. Like El Salvador and other countries, Costa Ricans are sick of the violent havoc wrought by gangs.
[Fernández’s] plans are strongly focused on tackling crime and organized crime, a top priority for voters in Costa Rica. During her victory speech, Fernández promised a “major and irreversible” change for the country.
Many of her constituents seem to hope that this “major” change will continue the political project of Rodrigo Cháves, the country’s current president and Fernández’s party colleague. Cháves publicly identified the election winner, previously a minister in his government, as his dream successor.
Murders have surged in Costa Rica as Mexican and Colombian drug gangs began using the previously safe country as a smuggling point. Like other Latin American nations, Costa Rica is looking to El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele for inspiration.
The name “Bukele” symbolizes a tough approach to criminals: he had a state of emergency introduced in El Salvador in March 2022 to combat street gangs. That state of emergency is still in force, and more than 110,000 people are now behind bars.
And the murder rate plummeted from 52 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018, the year Bukele took office, to 2.4 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023.
Despite much hand-wringing from ‘human rights’ quangos, Costa Rica had already set a Bukele-oriented course before the elections.
Already under current President Cháves, it was announced that Costa Rica would also have a mega prison built, with room for 5,000 prisoners. The foundation stone was laid in January by Bukele himself, who had come over at Cháves’ invitation.
Fernández has promised to finish building the prison and has said she would declare a state of emergency in cities and counties where gangs have a lot of power.
The success of the ‘Bukele model’ in yet another Latin American election has obvious ramifications for the four elections scheduled to be held in other countries in the coming months.
Polls show young Latin American voters in particular that security is one of their biggest issues in elections, and that they take for granted a erosion of democracy when necessary to tackle crime. It is a message that will also resonate in 2026 in the presidential elections in three of the largest countries in the region: Brazil, Peru and Colombia.
Bukele is not just the most popular leader in the region: a majority of Colombians want the ‘Bukele model’ in their country. In Peru and Argentina, younger voters are backing the tough-on-crime approach.
