On June 19, Gustavo Petro defeated far-right demagogue Rodolfo Hernández to become Colombia’s first left-of-center president. Francia Márquez Mina, Petro’s running mate, will serve as the country’s first Black vice president; the pair earned more votes than any ticket in the nation’s history. As the Colombian people celebrated in the streets of Bogotá, the former guerrilla fighter vowed to represent “that silent majority of peasants, Indigenous people, women [and] youth”. Petro’s triumph, which follows similar left-wing victories in Chile, Honduras, and, to a lesser extent, Peru, signals a broader pendulum swing within Latin America reminiscent of the “pink tide” during the early aughts. For a Biden administration that often frames its foreign policy around the dangers of autocracy, this political shift would seem like a positive development. But given that the interests of these countries are frequently at odds with those of Washington in an increasingly multipolar world, the administration’s support for this democratic wave remains hazy, even as Biden himself asserts the importance of fortifying the rule of law at home and abroad. Biden must decide whether he’s committed to proving that democracies can provide for their citizens, as he asserted at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles earlier this month, or whether he sees the term “democracy” as little more than a slogan, fundamentally devoid of meaning.
