This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, July 25th, 2022.

I'm Caleb Brown.

What explains the leftward swing in Latin American countries?

Cato's Daniel Raisbeck says it's not monocousal.

He details the cases of Chile, Peru, and most recently, Colombia.

We're seeing sort of a left word lurch in Latin America. Last year Peru moved left within their elections. In

Chile they elected a more a pretty radical leftist as a president and now what has happened in Colombia?

Well in Colombia exactly the same thing happens they elect elected, we elected for the first time actually in in

recent Colombian history a candidate who was very close to Hugo Chavez when

Chavez was alive.

The new president, his name is Guzawa Petro.

He started his public life in a left-wing guerrilla group.

And well, he has all sorts of ideas about expropriating private pension funds

and ending all oil exploration, oil being the number one legal export, and of course printing money without limits.

So right, I think it's a very dangerous time for Colombia.

And we should note of course in Venezuela long-standing sort of left-wing

government that can just collapsed and is continuing to collapse year after year.

Well, the interesting thing about Venezuela is that the economy definitely collapsed

and they also cause humanitarian disaster with

millions of refugees having to go to other countries including Colombia of

course which is right next door but the government itself hasn't collapsed.

They have actually been getting stronger and stronger.

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