Elections are coming up in five Latin American and Caribbean nations in 2026. Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Haiti, and Peru will elect presidents in the upcoming year. This will provide the White House with similar opportunities to those it exploited in 2025, when it threatened the populations of several countries if they didn’t elect the candidates that U.S. President Donald Trump chose. As the U.S. escalated its attacks on boats and increased its military posture against Venezuela, Trump at one point said there “will be hell to pay” if they didn’t.
The upcoming elections in the region will be another chance to create an outsized influence in Latin America for years to come. The White House will likely continue to contribute to the largely forced shift to the right in the hemisphere. With various strategies being employed in 2025, including the naval fleet in the Caribbean being used as a proverbial gun to the head, it provides insight into how the Trump administration will likely move forward.
Let’s take a look at the upcoming elections to get an idea of what’s at stake for the region in 2026, followed by an overview of interference in the 2025 elections.
The Upcoming Elections
On February 1, Costa Rica will hold general elections for president and its legislature. The leading presidential candidates include Laura Fernández of the Sovereign People’s Party and Álvaro Ramos of the National Liberation Party. The current president, Rodrigo Chaves Robles, is not without controversy. However, he is ending his term with a 58% approval rating, much higher than his predecessors. He has been described as an anti-establishment, populist technocrat. Fernández is his chosen successor to provide continuity of policy
Fernández says she is “socially conservative” and plans to tackle violent crime, in part, by building a prison in the style of El Salvador’s CECOT prison. She is also proposing an “integrated system” through social services to provide greater territorial control under the guise of confronting organized crime and stronger national defense. Fernández also wants to privatize many institutions and sell state assets such as the Bank of Costa Rica.
Robles is a center-left candidate running on a platform of social and economic inclusion, offering “universal cash transfers” for the poorest Costa Ricans. His approach to crime focuses more on prevention and a more structured approach, such as providing economic opportunities. Robles also promises to reform social services, salary increases, and increase spending on education.
With 20 candidates running and Fernández polling around 43% while all other candidates poll in single digits, it seems that she might coast to victory. However, 32% of voters remain undecided. Candidates must win at least 40% of the vote to avoid a runoff in April. Because Fernández is running on a far-right Christian nationalist platform, Trump likely helps boost her to victory.
On April 12, Peru will hold its presidential election with 36 candidates running. No candidate has more than 12% support. The two most popular of those are Keiko Fujimori of the Popular Force Party with about 12% support, and Rafael López Aliaga of the Popular Renewal Party with 10% support. This is Fujimori’s fourth attempt at the presidency, and he has consistently maintained a 10-12% approval rating during that time. Aliaga has been compared to Trump. The potential victor here is difficult to determine, but Trump likely backs the candidate most like him, Aliaga.
Peru’s internal politics are a mess. In October, its right-wing-controlled Congress removed President Dina Boluarte. In 2022, it also removed President Pedro Castillo. The removals have contributed to Congress’ 96% disapproval rating among voters. Analysts have described Peru’s executive branch as “held hostage” by the legislative branch, which is a coalition of right-wing parties. Essentially, Peru’s next president will be at the mercy of a neo-conservative Congress, greatly limiting their power. If Aliaga wins, he’ll have most of Congress on his side.
On May 31, Colombia holds its presidential election, after holding legislative elections on March 8. According to the Colombian constitution, President Gustavo Petro cannot seek reelection. His 55% disapproval rating has led opposition candidates to campaign on reversing his polices. There is currently a three-way split among top contenders. Leftist Iván Cepeda is leading all candidates with about 32% support. He promises to be the continuity candidate for social reform under Petro and to improve social services by increasing taxes on corporations.
Right-wing candidate Abelardo de la Espriella is often described as the “Colombian Bukele” due to his stances on security. He is polling around 18%. Centrist Sergio Fajardo is a former mayor of Medellín and is making his third presidential run. He is polling around 8.5% and is trying to appeal to voters by seeking a middle ground between the left and right. There is little doubt that Trump backs Espriella. It would open the door for the U.S. to dig its heels deeper into Colombia.
On August 30, Haiti will hold its first elections in over a decade. These elections are tentatively scheduled, and the list of candidates has not been finalized. Haiti’s situation is complicated. The government has been run by the Transitional Presidential Council, which took over following the resignation of former Prime Minister Ariel Henry over escalating gang violence. Haiti has not had an election since 2016 due to 2016 due to political assassinations, gang violence, and the collapse of the state, which has rendered voting impossible for most of the population.
On October 4, Brazil will hold general elections for president, Congress, and governors. Current president Lula da Silva is running for a fourth term. He will likely face Tarcísio de Freitas or Flávio Bolsonaro. Lula is running on a similar platform to previous campaigns. His focus is on state-led development and creating subsidized housing plans and debt renegotiation programs meant to help the middle and poorer classes.
Tarcísio de Freitas is the Governor of São Paulo and is considered the favorite on the right. He is a proponent of privatizing institutions, citing that the private sector “does almost everything better” than the state. He is an advocate for Bukele-style security measures and points to Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele as a model. Unlike the Bolsonaros, de Freitas is seen as a “market darling” with fiscal discipline while hoping to appeal to moderate voters.
Flávio Bolsonaro is the oldest son of former president and convicted insurrectionist Jair Bolsonaro. He is running on an identical Christian nationalist platform to his father’s by emphasizing “God, Fatherland, Family.” He is currently employing Trump-style rhetoric in using “narco-terrorist” when discussing national security, among other similar language. There is no doubt that Trump backs Bolsonaro since his father was a Trump favorite.
Lula is currently leading in the polls with 48% support.
2025 Election Meddling
In Argentina, the White House manipulated the midterm elections to help boost candidates aligned with Argentine President Javier Milei. After the Trump administration offered Argentina a $20 billion bailout, Milei visited the White House two weeks before the election to finalize the deal. During that meeting, in remarks to the press, Trump said that “If he [Milei] loses, we are not going to be generous with Argentina.” He then said that if Milei’s party did not win, the U.S. would not “waste our time” with financial aid for the South American country.
Before Argentina, the White House began 2025 with a softer tone than it ended the year with. After the presidential race in Ecuador ended in a runoff, Trump immediately began weighing in and backing Daniel Noboa. It was such an obvious case that Reps. Greg Casar (D-TX-35), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY-14), and Congressman Jonathan Jackson (D-IL-1), along with 14 other members of Congress, wrote a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio denouncing the White House’s interference.
“We urge you and other senior State Department officials to support the democratic process in Ecuador, and oppose all efforts to undermine the upcoming election,” read the joint statement. “In the event of a non-democratic transfer of power following the election, we expect all bilateral assistance to Ecuador will remain compliant with U.S. statutes related to the peaceful and democratic transfer of power.”
The letter also highlighted the human rights abuses under the incumbent president, Noboa. It addressed how cartels and drug smuggling networks have infiltrated Ecuador’s government, which aligns with Intelligence reports from Europe suggesting Noboa is involved in. The Department of State did not act on any of the requests made by the aforementioned lawmakers. Instead, the White House hosted Noboa just two weeks before election day.
Soon after Milei’s party won most of its elections and Noboa won another term, the presidential election in Bolivia garnered the White House’s attention. It should be noted that under the first Trump administration, the U.S. supported a coup of then-President Evo Morales in 2019. The architect of the coup was Carlos Trujillo, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS) at the time. This year, the administration used aid as leverage to influence the election, much like it did in 2020, while former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale influenced the election of Rodrigo Paz.
Similarly, Trujillo would play a role in interfering in Honduras’ 2025 election. This was made evident during a House Foreign Affairs Western Hemisphere Subcommittee hearing broadcast in Honduras. Trujillo, a registered foreign agent with corporate interests in Bolivia, testified at the hearing. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX-20) took him to task and exposed his motivations. While Trujillo’s involvement in the coup of Morales didn’t come up at the hearing, his conflict of interest was a key focus of Castro’s questioning. The meddling created chaos and doubt in Honduras.
Many questions about the election’s validity remain months later.
The December election in Chile was riddled with endorsements from the White House for José Antonio Kast, the son of a former Nazi member. Kast ran on a platform that echoed Trump and Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, Chile’s neighbor. Kast was struggling in the polls until Trump threatened tariffs on Chilean copper, which Kast exploited during the campaign, saying only he could get them lifted, and strong-arming voters with “hell to pay” if Kast did not win.
Those words, and Chile’s neighbor, Peru, agreeing to allow U.S. troops within its border in the lead-up to the election, sent a message that created fears of an invasion. That the military buildup occurred alongside Trump’s threats against Chile and his endorsement of Kast explicitly exposes how this election, along with the others mentioned here were interfered with, making the U.S.-backed “conservative corridor” in South America manufactured and largely illegitimate.
Conclusion
The history of U.S. involvement in elections across Latin America and the Caribbean is long and problematic. With all the rhetoric pointed at Latin America, the invocation of the Monroe Doctrine, Operation Southern Spear, and hardliner Marco Rubio at the helm of the Department of State, it’s all but guaranteed that the White House will interfere in various elections in 2026. While you may only hear about Brazil and Colombia, many other elections are at stake that will determine the future of Latin America for the next several years.
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Good election wrap-up, Arturo. One question: in the paragraph that follows the description of Fernandez, did you mean to describe Ramos as the left leaning candidate running against her? Right now it says Robles, but I think your previous paragraphs mention him as the sitting president.
The US has been interfering forever. I think they're more shameless about it now.