Frontyard Empire

With Lula’s reelection, Brazil has pulled the brakes on what seemed an unstoppable trend across the hemisphere. At first, when Flávio Bolsonaro outperformed expectations to take the first round with 47 to Lula’s 45.1 percent of the vote, it appeared Brazil would be the next country to join a far-right wave swelling across the region. But then Lula mounted a miraculous comeback in the second round, winning 51.8 to Bolsonaro’s 48.2 percent, and proving that the far right’s rise is far from inevitable. 

Yet Lula’s next term will be haunted by the first round results. There will be a right-wing majority in both houses of the National Congress, the strongest parliamentary opposition in the history of his four mandates. Still, his presidential victory represents a ruptural event. In a hemisphere increasingly dominated by the far right, what stood out about the Brazilian elections?

Amidst a hostile environment, Lula met fire with fire and refused to moderate his message. In an open struggle against Bolsonaro and his allies — Donald Trump to the north, Javier Milei to the south — he pitted Brazil’s future against the foreign intervention of Big Tech giants like Meta and Palantir, which he rightly characterised as the political arm of US government. As digital platforms became a major site of struggle — Meta banned Lula’s page on Facebook, only to reverse its decision a day later — Lula drew clear battle lines around the extractivist dimension of ‘digital’ capitalism. 

Another major hallmark was the material measures Lula opposed to Bolsonaro’s austerity programme. During the campaign, Lula introduced a series of reforms to benefit the working class, including the reduction of the working week; debt forgiveness for small businesses; subsidies for diesel; subsidies for taxi, Uber, truck, and bus drivers who wish to replace their vehicles; free public transport on weekends; and additional assistance for students. He additionally enacted a ban on sports gambling and online casinos, while denouncing the betting platforms that extract profits by producing addiction and impoverishment for young people. Lula also announced a significant increase of public funds — $5.6 billion through the end of 2027 — for Bolsa Família, the famous anti-poverty programme first introduced by the Workers’ Party (PT).

Remarkable, too, was the internationalisation of both campaigns. One openly denounced US intervention as a new form of imperialism; the other embraced a US economic and military alliance in the fight against international ‘narco-terrorism.’ One championed the fight against climate change and the government’s achievement in dramatically reducing the Amazon’s deforestation; the other spewed climate denialism and advocated for endless extractivism. One stood in solidarity with Palestine and denounced the ongoing genocide in Gaza at the United Nations General Assembly; the other celebrated Netanyahu’s government and pledged a ‘deep friendship’ between Brazil and Israel.

What followed in the aftermath of the vote read like a cheap spy novel. Under investigation for money laundering by judicial authorities who requested his passport and barred him from leaving the country, Bolsonaro declared the election fraudulent and booked a fake ticket to the US from Brazil. He then escaped to Argentina by foot and boarded a plane linked to a drug trafficker and a company under investigation in the corruption case involving Milei and the National Disability Agency (ANDIS). From there he flew to Guayaquil, Ecuador, before reaching his final destination in Miami, where he met his brother Eduardo, similarly ‘exiled’ after being declared ineligible for public office, and immediately posted a joint selfie to Instagram, assuring his supporters he was safe and sound in the imperial bosom of the United States — welcomed by Trump and Rubio alike.

Bolsonaro’s great escape illustrates the transnational criminality and collaboration of the far right across the region, which has rapidly transformed as a reactionary vanguard, linked to a waning US empire, has advanced. While Lula’s victory shows that this trend can still be halted, it leaves no room for complacency. To stop the tide of reaction from spreading across the entire continent, we must first understand the gravity of what we’re up against. What is the character of this rising new right? What are its principal aims — and how can they be thwarted?

Fascism in the Frontyard

With Rubio at the helm of foreign policy, the US has placed Latin America at the centre of its so-called Donroe Doctrine — an eruption of violence that harks back to the glory days of US hegemony. This coincides with a general rightward turn, as Trump joins hands with allied leaders from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Peru and many other states. 

The idea of the US ‘backyard’ has a long historical arc. Originally associated with the Monroe Doctrine, it was extended under Roosevelt, who claimed that Latin American countries were incapable of maintaining order and that Washington would have to compensate with ‘gunboat diplomacy’. This view of the continent as an imperial outpost informed the CIA-sponsored coups of the 1970s and 80s, before underwriting the more indirect violence of neoliberalism — from austerity to structural adjustment — under the guise of the democratic transition. 

But the current condition of Latin America does not simply recalibrate these methods. The dynamic of the 2020s is distinct. The Trump administration has dropped bombs across the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean, murdering hundreds of people on unsubstantiated claims of narcoterrorism. It has surrounded Venezuela with 12,000 naval troops and abducted President Nicolás Maduro. It has tried to destabilise every progressive government in the region and intensified its political, economic and military interventionism in support of new far-right leaders.

These are reactionary responses to a new situation in which US empire is on the backfoot. To be ‘defensive’ in a conjuncture of geopolitical fracture and popular discontent means going on the offensive. Amidst right-wing radicalisation in the region, a new kind of pan-American order is emerging: no longer a mere ‘backyard’, but a central focus for the multipolar order and for the international far-right project. Latin America is now the frontyard of neofascist and imperial experimentation.

Whereas the 1970s discourse of the backyard drew a distinction between the ‘liberal-democratic’ US and the dictatorships of the South, these imagined divisions are beginning to dissolve. The new right now pursues a collective project that openly scorns democracy across the Americas, developing strategies of authoritarian exit from liberal governance. The far right does not need the coup d’etat as its primary instrument, as ‘anti-establishment’ firebrands continue to win at the ballot box and Washington looks to other tactics (economic blackmail, sanctions, political interference, security promises, military intimidation) to entrench its dominance. This pan-American project is not a rearguard force pursuing a more aggressive Cold War vision of imperialism, but the vanguard of an emergent order. 

The New War on Terror

The ‘Shield of the Americas’ summit on 7 March was a milestone. Hosted by Rubio in Florida, it brought together a dozen heads of state to plan an ‘Americas Counter-Cartel Coalition’ (ACCC), supposedly targeting crime, drug trafficking, migration and Chinese influence in the hemisphere. Kristi Noem presided, having recently taken up the role of Special Envoy to the Americas after her time overseeing ICE deportations. ‘Our objectives’, she told the assembled politicians, are ‘to go after these narco-terrorists that are destroying our people’ and to keep out ‘those adversaries that wish to change our way of life’. The leaders of the three most consequential countries for any serious effort to tackle drug flows — Mexico, Brazil and Colombia (then under the presidency of Gustavo Petro) — were nowhere to be seen, for they had been branded ‘narco-terrorists’ themselves. 

This was evidence of a historic shift. Over the past decade, Latin America has been through a major cycle of struggle, from the transfeminist protests and effective legalisation of abortion in Argentina and Mexico, to the student revolt in Chile, the national strike in Colombia and the mobilisations of workers and indigenous peoples across Ecuador. Anti-racist and anti-extractivist protests became organically connected, and their strength was often registered at the ballot box, helping catapult what some described as a New Pink Tide — with leaders like Petro and Gabriel Boric suddenly catapulted to power. 

Now the scales have turned. The right has won twelve out of the past fifteen elections on the continent, building a reactionary internationalism to snuff out this emancipatory one. ‘Narco-terrorism’ is one of its most effective ideological constructs: a threat to the nation which justifies a transnational crackdown, extending the post-9/11 category of ‘the terrorist’ to legitimise the expansion of state power and the elimination of its enemies. The result is a diffusion of lawless violence which collapses the boundaries between foreign and domestic. From their perch in Washington, Pete Hegseth and Stephen Miller are implementing a programme of regional militarisation. The ACCC has officially designated a number of alleged cartels and gangs as ‘foreign terrorist organizations’ and dedicated ‘unprecedented resources towards their destruction’. Washington has signed agreements with Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, Colombia and Peru, which allow the US to intervene inside their borders. 

Ecuador is a cutting-edge example of what this partnership looks like. President Noboa has used the ‘war on drugs’ as a pretext for emergency rule, cracking down on political opponents, purging dissenting judges and consolidating his authority, while welcoming US troops in an ‘international collaboration against crime’. He has formed a ‘strategic alliance’ with the private military contractor Erik Prince, the infamous founder of the Blackwater mercenary force that massacred civilians in Iraq. In early spring, at the invitation of Noboa’s government, the US bombed what it said was a training camp for drug traffickers in rural Ecuador, with Hegseth broadcasting footage of the explosion on social media. Two weeks later it came to light that the facility was actually a dairy farm. Shortly after, an Ecuadorian fishing crew somehow survived a double drone strike that destroyed their boat only to be detained at gunpoint by soldiers on a US-flagged vessel and later transferred to Salvadorian authorities. The US State Department offered no explanation for either incident. The frontyard order feels no need to justify itself. 

Because drug trafficking is both real and fantasmatic, an illegal economy on which many people rely and an object of moral panic, ‘narco-terrorism’ can act as an effective tool for the far right. Even when the latter targets ordinary civilians, it can frame this as part of its legitimate crime-fighting mission. It combines a promise of ‘order’ with an image of fearless radicalism, claiming that security can only be guaranteed by drastic means — flouting convention, remaking institutions, breaking laws. The right becomes a contradictory force of stability and chaos, its strongmen vowing to protect society while engaging in the very same practices (grift, corruption, murder, trafficking) which they condemn for tearing it apart. 

Battlefields

The series of elections in 2026 has given the Shield of Americas opportunities to extend its reach, with Peru, Colombia and Brazil the three most important battlefields. In early June, Keiko Fujimori made her fourth attempt for the Peruvian presidency, modelling herself on her father, who ruled as a merciless dictator from 1990 to 2000. She proposed the expulsion of migrants, compulsory prison labour programmes and joint police-military deployments to deal with crime. Facing off against the leftist Roberto Sánchez, she was declared the winner with a margin of less than 0.3 percent. While some contested the result and called for greater transparency, the US ambassador issued bellicose statements in her support. Since coming to power, Fujimori has returned the favour, throwing her weight behind the war on Iran while opening up oil and mining projects to foreign capital. 

Colombia was the next domino to fall. The far-right ‘outsider’ Abelardo de la Espriella defied expectations at the end of June by beating Petro’s chosen successor Ivan Cepeda. A millionaire grifter with his own signature brands of whiskey and cologne, Espriella has set about copying many of his political forerunners. Like Argentina’s Milei, he pledges to cut government spending by 40 percent and dollarise the economy; like El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, he says he will build mega-prisons in the rainforest to house terrorists; like the Bolsonaros in Brazil, he exploits Christian radicalism and open misogyny to fire up his base. 

Espriella has vowed to do ‘exactly the same thing’ in Colombia that Netanyahu did in Gaza, ending the peace accords negotiated with FARC guerillas and initiating an all-out war. He says he will kill criminals like ‘rats and cockroaches’ and ‘disembowel’ the left. What he calls Plan Colombia 2.0 will see the construction of new US military bases and joint operations across the country. The president insists that all Colombians who request asylum in the US will be rejected and returned. In the days before the election, ICE detained the progressive Columbian activist Franklin Humberto Coral Garrido after he criticised Espriella while in the US. It later emerged that Rubio himself had signed off on the order. 

In Brazil, Trump was overt about his support for Flávio Bolsonaro. The US designated two Brazilian gang networks as international terrorist threats, helping the younger Bolsonaro to pitch himself as the guardian of law and order — running on a platform of fortifying the border with troops and a wall, building Bukele-inspired prison complexes, and punishing criminals with chemical castration.

The countries subject to Trumpian meddling now extend across the continent. In the Honduran presidential election earlier this year, Washington announced it would cut aid unless his favoured candidate won, threatening ‘catastrophic results’. In the runup to the February elections in Costa Rica, Rubio met with the hard-right Laura Fernández before she had declared her candidacy and praised her for taking a tough line against China. In Chile, Trump offered a ringing endorsement to the Pinochet admirer Jose Antiono Kast, while in Argentina his administration organised a sophisticated financial blackmail operation — promising to withdraw from a $20 billion currency swap, thereby triggering a dollar crisis and inflation, if the vote did not go their way. 

Vanguard Argentina

It is Argentina, however, that is the locus of frontyard fascisation: the place where its logic is most brutally clear. After taking office in December 2023, Milei’s government made drastic cuts to healthcare, education and pensions while attempting a radical deregulation of the economy, causing prices and poverty to soar. It launched a major assault on trade unions and social movements which singled out feminist communities (kitchens, care spaces and other sites of social reproduction). In recent months it has ramped up its ambitions with a labour ‘modernisation’ programme, which extends the workday to twelve hours, allows employers to withhold pay from sick workers, puts new restrictions on workplace organising and makes total work stoppages illegal in certain sectors. 

Much of Trump’s efforts to eliminate US government jobs was modelled explicitly on Milei’s public-sector crackdown. (Milei gifted one of his signature chainsaws to Elon Musk, who wielded it onstage at CPAC in 2025, announcing his plans to slash the state bureaucracy.) Ties between the Argentine state and US Big Tech are now deepening by the day, with AI surveillance, satellite internet, cryptocurrency schemes, and predatory data platforms being pushed at mass scale. Milei has partnered with Peter Thiel to launch the so-called Social Digital Twin: an AI system that aims to centralise the state’s information on pensions, health, education, employment, migration and territory in a single database. It will then use algorithmic projections to forecast how different social and legislative changes might play out, building what amounts to an automated policymaking machine. 

What we see here is a shift from reaction to anticipation. The far right is increasingly enchanted by the idea of the ‘predictive state’. If algorithms can convert social experience into ‘public intelligence’, then every institution associated with public education and knowledge cultivation can be defunded. If threats to ‘order’ can be tackled in advance, then the right can switch from a defensive position to a fully offensive one. With the help of US state institutions — Palantir is fully integrated with the CIA, FBI and NSA — Argentina is becoming a laboratory for cutting-edge combinations of ‘human capital’ and AI.

Setting out his stall in the Financial Times, Milei explains that ‘In the spirit of the Dutch merchants who made Amsterdam the financial capital of the 17th century, we intend to offer the most attractive legal and fiscal environment for the AI companies that will define the 21st. Let Buenos Aires become for AI what Amsterdam was for the age of sail’. Milei takes pride not only in his country’s high-tech prospects but also in its colonial past. The frontyard condition is one of active, willing self-colonisation. Whereas in the 1990s President Carlos Menem justified structural reforms in the colonial language of ‘entering the first world’, this is an entrepreneurial vision for a colonialism of the future. By embedding US digital monopolies deep within the state, Argentina is offering to host the most advanced agents of empire while at the same time trailblazing new methods of social control. 

As the nations of the frontyard open up new sites of value-creation — placing the economy and the environment at the mercy of investors — the state itself is remade as a site of extraction. It is plundered by the far right so that it can facilitate other forms of plunder, reducing its social functions and increasing its repressive ones. While this is dressed up in the rhetoric of nationalism, it is in fact a thoroughly international process, in which the main pathfinders of neofascism — from Buenos Aires to Washington to Tel Aviv — engage in an unequal collaboration across sectors, from AI to fossil fuels to military contracting. Mieli has ushered in the ‘Isaac Accords’ to strengthen ties between Israel and Latin America, celebrating their shared ‘Judeo-Christian’ values. The developmentalism of yesteryear is over. In the name of anarcho-capitalism, new modes of fascist and imperial worldmaking are on the rise.

Limits and Resistance

Financialisation, extractivism and militarisation are thus the three pillars of the frontyard order, the emergent triangle that gives Latin America its new geopolitical significance. Financialisation was once the blunt instrument that prised open the continent for investors, restructuring debt and cutting services in the name of market freedom. It has now become much more than just a top-down imposition; digital and financial platforms are used by many ordinary people, bringing speculation into the realm of everyday life, where it acts as a stand-in for social welfare. 

Extractivism, too, is taking on new meanings: delinked from developmental promises of ‘jobs’ or ‘growth, it is not just harnessing raw materials, but repurposing the state as an imperial instrument. Militarisation has meanwhile outgrown the Cold War model of coups d’etat to install dictatorships, turning war into a constant condition of formally democratic societies which erodes them from within: a never-ending campaign of violence in the service of ‘security’. 

Behind this project are the dual drives towards expansion and elimination. The goal is to combine such methods of control and plunder to vanquish all sources of opposition. Yet, as Thiel revealingly asked in an interview with Milei, ‘How is this sustainable over time?’ As more people are plunged into conditions of precarity, might the far right end up being derailed by the rolling crises it is creating? 

In Argentina and the US, the polling seems to suggest as much. Milei and Trump have seen their popularity decline dramatically, with disapproval ratings hovering around 60 percent. Behind the numbers is a dismal economic situation in Argentina, as real wages, consumer demand and manufacturing have all plummeted, with more than 2,000 businesses closed and 73,000 jobs lost. Higher private debts and lower living standards have combined with a series of corruption scandals — including Milei’s personal involvement in the Libra cryptocoin scam, which wiped out around $4 billion in market value — while repeated massive street protests have undermined the government’s mandate.

Trump is paying the price for his most radical policies, from tariffs to tax cuts, mass deportations to the disastrous assault on Iran, which has triggered global energy and agricultural shocks and a deepening affordability crisis. Both the internal offensive against migrants and the external assault on Iran have turned into major liabilities, casting doubt on the right’s ability to secure legitimacy through war. They have led to a cycle in which coercion gives rise to crises which destroy rule by consent, necessitating more coercion which produces further crises, and so on in a vicious cycle.

The limits of the frontyard strategy can also be discerned in ongoing struggles against right-wing governments and US interventionism. In Bolivia, right-wing president Rodrigo Paz provoked an indigenous-led popular uprising by aggravating rather than addressing the worst economic crisis in decades. For assistance, he turned to military threats from the Shield of the Americas and loans from the IMF. In Argentina, a major bill titled ‘The Inviolability of Private Property’ sought to lift the cap on land ownership by foreign investors. After passing one house of Congress, it ran into massive protests, as demonstrators gathered in front of parliament to declare that the country is ‘not for sale’. But bill was ultimately defeated, at least for now. In Chile, a cycle of student protests has now restarted, this time opposing spending cuts by Jose Antonio Kast, who became the first president since the return to democracy to cancel commemorations of the coup d’etat against socialist president Salvador Allende.

Finally, in Brazil, US interventionism in support of Flávio Bolsonaro did not cash out. While it may be true that Lula’s victory is, at minimum, a matter of ‘buying time’, the result nonetheless exemplifies the limits of the frontyard, and offers a model of effective resistance: combining popular electoral tactics, social media virality and massive mobilisation on the streets, bridging non-urban territories, favelas, universities — with popular rallies reaching two million supporters dressed in yellow, green and red.

The fact is that beyond its ‘anti-terrorist’ rhetoric and its resort to violence, the far right has little means to address popular discontent. As it creates deepening instability in the name of stability, crisis in the name of order, it struggles to attain its goal of hegemony. This gives new ammunition to the student, transfeminist, indigenous and labour struggles resisting fascisation, which continue to fight for a different Latin America — defined not in relation to its northern neighbour, but by its own traditions and horizons.