Brazil's tight election becomes proxy battle for Trump's Latin American influence

Brazil's presidential election on Sunday has become something far larger than a domestic contest. It is, in the eyes of regional analysts and Washington itself, a referendum on whether Latin America will remain a space where governments can chart their own course or whether the region will align itself almost entirely with Donald Trump's vision of hemispheric order.

Trump made his ambitions explicit in September, gathering a dozen Latin American leaders in New York after his UN speech. He told them that every rightwing candidate he had endorsed in seven recent presidential elections across the region had won. The boast was not idle. Since Trump began his second term, the political map of Latin America has shifted dramatically rightward. The Shield of the Americas—a 15-nation coalition ostensibly focused on combating drug cartels—is now governed almost entirely by right or far-right leaders. Only six countries remain under leftist governments: Brazil and Mexico, the regional heavyweights; Uruguay and Guatemala; and the isolated regimes of Cuba and Nicaragua. That number could shrink to five on Sunday.

The race itself is extraordinarily tight. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the 80-year-old incumbent seeking a fourth non-consecutive term, is running neck-and-neck against Flávio Bolsonaro, a 45-year-old far-right senator and the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro. If neither candidate reaches 50 percent of the vote, a runoff will follow on October 25. The outcome is genuinely unpredictable, which is precisely why analysts across the region view this election as potentially decisive for Latin America's future autonomy.

The stakes are not merely ideological. Lula and Bolsonaro differ sharply on the Trump administration's central regional initiative: a so-called war on drugs that has justified dozens of airstrikes on boats, killing more than 230 people, and joint operations involving US military personnel on land. Bolsonaro has pledged to join the Shield of the Americas and adopt an iron-fist approach to crime. Lula has criticized the inferiority complex of Latin American presidents who align themselves with Trump's agenda and has raised concerns about national sovereignty. The Trump administration has also made clear that access to Brazil's rare earths and critical minerals is a condition of favorable trade treatment—something Lula rejected but Bolsonaro has offered as a solution to American dependence on China.

Pedro Telles, a professor at Brazil's FGV university, frames the choice starkly: "Trump really does take seriously the idea that the Americas should be his back yard." Mexico, he notes, will retain some leverage because of its geographic proximity and economic ties to the United States, and its president, Claudia Sheinbaum, remains one of the region's most popular leftist leaders. But if Flávio wins, Telles said, it would be a devastating blow to the left globally and a major acceleration of the far-right agenda. Sandra Borda Guzmán, a political scientist at Colombia's Universidad de los Andes, put it differently: instead of expanding the region's autonomy, a far-right victory would bind Latin America unconditionally to American dictates.

Flávio Bolsonaro is an unlikely frontrunner. His only previous bid for executive office ended in humiliation—he finished fourth in Rio's 2016 mayoral race. He is best known for his family name and faces corruption allegations, some shelved and others still under investigation. Yet he has emerged as a serious challenger to a three-time president, and analysts point to several reasons. Economic conditions have improved under Lula: unemployment, poverty, and inflation have all fallen, and average incomes have risen. But household debt has grown sharply, something many attribute to online betting, which Jair Bolsonaro left unregulated and Lula banned days before the election. Lula's campaign has also been damaged by corruption allegations involving his son and a former aide, and a separate scandal involving supreme court justices may have tarnished the president by association. Many voters appear to be supporting Flávio not because they believe he is the best option but because they want Lula out.

Bruna Arguello, a 34-year-old businesswoman from Santana de Parnaíba, captured this sentiment plainly. Her first choice would have been Ronaldo Caiado, a far-right former governor of Goiás, but he is polling at only 4 percent. "I'm going to vote for Flávio, but not because I think he's the best option," she said. "Unfortunately, he has no chance of winning, so I'm going with Flávio so we can get Lula out." Others remain committed to the incumbent. Docy Moreira, a 59-year-old actor, was so disturbed by Jair Bolsonaro's 2018 election victory that she left her hometown of Belo Horizonte, where two-thirds of voters had backed the far-right leader. She moved 1,550 miles north to Luís Correia in Piauí, searching for a place where people had rejected authoritarianism. She eventually returned home, and most of her family now plans to vote for Bolsonaro's son. Still, Moreira remains confident Lula will prevail. "If not, it will be devastating," she said, "but I'm not going to move again. I'm stronger now."

Michael Shifter, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, noted that democracy itself is on the line. Flávio Bolsonaro is only running because his father cannot—Jair Bolsonaro is under house arrest after being convicted of attempting a coup to overturn his 2022 election loss to Lula. "So it's not just a question of one more country moving to the right," Shifter said, "but of a right that has a very problematic relationship with democracy." For Trump, a Bolsonaro victory would represent a triumphant consolidation of regional power at a moment when American foreign policy is struggling elsewhere. For Latin America, it would mean the effective end of any major counterweight to Washington's influence.