, Columnist
Latin America Is Slipping Back Into Strongman Rule
With the U.S. losing its global primacy, democracy is fading south of the border.
Hardly swept away.
Photographer: INTI OCON/AFPThis article is for subscribers only.
For reasons of geography, culture and commerce, no region of the world matters more to the U.S. than Latin America. But because the U.S. has long been such a dominant presence there, the region receives comparatively little attention from Washington — until something goes seriously wrong.
That’s why so few Americans seem to have noticed an alarming trend: The long, slow erosion of Latin American democracy is threatening to become an autocratic avalanche.