The Americas Quarterly Podcast

Colombia goes to the polls on May 31 amid some of the worst violence the country has seen in two decades. FARC dissidents have carried out dozens of attacks in recent weeks, prompting an appeal for peace from Pope Leo XIV. In a way, the campaign has been shadowed since last year by the assassination of senator Miguel Uribe Turbay. And yet, paradoxically, President Gustavo Petro's approval rating has risen 10 points this year. Now three candidates are vying to succeed him: Iván Cepeda, Petro's preferred successor on the left; Paloma Valencia, a conservative senator from Álvaro Uribe's party; and Abelardo de la Espriella, a right-wing outsider who echoes both Javier Milei and Nayib Bukele. Today on the podcast, we want to understand the outlook for Colombia. Who is most likely to make it to the second round? And what would each of the three candidates mean for the country? Our guest is Sergio Guzmán, director of Colombia Risk Analysis, speaking from Bogotá.

As recently as the 1960s, the average woman in Latin America had six children. Today that number is 1.8. In Chile, it has fallen to 1.1, lower than Japan. Combined with rising life expectancy, the result is a region aging faster than any other in the world. If current trends hold, national populations could decline by a third in Chile and Uruguay, a quarter in Brazil, and a fifth in Argentina by 2100. The consequences are already visible: pension crises and census counts that have come in millions lower than governments expected. Today on the podcast, we dive deeper into AQ's latest cover story to understand what this demographic transformation means for Latin America's economies and politics specifically. Is there a silver lining? And can the region adapt? Our guests are Laurence Blair, author of AQ's cover story on The Gray Tide, and Ernesto Revilla, Chief Economist for Latin America at Citigroup.

For years, Peru has defied gravity. The country has had eight presidents in ten years—a virtual power vacuum at the top of government—and yet the economy kept growing, the currency held strong, and the mining sector kept producing. That decoupling of politics and economics has kept Peru relatively stable and has prompted many in the private sector to argue that politics doesn’t really matter. But a first-round election marred by widespread logistical failures, fraud allegations, and a razor-thin race for second place—between leftist Roberto Sánchez, a former minister of the now-imprisoned Pedro Castillo, and right-wing populist Rafael López Aliaga—is now putting that resilience to its most serious test yet. Our guest is Luis Miguel Castilla, currently a Senior Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and former Minister of Economy and Finance of Peru.

Until recently, things seemed to be going well for Argentina's President Javier Milei. In October, his party won the midterm elections in a contest many polls predicted would swing the other way. Since then, he passed an important labor reform, poverty fell to its lowest level since 2018, and the economy is expected to grow around 4 percent this year. Yet suddenly, a few warning signs began to flash. One poll showed a substantial drop in Milei's popularity. Another, by Poliarquía, recorded the sharpest single month drop in public optimism of his presidency to date. Today on the podcast: What's affecting Milei's numbers? What does the broader political landscape look like? And what does that mean for public sentiment around the Argentine economy? Our guest is Alejandro Catterberg, president and co-founder of Poliarquía Consultores.

Nearly three months after the fall of Nicolás Maduro, Delcy Rodríguez is still standing as interim president of Venezuela. The broad feeling, at least for now, is that Rodríguez and the chavista regime are not going anywhere. Since she took office on January 5th, Rodríguez has signed an amnesty law, reformed the hydrocarbon law, and restored diplomatic relations with the U.S. for the first time since 2019. Yet she has done this while keeping most of the chavista regime entrenched in power. Diosdado Cabello remains her Interior Minister, her brother, Jorge Rodríguez, runs the National Assembly, and the new Defense Minister is the former head of Venezuela's feared intelligence service, accused of overseeing torture and human rights abuses. What do her actions ultimately mean for the future of Venezuela? Our guest is Juan Forero, Bureau Chief for South America at the Wall Street Journal.