In a time of geopolitical upheaval, few parts of the world have weathered greater social and economic upheaval than Latin America. Despite accounting for just eight percent of the world’s population, Latin American countries have suffered more than 40 percent of all deaths from COVID-19; during the first year of the pandemic, they also experienced their greatest economic contraction in more than a century. Then, just as the region was making an economic rebound, it was hit by the twin shocks of Russia’s war in Ukraine and a global inflation crisis. As of October 2022, average inflation across the region was approaching 15 percent—about triple the level of Asia’s and one-third higher than sub-Saharan Africa’s—while public debt levels have soared to more than 70 percent of regional GDP.
That Latin America’s latest turmoil is driven in large part by far-flung events may seem surprising. For much of the past three decades, Latin America has mostly remained on the margins of major geopolitical conflicts, from the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria to China’s growing ambitions in the Indo-Pacific region. Distance, both geographic and political, has tended to keep the region apart and consumed instead by its own internal issues, such as sky-high inequality, violent crime, and corruption.
