Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was reelected yesterday, Sunday, October 25, to a fourth term, defeating Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is under house arrest after being convicted of 27 years in prison for attempted coup. The inauguration ceremony is scheduled for January 5, 2027.
- As of now, the governments of half the region’s countries (16 out of 32) have sent their congratulations to Lula, and no official reaction has been recorded from 13 of them.
- Costa Rica is the only Latin American country whose government “congratulated the Brazilian people for having […] elected their new president in a democratic and peaceful process,” without naming Lula.
- In Colombia, President Abelardo De La Espriella, who had supported Flávio Bolsonaro, acknowledged Lula’s victory without congratulating him: “Neither Lula decides for Colombians, nor I for Brazilians,” and he noted “great and deep political and ideological differences” with the Brazilian president.
- In Argentina, the government of Javier Milei has not yet issued a statement regarding the Brazilian election, and the president has not congratulated Lula.
- In the run-up to the vote, Milei had written on the social network X hoping that Lula’s “last dirty campaign” would “not include stealing the election.”
- On Election Day, he shared posts accusing Lula of seeking to “steal” the election.
- In his Instagram stories, Milei shared an image with the caption “Lula thief and liar,” according to the Argentine daily Perfil.
- He also posted an AI-generated image depicting him alongside Flávio Bolsonaro, with a quote attributed to the latter: “I’m confident that Brazil can recover.”
Lula’s victory, by more than four million votes ahead of Flávio Bolsonaro, interrupts the string of wins achieved by candidates aligned with or close to Donald Trump since 2025. With the exception of Suriname, where the left-wing candidate Jennifer Geerlings-Simons won in July 2025, all major elections had produced leaders aligned with Washington.
- The re-election of Trump in November 2024 had coincided with a domino effect that he seems to have at least partly driven: besides Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Honduras had elected presidents from the right and far-right.
- Among the region’s five largest economies, Brazil and Mexico, which together account for more than half of Latin America’s GDP, are the only countries led by a leftist president.