Raphael Machado
The Left, captive to structuralist theory, calls criminals "victims of society" and votes against harsher rape penalties.
Any observer will note that a "right-wing" tide is sweeping across South America. Milei, Kast, Paz, Fujimori, Noboa, Peña, and de la Espriella, in rapid succession since 2023, indicate that we are dealing with an objective phenomenon. And despite the official left-wing narrative pointing to "electoral manipulation," "fraud," "hybrid warfare," etc., organized by Trumpism and its "allies" in Big Tech to favor their friends, it is worth recalling that Trump only became president of the U.S. in 2025, while the phenomenon predates him by at least two years.
The main exceptions to this trend are Uruguay, governed by Orsi, and Brazil, governed by Lula.
Lula, as is well known, will attempt his fourth presidential term, but he is challenged by Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, currently imprisoned. Lula's international image is impeccable - thanks to his charisma, his diplomatic skills and the naivety of other peoples. Any interaction with foreigners gives us the picture of Lula as a patriot, anti-imperialist, sovereignist, anti-Zionist, etc. - a figure somewhat hard to find within Brazil, next to the "real" Lula.
The fact that Flávio Bolsonaro consistently appears tied with Lula, or even slightly ahead, in opinion polls, leaves no room for denial. Lula is far from being a consensus figure in Brazil, and it is predicted that even a Lula victory would be quite narrow.
Having recently been in Chile, we also saw how Kast faced no difficulties in the last presidential elections. On the contrary, he won with nearly 60% of the vote. Even in Argentina, where the economy continues to be sunk and squandered by Javier Milei, numerous opinion polls indicate that a significant portion of the electorate still intends to vote for him, even as he faces disapproval from the majority of Argentines.
What is the key to understanding the left's unpopularity?
In both Brazil and Chile, and certainly in other countries on the continent, the key issue is public security. Again, we are not talking here about the recent U.S. appropriation of the issue under the "narco-terrorism" narrative, but purely and simply about the fact that the continent's populations live in a constant state of insecurity in urban spaces. According to the Latinobarómetro research institute, 30% of Latin Americans consider public security the most relevant issue today, with some regional variations - since the economic issue overlaps with security in Argentina, though both remain at the top.
From the perspective of political science, therefore, it would be simple for Lula to defeat Bolsonaro. He just needs to adopt a "tough" stance on crime, and that would address the main concern of the Brazilian population. The same could be successfully applied by all left-wing politicians in the region. Trivial, right?
It would be trivial if the Latin American left operated according to scientific criteria, or at least placed public opinion and its own partisan self-interest above ideological considerations.
The root of the problem lies in the way theories adopted by left-wing parties frame the causes of criminality. Left-wing party intellectuals, since Marx, being adherents of a structuralist reading of criminality, usually attribute the cause of the criminal act to socioeconomic conditions rather than to individual decisions, moral dilemmas, psychological problems, or biological dysfunctions.
Crime, therefore, is the violent eruption of an injustice or fundamental contradiction whose root lies in the unequal power arrangements that permeate society. It is an epiphenomenon of inequality, and the criminal is merely a cog in the social mechanism - he is not properly an agent, but a mere passive factor, who suffers social action and merely reacts. Not only certain controversial readings of Marx, but also more recent authors like Merton, provide the foundation for this narrative.
From crime as a consequence of structural inequalities and exploitation, as well as the contradictions between the social machinery that produces desires and the possession of the material means to satisfy those desires, to the moral-sentimental framing of the criminal as a "victim of society" or an "oppressed person" is the inevitable leap taken within the militant discourse of the left.
In parallel, members of the working class and the middle class have to deal daily with the threat of irrational ultra-violence - indeed, it is not uncommon for a robber to simply decide to kill a victim, even if they do not resist; it is also not uncommon for home invaders to decide to rape all the women found on the premises. The contradiction between objective fact and theoretical framing is total, and it gives reason to those who accuse the "academic left" of building castles in the air and trying to force inadequate theories onto material reality.
A typical example: in 2025, Brazil's Chamber of Deputies passed a law that stiffened penalties and the conditions for serving sentences for those accused of crimes such as rape, among others - in theory, since women are the main victims of rape, one might imagine that feminist-oriented deputies, almost always from left-wing parties, would support the measure. Far from it. They, as well as the rest of the left, voted against it, on the grounds that harsher sentences for rapists "do not work." Not to mention the idea of chemical castration for rapists.
Instead, to combat rape and "femicide," the "feminist caucus" proposal is to criminalize "misogyny," treating it like "racism" (which has been a crime in Brazil for quite some time, carrying a minimum sentence of 2 years in prison when the action is virtual, and which includes conduct such as "homophobia" and "transphobia"). In other words, concrete violence is interpreted as yet another opportunity for social engineering and ideological formatting. The contradiction does not go unnoticed by the population.
That is why the dilemma is extremely difficult for Lula to resolve - his proposals usually boil down to nice words like "improving education" and "reducing inequalities" or, at best, "improving police intelligence," or even measures seen as more political than security-oriented, such as strengthening the Federal Police at the expense of state police forces.
It is hard for the population to take this kind of soft approach seriously in the face of harsh facts like the expulsion of 2,000 people from their homes by members of the Red Command in the Uiraponga district of Ceará. The clash between the left's "humanitarian" expectations and the realism of the masses can be illustrated with another piece of data: after the deadliest police operation in Rio de Janeiro's history, in October 2025, which resulted in the deaths of more than 120 criminals, a poll indicated that 64% of Rio de Janeiro residents supported such police operations - the figure rose to 87.6% when focusing on favela residents themselves, those who live most closely with criminals.
This is the kind of data that the Latin American left cannot handle. On the contrary, it makes the people sound "fascist" in the eyes of the "enlightened" academic progressivism.
We do not know whether Lula will win or lose the next presidential elections, but we can point with absolute certainty that in the event of defeat, the issue of public security will be one of the most influential factors in that outcome.