Takeaways from AP's report on Latin America's hard shift to the right

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Right-wing populists have been making headway in some of Latin America's biggest economies, promising a strong-arm approach to combatting crime and illegal immigration as an answer to the left-wing populism that took hold in the region just a few years ago.

Although homicide rates have broadly declined across Latin America compared to a decade ago, spikes in some countries and a regionwide rise in other crimes have made conditions ripe for conservative populists to blame migrants and pitch heavy-handed strategies popularized by El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele.

Disaffected voters are embracing such tactics despite concerns that they could encourage human rights abuses or threaten democracy.

Here are highlights from the AP’s reporting:

Latin America and the Caribbean last year saw their combined average homicide rate drop by more than 5% compared to 2024, with the median rate reaching about 17.6 per 100,000 people, according to InSight Crime, a think tank focused on organized crime in the Americas.

But there are a few key exceptions. Drug-fueled killings have increased in Peru and Colombia, the world’s top cocaine producers, as well as in neighboring Ecuador, whose major ports traffickers see as a gateway to European markets.

Last year, authorities tallied 2,400 homicides in Peru and 14,780 in Colombia, which were the most in each country since at least 2020. Killings rose a remarkable 31% in Ecuador year-on-year, to 9,216.

Although populist politics across the political spectrum have done well, only the right has offered short-term security solutions that will make voters feel safe withing months even if it comes at the expense of "democracy and human rights,” said Adam Isacson, director for defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America organization.

Proposals offered by the left, such as community violence prevention programs, better police training, and judicial and prison reforms, take more time to bear fruit, he said.

“It’s absolutely what you’re supposed to be doing, but people’s patience runs out,” Isacson said of long-term proposals. “So, there come the Bukeles of the world saying, ‘You want to feel better? We got this.’”

In Colombia, where swaths of the countryside have fallen into renewed conflict, pro-Trump businessman Abelardo de la Espriella has topped polls ahead of Sunday’s runoff election as he takes his cues from Bukele.

In Peru, where extortion has increased fivefold in the past five years, Keiko Fujimori rocketed to a June 7 presidential runoff on a law-and-order platform, vowing to deploy the military in prisons and along borders as she leans on the authoritarian legacy of her disgraced late father, former President Alberto Fujimori.

DeBre reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

FILE - Presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori, of the Popular Force party, waves after voting during the presidential runoff election in Lima, Peru, June 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia, File)

FILE - An unidentified man is detained by soldiers during a military operation in Guayaquil, Ecuador, Jan. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Cesar Munoz, File)

FILE - President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele greets President Donald Trump at the Shield of the Americas Summit at Trump National Doral Miami in Doral, Fla., March 7, 2026, (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

FILE - Prisoners look out from their cell as the Costa Rica Justice and Peace minister tours the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez, File)

FILE - Presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella addresses supporters from inside a bulletproof booth aboard a barge on the Magdalena River after leading the first round of the presidential election and advancing to a runoff in Barranquilla, Colombia, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara, File)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told President Donald Trump last year that he was the “greatest friend Israel ever had in the White House."

Now, as Trump tries to finalize a deal to end the war with Iran, he's unloading on Netanyahu with rhetoric that no other American leader has dared to use publicly.

He claimed credit for Israel's existence — “without me, there would be no Israel” — and cursed his judgment in interviews. He even described him as “crazy.”

Netanyahu’s tenure as prime minister spans four U.S. presidents, and he's frustrated all of them at one point or another. But none has voiced that as openly as Trump, who started the conflict in tandem with Netanyahu.

The tension comes as Trump criticizes recent Israeli attacks in Lebanon, which threatened to jeopardize negotiations between Washington and Tehran. Trump has been pushing for a deal as he faces political blowback at home, where the war is unpopular and has driven up gasoline prices.

“If Netanyahu gets in between something Trump really wants, and that’s out of this war, he’s prepared to use the leverage that he has,” said Aaron David Miller, who served as an adviser on Middle East issues to Democratic and Republican administrations over two decades.

An agreement is scheduled to be signed on Friday in the Burgenstock resort near the city of Luzern. Speaking on Tuesday at the annual G7 summit in France, Trump said he told Netanyahu that he's been unhappy with his recent moves.

“Without the U.S., there would be no Israel. Without me, there would be no Israel because no other president was willing to do what I did,” Trump said. “I have had a great relationship with Bibi. Now Bibi has to be more responsible with respect to Lebanon.”

There has long been a bipartisan consensus around supporting Israel in Washington, but that has frayed in recent years. Liberals have been increasingly outraged by Israel's treatment of Palestinians, especially during the war in Gaza, and conservatives have questioned the importance of longstanding American support for Israel. There are concerns about antisemitism on the left and the right.

Trump’s latest comments drew swift criticism from left-leaning groups.

“He is framing Israel’s mere existence as contingent on him,” said Halie Soifer, who leads the Jewish Democratic Council of America. “It’s deeply offensive to the vast majority of Jews who care about Israel’s future.”

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris often disagreed with Netanyahu during the war in Gaza, and sometimes they criticized him publicly. But they were more circumspect to avoid facing accusations of being anti-Israel.

Conservative, pro-Israel groups were divided on the seriousness of Trump’s public condemnation of Netanyahu.

Republican Jewish Coalition President Matt Brooks described Trump’s criticism as little more than the inevitable disagreement among family members.

Brooks dismissed that any muted criticism of Trump’s comments from his party represented a political mixed message because Trump has been reliably supportive of Israel as president.

“If Biden or Harris said something critical, it came from the position of someone who was hostile toward or didn’t have the same level of support for Israel that President Trump has,” Brooks said.

He noted the first Trump administration’s role in moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and the return of Israeli hostages from Gaza during the president’s second term, among other acts.

Biden had criticized Netanyahu’s handling of the war in Gaza, though Trump’s criticism of Netanyahu comes with a “tremendous reservoir of goodwill on this issue that neither Biden nor Harris ever had.”

Pro-Israel advocate Mort Klein said Trump should have kept the comments private, especially in light of his public praise over the years of authoritarian leaders in Turkey, North Korea and China.

Klein, president of the conservative Zionist Organization of America, said he worried that Trump was making the comments in public to appeal to Israel critics “because he sees that Americans have become more hostile toward Israel than they’ve ever been.”

“That worries me,” Klein said.

FILE - President Donald Trump poses for a photo with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before he boards Air Force One at Ben Gurion International Airport, Oct. 13, 2025, near Tel Aviv, as Israel's President Isaac Herzog watches at left. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)