If you’ve been with me a while, you know socialism isn’t an abstraction to me. I was born in the USSR, in the last decade before it came apart, and grew up with the empty shelves, the lines around the block, and the almost comical gap between official propaganda and reality on the ground.
Then, as an adult, I watched post-Iron Curtain Europe, the one corner of the world that should have known better, drift back in the same direction. More state, more control, more of what I grew up under.
So as soon as I was in a position to do something about it, I went looking for the opposite. A little liberty, a Plan B, somewhere the trend was running the other way.
That search eventually took me to South America.
We’re permanent residents down there now, my kids are citizens by birth, and along the way, I’ve had what, looking back, seem like quite a few adventures. Everything from living through bouts of hyperinflation and mining bitcoin to investing in barely-there stock markets and navigating the absurdities of South American bureaucracy.
So when I read today’s essay by my friend Joel Bowman, it hit close to home.
Some of you will remember Joel. He writes Notes from the End of the World out of Buenos Aires, and he’s one of the sharpest and funniest writers I read. He has a rare knack for taking the political circus most of us would rather look away from and showing us what actually matters beneath all the noise.
This time, the circus is in Brazil, where Joel is watching the election from a beach chair. But the real story goes well beyond one election.
Across South America, one country after another has turned its back on the socialists who hollowed it out. From Argentina and Ecuador to Bolivia, Chile, and Peru, the political tide has been turning (thankfully, my beloved Paraguay largely avoided socialism in the first place).
Joel calls it a Liberty Spring.
And it’s almost the mirror image of what I’ve been telling you about the West. While the so-called rich world drifts toward more government and more control, the continent so many had written off is quietly heading in the opposite direction.
It’s still early days, of course, and the results have varied. But having seen where the collectivist road ends, I find it hopeful all the same.
I’ll let Joel take it from here. Enjoy, and be sure to check out more of his writing over at Notes from the End of the World.
Brazil’s “Far Right Tsunami”
By Joel Bowman, editor of Notes from the End of the World
“When we look at how the political color of the map of the region has changed, one is clearly filled with hope.”
~ Javier Milei, speaking at the Winds of Change conference in Sept. 2026
Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Pipa Beach, Brazil...
Are you paying attention, dear reader? Another domino teeters and wobbles down this End of the Americas.
But first...
We came to Brazil to take a break, to read and relax, to work on our pre-award winning novel, and to escape the scourge of modern politics for a couple of weeks.
Perhaps we should have looked at the calendar: The very first weekend we arrived, the Brazilians went to the polls for their general elections. On the ballot (we assume): “The future!” “Our children!” “Democracy itself!”
Oh well, we mused, the spectacle of modern politics is usually worth a good chuckle. So we grabbed a beach chair, ordered a stiff caipirinha, and settled in for the show...
As it happens, we were here (also by mistake) for the country’s last general election, back in 2022, when lifelong socialist goon, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, nosed out the incumbent (and father of the current contender), Jair Bolsonaro. At the time, there were credible accusations of widespread voter fraud, ballot stuffing, and systemic corruption on both sides... in other words, a presidential election in South America.
Naturally, Bolsonaro Sr. was jailed after his election loss – par for the course in this part of the world. This past weekend’s election pitted Jair’s eldest son, Flavio, against Lula the Undead. Four other members of the Bolsonaro family also ran for election in various other governmental races.
To the shock of absolutely nobody, the long-disgraced legacy media... the pollsters and the insiders... thought leaders and quackademics... the usual list of suspect experts and expert suspects... all lined up behind their man in office, one of the last holdouts against a streak of conservative victories that has been sweeping the continent (more about which in a moment)...
Ah, but wait... what’s this? A wrinkle in the script?
Spring of the Patriarch
Lulu’s comrades-in-arms over at The Guardian reported the surprise results, through misty eyes and gritted teeth...
Flávio Bolsonaro poised to win Brazilian presidency after shock first-round victory
Flávio Bolsonaro is in pole position to win Brazil’s presidential election, after a far-right tsunami propelled him to a shock first-round victory over the incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, leaving progressive voters reeling.
The 45-year-old rightwing candidate received 56.1m votes to Lula’s 53.8m – 47.03% to 45.16% – meaning the 80-year-old leftwinger has a mountain to climb if he is to bounce back in the second round on 25 October. Never, since the return of democracy to Brazil in 1985, has the first-round runner-up managed to turn the game around and win the second ballot.
Leaving no hyperbole unturned, no cliché untapped, no indolent idiotic idiom untyped, The Guardian bravely sallied forth:
The far-right surge was a triumph – albeit an incomplete one – for the Bolsonaro clan and its 71-year-old patriarch, Jair Bolsonaro.
“Far right”... “tsunamis”... “patriarchs”... one can at least be grateful the authors did not spell “clan” with a “k.”
Meanwhile, actual Brazilian voters seemed comfortable enough declaring their fealty for members of “the disgraced ex-president’s” family. On top of Flavio’s first round win, Jair’s wife, Michelle Bolsonaro, won a seat in the nation’s senate, as did his second son, Carlos. His youngest son, Jair Renan, also won a seat in the lower house. So too did Jair’s brother, Renato.
The Guardian, soldiering on:
Across Latin America’s biggest democracy, key congressional and gubernatorial races were also won by staunch Bolsonaristas including Tarcísio de Freitas, who was re-elected as the governor of São Paulo state, and Sérgio Moro, who was elected governor of the southern state of Paraná. Both men were ministers during Bolsonaro’s 2018-22 government.
Bolsonaro’s Liberal party (PL) will now boast the largest caucus in the senate with 28 of its 81 seats. Combined with the seats of other hard-right parties, that number rises to 43, giving the movement an upper house majority.
Smart Money Moves
Betting markets, whose participants would rather see their political arch-nemesis win than personally lose a dime, have swung hard, too. After having Lula ahead by as much as 67% vs 29% in mid-August (with independent contenders making up the difference), Polymarket now has Bolsonaro at 85% vs 15% to win the presidency.
Regardless of how this country’s elections play out two weeks from now, it’s at least heartening to see the experts maintaining their unblemished record of complete predictive failure. There are still some things you can count on!
More interesting from a geopolitical standpoint, however, is the regional trend. For those keeping count, there have been seven presidential victories for non/anti-socialist candidates on this continent since Argentina’s Javier Milei kicked off something of a South American Liberty Spring with his own win back in November, 2023. A conservative victory here in the continent’s largest democracy would make it eight.
Indeed, it is a remarkable coincidence that, since USAID was effectively dismantled in January of 2025, every presidential election in a major South American country has produced a “right” or “center-right” victory. To wit:
In April, 2025, Daniel Noboa was reelected in Ecuador...
In October, 2025, Rodrigo Paz ousted the collectivists in Bolivia...
In December, 2025, José Antonio Kast defeated woke moron Gabriel Boric in Chile...
In January, 2026, Abelardo de la Espriella bested the insufferable Petros in Colombia...
And in June, 2026, Keiko Fujimori prevailed for the conservatives in Peru...
Setting aside Venezuela’s transitional political status (“it’s complicated”), that leaves only the imposing economic powerhouses of Guyana (President Ali), Suriname (President Simons), and Uruguay (President Orsi) on the political left.
If the betting markets are right, and a “far right tsunami” does in fact sweep Brazil, the continent will have gone from majority left/center-left controlled in 2023, right before Milei’s libertarian breakthrough, to overwhelmingly right/center-right controlled in 2026.
Swinging Samba
Notice, too, the share of the continent’s wealth and population that such a drastic transition represents…
In 2023, roughly three-quarters of South America’s population, along with some 60% of the continent’s wealth, was governed by left-leaning governments. In 2026, assuming again that Brazil stays the course a fortnight from now, that will have flipped such that 92% of the population and 95% of the continent’s wealth is controlled by conservative governments.
In barely three years, South America has seen a 162-point swing from left-to-right in terms of population, and a 155-point left-to-right swing in terms of wealth. Non-trivial, in other words.
Unlike the cringeworthy convulsions of the “govern me harder!” horde, currently begging for repackaged socialism in certain pampered zip codes in the over-privileged north, one gets the sense that this End of the World has in mind a brighter future, one filled with free markets, free minds and free people.
Earlier this year, at his annual speech in Davos, Javier Milei warned a stupefied establishment of entrenched elites that, much to their collectivist chagrin, the ideas of liberty were already taking hold...
“The world has begun to awaken,” he said. “The best proof of this is what is happening in the Americas with the rebirth of the ideas of liberty.
“We have a better future ahead of us,” he continued, “but that better future only exists if we return to the roots of the West… returning to the ideas of liberty.”
Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...
Saúde!
Joel Bowman
Lau’s Note: Interested in more of Joel’s writing? Be sure to head over to Notes from the End of the World.
a nice trend in SA if it's not, like in the USA, the uniparty winning again. Real change like in Argentina or El Salvador give some hope that the wretched conditions of socialism can be reversed without violence.
But why has nothing changed in Uruguay? Is the "warm embrace of socialism" too comforting to that peaceful country?
None of us can, well, at least I can't, keep up with the essays written by everyone we appreciate. Joel is one of those for me, so thank you for looping him in here. Geopolitics in South America is moving right quickly. I used to think that would be bad. Recent years, I tend the other way. But mostly it's a clown show with good hearted and malevolent clown leaders and populations who are affected, portions to a great extent, the relatively wealthy not so much, and the majority just getting by and trying to avoid trouble. I care, of course. So I appreciate being informed. Thanks.