
Learning From Defeat in Chile
Chile’s left-wing alliance took power with huge optimism in 2022, but hopes of changing the constitution, or even securing reelection, soon faded. Former minister Giorgio Jackson tells Jacobin what went wrong.
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Pablo Castaño is a freelance journalist and political scientist. He holds a PhD in Politics from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and has written for Ctxt, Público, Regards, and the Independent.

Chile’s left-wing alliance took power with huge optimism in 2022, but hopes of changing the constitution, or even securing reelection, soon faded. Former minister Giorgio Jackson tells Jacobin what went wrong.

Europe has often called itself a global leader in fighting climate change, even promising to halt the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035. Yet now it’s dropped the plan, as part of a broader retreat from the green transition.

In Valencia, Spain, the right-wing regional president has quit over the mishandling of floods that killed 229 people. While institutional failures forced his resignation, they’ve also fed support for Vox, a far-right party that opposes action on climate change.

The war on drugs has utterly failed to reduce drug consumption. But it has served to maintain US military and intelligence apparatuses in Latin America.

Spain’s center-left prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has been one of the Western leaders most critical of Israel. But words often haven’t translated into action, and rising pro-Palestinian protests are criticizing his government too.

President Emmanuel Macron last week appointed France’s fifth prime minister since the start of 2024. This Thursday’s mass strike suggests that his gambit has done little to settle the country’s political crisis.

Spain’s Vox party typically masks its racism in more palatable rhetoric. But this summer, leading Vox MPs helped incite violence against residents of Maghrebi origin in the Murcia region in Spain.

In Romania’s integration into European capitalism, the tough years after the 2008 crisis broke the illusion of continuous progress. The losers of that period are today swinging to far-right parties who tell a story of national victimhood.

Robert Francis Prevost, the first US-born pope, embodies Catholicism’s anti-nationalist ethos. Will he follow Pope Francis in confronting the resurgence of nativism in the US and abroad?

In the decades after Portugal’s Carnation Revolution, many considered the country immunized from the far right. This has been challenged by the rise of Chega, the anti-immigrant party that won almost a quarter of the vote in Sunday’s election.

Robert Francis Prevost, the first US-born pope, embodies Catholicism’s anti-nationalist ethos. Will he follow Pope Francis in confronting the resurgence of nativism in the US and abroad?

Rather than ushering in a new era of Latin American unity, Donald Trump’s tariffs, anti-immigrant policies, and withdrawal of humanitarian aid have mostly highlighted its divisions.

Pope Francis brought a limited but desperately needed progressive spirit to the Catholic Church. Under his successor, that spirit is likely to wither.

Gustavo Petro became Colombia’s first left-wing president three years ago. With a hostile Congress threatening his landmark labor reform, he’s scrambling to make sure he’s not its last.

In Spain, rents have risen 74% over the last decade, with even steeper rises in the main cities. The Socialist-led government’s Housing Act has failed to rein in speculation, leaving many working-class Spaniards struggling to pay the bills.

Flash floods in eastern Spain last month killed over 200 people. A massive solidarity effort by ordinary Spaniards helped to clean up devastated villages — and shamed the weak response by local authorities.

In Germany, the new Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance has scored well in its first electoral tests. Its burial of class politics and imitation of right-wing positions on migration show why its rise isn’t good news for the Left.

A clumsy, short-lived coup last month couldn’t bring Bolivia’s discredited conservative forces back to power. But the divide between Luis Arce and Evo Morales over the legacy of the Movement for Socialism could give those forces a bigger opening.

According to polls for France’s snap election, the far right’s main opponent isn’t Emmanuel Macron but the left-wing New Popular Front. It has to rally working-class voters and show that the social damage of Macron’s rule can be undone.

Colombia’s leftist president, Gustavo Petro, has plainly declared the war on drugs a bloody failure.