Latin America's Authoritarian Right Realigns With Israel as Global Isolation Deepens

Israel finds itself increasingly isolated across much of the world over its military operations in Gaza and the West Bank, yet in Latin America, a different story is unfolding. A cohort of newly ascendant right-wing governments in the region is moving swiftly to deepen ties with the Israeli state, reversing diplomatic breaks that seemed, until recently, permanent.

The reversal is striking when measured against recent history. In 2009, Hugo Chavez, then Venezuela's socialist president, expelled Israel's ambassador and severed relations in protest over a three-week military offensive in Gaza that killed more than 1,400 people, roughly 1,100 of them civilians. Seventeen years later, Venezuela and Israel have agreed to restore consular services—a limited but symbolically significant step that would have been unthinkable just months ago. In Colombia, the new nationalist president, Abelardo de la Espriella, took office on August 7 and almost immediately reversed his predecessor Gustavo Petro's decision to break diplomatic ties over the current Gaza war, which has killed more than 70,000 people, nearly a third of them children. De la Espriella has announced plans to relocate Colombia's embassy to Jerusalem and declared that Colombia will recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a position held by only the United States and now Colombia—despite the fact that international law, including UN consensus and German recognition, treats the territory as occupied Syrian land since 1967.

Bolivia's pattern mirrors the pattern elsewhere. The country's socialist government had severed ties with Israel after an Israeli bombardment of a displaced persons camp in Gaza in 2023. When conservative Rodrigo Paz took office in 2025, he quickly restored diplomatic relations. Chile's shift is equally stark: Gabriel Boric, the democratic socialist former president, was openly critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government. His successor, national conservative Jose Antonio Kast, is now working to revive defense cooperation between the two countries.

Academics studying the region see a coherent ideological pattern. Isaac Caro, a professor at Alberto Hurtado University in Chile, describes what he calls a "trend toward rapprochement with Israel as a response to the surge of the radical right in the region." These authoritarian governments, he argues, are linking closer ties to Israel with "an active alignment with US foreign policy" and positioning themselves within a renewed discourse of Latin America's place in Judeo-Christian Western civilization. Argentina's ultraconservative President Javier Milei has made close relations with Israel a cornerstone of both his foreign policy and his personal political identity. Daniel Wajner, an associate professor of international relations at Hebrew University, notes that the surge began earlier with figures like Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's former neoliberal president, and Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, who calls himself the "world's coolest dictator." These early adopters were followed by Milei and others, all actively "embracing" Netanyahu's national-conservative government.

The strategic calculus runs both directions. For Latin American authoritarians, alignment with Israel signals ideological kinship with the United States and positions them within a particular vision of Western values. For Israel, these partnerships offer something it desperately needs: international legitimacy and support in multilateral forums like the United Nations, where Latin American votes have historically been crucial in countering isolation. Beyond diplomacy, both sides see practical gains. Israel offers expertise in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and defense technology. Latin American governments offer economic, technological, and military cooperation opportunities.

Yet the picture is not uniform across the region. Brazil, under President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has maintained a highly critical stance toward Israeli actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Gilberto Aranda, a political analyst from the University of Chile, notes that Brazil—the country with the most influence in the region—remains a major counterweight to the rightward shift. Mexico, under President Claudia Sheinbaum, has chosen a middle path: criticizing Israeli actions while maintaining diplomatic relations, demonstrating that criticism of Netanyahu's government does not automatically lead to a break in ties.

What makes this moment significant is the speed and scale of the reversal. These are not incremental adjustments but fundamental shifts in foreign policy, often announced within days of new leaders taking office. The relationships themselves are not new—they date back to Israel's founding in 1948 and encompass migration, trade, and security cooperation. But the political will to strengthen them, after years of socialist and center-left governments in the region had moved toward distance or rupture, represents a genuine realignment. Whether these bonds will hold depends entirely on who holds power in Latin America and when. For now, Israel has found willing partners in its moment of global isolation, but the foundation remains as unstable as the region's own political cycles.