 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Latin America has seen a tumultuous 2021. The continent and its governments today look very different from the beginning of the year. Progressive governments have come to power in a number of countries. Meanwhile, the hold of right-wing governments looks increasingly shaky in some others. The electoral process in Ecuador, Chile, Peru and Honduras also hold significant signs to the future of the continent, with progressive forces winning in the last three. How did the electoral processes in each of these countries proceed? Who were the major players and what were the forces at work? What does it board for regional integration? Zoe Alexandra of People's Dispatch explains. Hello and welcome to Dispatchers from Latin America. Since we are ending the last week of the year, we wanted to take this opportunity to look back at what the last year has meant in terms of the region, Latin America and the Caribbean. What are the hopes looking forward into 2022 and sort of understand what unfolded in this past year? So first, we can talk about the electoral victories and the electoral processes. Beginning in the year in February, the first round of the Ecuadorian presidential elections were held. In this first round, Andrés Arauz of the Union for Hope emerged victorious with around 30%, leading over neoliberal banker Guillermo Lasso. He also beat Yacupérez who was from the Pachacuti Party. In this first round, many were hopeful that this would mean a return to progressive politics in Ecuador. A sharp departure from what the last four years have been under Lenin Moreno. While he was a member of Rafael Correa's government, he has done a complete 360, should we say, when he was in office implementing a series of neoliberal measures in line with the IMF, taking on an IMF loan, even opening up talks to the United States to use Ecuadorian air bases for their own purposes and also furthering militarization in the country. So in this context, many left and progressive moments were very hopeful for this process in Ecuador. Of course, since Andrés Arauz only achieved 30% of the vote in the first round, this went to the second round election in April. In these elections, Guillermo Lasso, the banker, won against Andrés Arauz. And so this saw a defeat of the progressive project, of the defeat of return to the citizen revolution in Ecuador. There were also a lot of hopes in terms of how this would impact all of the legal processes that exist against members of the citizen revolution government, namely against Rafael Correa. Those charges still hold and Ecuador continues to be the country with one of the most intense law fair campaigns against progressive politicians and members of the former citizen revolution government. So in Ecuador, while there was initial hope for the victory of a progressive candidate, in April this was defeated, another key electoral process which came up quite at the same time would be in Chile. In Chile, through the process of the mobilizations on the street, which we have covered so much here, people's dispatch that began in October 2019, one of the key demands was for the rewriting of the Constitution. So in this year, 2021, this demand was finally brought to the people in the form of a consultation. Do the people want to have a process wherein citizens can participate in the process to rewrite the Constitution, which was drafted while Augusto Pinochet was a military dictator in the country? People overwhelmingly supported this proposal, and this was voted on in this year. And several other electoral processes occurred also in Chile, namely the one that just finished last week, which was the second round presidential elections. This was another key win. So first we have the people voting in support of rewriting the country's Constitution, giving a vote of confidence to a demand that was raised in the streets. And then in the general elections where Chileans voted on who's going to be president, who would be representing them, in the presidential elections had to go to a second round. But ultimately, the progressive candidate, Gabriel Bordich, won against a many say neo-fascist candidate who had praised Pinochet, had said that he oversaw a democratic process. And so this really represented a serious setback for Chile, especially in the midst of a process where people had already voted for a process to rewrite the Constitution and where there really had been shifts in how people were relating to the political process. But ultimately in December, this project of the far right, which sought to kind of curtail those advances, was defeated at the polls, and next year a new president will be sworn in in Chile, Gabriel Bordich, who has committed to furthering many of these demands that were raised on the street. So this is a very significant shift in Latin American politics, especially given the fact that Chile had been a crucial ally in, for example, furthering the neoliberal project on the continent, private health care, private insurance, pensions, and other private education. And similarly, massive support to the United States in their campaign against Venezuela. A third very crucial electoral victory for progressive forces on the continent was in Peru. There was a very contested electoral process which began in April to this year, the first round of the presidential elections, as well as a general election to elect parliamentarians. In this first round, there was a massive shock for many people. A school teacher, a member of the peasant rounds, Pedro Castillo, won the first round of these elections with a very thin margin against his other candidates. There was a record number of candidates participating in these elections, and Pedro Castillo, a relatively unknown activist and movement leader, ended up coming in first. And then the second round, of course, was very, very hotly contested. His opponent was Keiko Fujimori, who is the daughter of Alberto Fujimori, former dictator in Peru. And once again, similarly to Chile, you have two different models and two different projects for society coming head-to-head, one being, of course, the far-right project of Keiko Fujimori, who wanted to continue these neoliberal policies that exist in Peru, an exclusion of the masses, exclusion of the majorities, whereas Pedro Castillo had voice support for re-rating the constitution, agrarian reform, and many other key demands that have been raised by social sectors in Peru. And he won the second round of the presidential elections in June. It was, again, a very, very close race. And the far-right attempted to delay this victory by imposing different legal, repealed processes, questioning all of these votes. In the end, after a month, the victory was confirmed, and Pedro Castillo was eventually sworn in into office. But, of course, this created a situation of tension. And from that moment, there's been a continued situation of tension. A lot of pressure put against Pedro Castillo's government. He's getting, you know, very tested in this sense. And there's already been an impeachment motion presented against him. So this is a constant battlefield, continues to be one. Another very key electoral victory was in Honduras, Zimara Castro won these elections, a progressive candidate from the Libre party. She won against the candidate from the National Party, which has been ruling Honduras the past 12 years, which has driven the country into a situation of complete chaos, of complete economic crisis, social crisis, the largest waves of mass migration, probably in history. A lot of corruption, a lot of siphoning off of public funds, weakening of the public sector. And so this was a very crucial victory for the Honduran people into 2017 elections. There was mass electoral fraud that was committed by the same National Party in order to win the elections. And so there was a lot of apprehension about what would happen in these elections. But in the end, the vote of the people, the will of the people was respected, and another victory for progressive forces on the continent we're seeing. And so as we come to the end of the year in Latin America, it's very important to take stock of all of these victories. The situation, the geopolitical situation, the correlation of forces on the continent has very much shifted in favor of progressive movements of progressive forces. There is more likely to be a more favorable conditions for projects of Latin American integration of furthering spaces of cooperation like ALBA, TCP, like CELAC, and other important bodies where Latin American leaders, for of course the first decade of the 2000s, were really building important economic partnerships, political partnerships, and challenging US imperialist hegemony on the continent and in the region.