Spain’s Vox Sets Its Sights on Latin America

Spain’s Vox Sets Its Sights on Latin America
Supporters of Spain’s far-right Vox party attend a closing election campaign event in Madrid, Spain, Nov. 8, 2019 (AP photo by Bernat Armangue).

In September, several senators belonging to Mexico’s National Action Party, or PAN, met with a visiting delegation from Vox, a rising political party from Spain. As the latest far-right party to gain traction in Europe, Vox seemed like a strange bedfellow for the PAN, a center-right party that has produced two of Mexico’s last four presidents.

The meeting was a political gift for leftist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who seized on it to brand his opponents in the PAN as “almost fascist.” The PAN’s own leadership hastened to assert that the senators had met with Vox in a purely private capacity—even as Felipe Calderon, the most recent PAN ex-president, publicly lamented that his party had “lost its way.”

Vox’s Mexican expedition has not been its only foray into Latin American politics. In Bolivia, it has taken up the cause of Jeanine Anez, the former interim president who took office after Evo Morales resigned under pressure in 2019. She is now in prison facing charges mounted by the leftist government of President Luis Arce, who was elected in 2020. Vox also sent representatives to Ecuador for the inauguration of conservative President Guillermo Lasso in May. And recently, another Vox delegation visited Miami to meet with the Cuban American community.

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