The Left Is Losing Its Claim on Rebellion

Young voters are not necessarily becoming more ideological; they are reacting to insecurity, economic frustration and the exhaustion of progressive symbolism.

When the Left Loses Its Monopoly on Rebellion
By Guillermo Silva Grucci

Reading and learning from the article by our director, jurist and political scientist Dr. Nelson J. Mosco Castellano, “When the Right Begins to Look Rebellious,” we offer the following considerations.
For a long time, the illusion was created that the left was inherent to youth.
That perception, which was inculcated to the point of becoming a conditioned reflex, is a creation of the left itself.
There is a reason why work begins in school to shape Marxist mentalities.
The foundations do not matter much. They are reduced to slogans and catchphrases, repeated like parrots.
At the secondary level, this is deepened somewhat more, taking advantage of the natural rebelliousness of young people.
And graduation takes place at the universities. That is how what authors such as Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, Carlos Alberto Montaner and Álvaro Vargas Llosa defined as “the perfect Latin American idiot,” admirer of Fidel Castro and Ernesto Guevara, is produced.
That tendency appears to be changing.
In Uruguay, recent polls indicate that “among young people aged 18 to 29, left-wing and right-wing ideological identification now appears almost balanced. According to data collected by [the newspaper] El País, in 2000, 37% of young Uruguayans identified with the left and 27% with the right. Whereas in 2025, the relationship appears inverted: 29% on the right and 26% on the left.”
But one very important aspect must be taken into account: this shift is not taking place because of ideological conviction, but because “the left is losing the symbolic monopoly of the future,” Mosco notes.
And it is losing it because wherever it is implemented, it inexorably fails.
The worst part is that the left does not resign itself to electoral defeat. In reality, elections are only useful to them when they win.
Take the case of Bolivia, where Evo Morales is promoting an armed uprising against the recently elected democratic government.
Or that of the communist candidate Sánchez, who in Peru does not recognize defeat at the polls.
And also that of President Petro, who speaks of fraud because he knows that the departure of the left-wing government in Colombia is imminent.
Thus, Milei took office in Argentina, Laura Fernández Delgado in Costa Rica, Bukele in El Salvador, Kast in Chile, Daniel Noboa in Ecuador, José Raúl Mulino in Panama, Santiago Peña in Paraguay, and Nasry Asfura in Honduras.
And now, Peru will be presided over by Keiko Fujimori, who holds a master’s degree in Business Administration.
If this is not an ideological mutation, what explains this inclination among young people toward right-wing options?
They are tired of “speeches about rights and inclusion, [while] they reached adulthood with impossible rents, precarious jobs, insufficient wages, absurd paperwork and a State that promises to protect them, but often complicates life,” Mosco says.
And yes, many must continue living with their parents because housing is inaccessible.
Insecurity is more than a “thermal sensation,” an expression that former Interior Minister Daisy Tourné used during her time in that office in Uruguay in 2008.
Eight years later, then Interior Minister Eduardo Bonomi turned Tourné’s words into “the narrative of fear.”
In 2026, most of the population perceives insecurity as having become the great problem. Just watch the news every day. And Argentina is not the exception; rather, what appears like a ray of sunlight in the storm is Bukele’s El Salvador. According to the polling firm Equipos Consultores, on March 19, 2026, 41% of Broad Front voters and 52% of Republican Coalition voters sympathized with Bukele’s administration.
In European countries, uncontrolled immigration is also evident, which often produces a cultural shock that becomes a serious cause for concern.
To the rejection of elites, what President Milei calls “the caste,” economic frustration is added.
Nor should it be forgotten that today’s hedonistic and materialistic conception of life, promoted by intense commercial advertising that encourages consumerism, also operates as a factor of tantalization.
Let us remember Tantalus, punished by the gods, submerged in a lake up to his neck without being able to drink, and with a delicious fruit tree above his head from which he could never eat for all eternity.
And the woke agenda adopted by the left, though not exclusively by it, is the icing on the cake.
Although “not because everyone rejects it, but because many perceive that cultural politics replaced real politics,” Mosco rightly points out.
That elusive tendency to replace reality with ideology becomes more evident when the debacle of socialism becomes inevitable, not because its management departs from its models, but precisely because of that, because its DNA carries the seed of failure.
Thus, we are told about a “rights agenda” that is increasingly perceived as a distraction meant to divert attention from the problems of everyday life.
In short, the right appears rebellious in contrast to a depreciated left.
The challenge lies in not disappointing that expectation, which belongs not only to one age group, but to society as a whole. Hopefully, governments will take this into account.

Youth and rebellion.
Socialist exhaustion.
The right as expectation.

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