From virtually the moment he and his band of bearded rebels rode into Havana in 1959 until his death from natural causes in 2016, the most iconic leader in Latin America was Fidel Castro. With his trademark military fatigues, slender Cohiba cigars, and marathon speeches vilifying Uncle Sam, Castro captured the imaginations of aspiring revolutionaries and millions of others around the world. Never content to merely govern Cuba, Castro worked tirelessly to export his ideas. His global network of allies and admirers grew over the decades to include leaders as diverse as Salvador Allende in Chile, Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, and Yasser Arafat, the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
El comandante would roll over in his grave if he learned that, today, the two Latin American figures who come closest to matching his global profile both hail from the ideological right. Javier Milei, the self-described “anarcho-capitalist” president of Argentina who has wielded a chainsaw to symbolize his zeal for slashing the size of government, and Nayib Bukele, the bearded millennial leader of El Salvador, have built fervent followings at home and abroad. Instead of the ubiquitous Cuban revolutionary cry, ¡Hasta la victoria, siempre! (“Ever onward to victory!”), Milei’s libertarian catchphrase, ¡Viva la libertad, carajo! (“Long live freedom, damn it!”), is now showing up on T-shirts on some college campuses in the United States and being quoted by politicians as far away as Israel.
Like Castro in his day, both leaders are punching well above their countries’ weight in the global arena. Milei was the first head of state to meet U.S. President Donald Trump after his election in 2024, receiving a lavish welcome at his Mar-a-Lago resort. Trump has called Milei “my favorite president,” and in October he extended a $20 billion rescue package to Argentina—the largest such bailout by the United States for any country in 30 years. Milei’s success in cutting government bureaucracy and red tape, which helped bring inflation in Argentina from above 200 percent when he took office in 2023 to about 30 percent by late 2025, has been hailed as a model by the United Kingdom’s conservative opposition leader Kemi Badenoch, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and many others on the European right. It has also made him a guru of sorts for libertarian Silicon Valley titans such as Elon Musk, who wielded Milei’s chainsaw onstage at a conference of conservatives in the United States in February. Meanwhile, Bukele’s crackdown on gangs has made him a wildly popular figure across much of Latin America and beyond, even as he unapologetically casts aside concerns about due process and human rights. (Some 81 percent of Chileans in a 2024 poll gave Bukele a positive rating, higher than that of any other global leader and more than double that of their own president.) Bukele has over 11 million followers on TikTok, more than any other head of state except Trump.
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