Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva appears to have cemented a left-wing political conquest in Latin America with his narrow election victory over incumbent Jair Bolsonaro on Sunday.

From Mexico in the north to Chile in the south, the region’s ever-rocking political map is again resembling that of the early 2000s, when a so-called “pink tide” of left-leaning governments swept over it.

But analysts say this time it’s different: The trend is being driven by pragmatism rather than ideology.

“It’s not because Latin Americans are becoming more leftist. I don’t think there’s any evidence for that,” Inter-American Dialogue analyst Michael Shifter told AFP.

In their recent electoral cycles, Latin American countries have resoundingly dethroned incumbent parties on the right and centre-right of the political spectrum.

Honduras, Bolivia and Argentina were among those turning their backs on the right, while Colombia elected its first left-wing president in June, despite a deep-seated distrust, like elsewhere in the region, of anything with ties to “communism”. .

Many voters have been swayed to the left by economic woes and the devastating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Voters around the world felt ignored, even vilified, by the political establishment as poverty and inequality increased.

“It’s more of a down trend than anything … people looking for an alternative,” Shifter said of the recent string of left victories.

“We happen to find ourselves in a moment in Latin America where many governments that are being opposed are right-wing or centre-right.”

In Brazil, far-right Jair Bolsonaro — widely seen as racist, sexist and homophobic — has been a divisive leader, fueling the push toward Lula, an icon of the Brazilian and Latin American left.

His Covid-skeptical stance is blamed in large part for Brazil’s massive pandemic death toll of more than 685,000, and he led the record-breaking destruction of the Amazon rainforest.

Lula is a political veteran who served two terms from 2003 to 2010 and lifted some 30 million Brazilians out of poverty.

He was part of the original “pink tide” that also saw the rise of left-wing leaders like Evo Morales in Bolivia, Michelle Bachelet in Chile, Rafael Correa in Ecuador and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

At the time, “there was a very optimistic wave of left-wing governments trying to reduce poverty and deal with inequality,” said Guilherme Casaroes, a policy analyst at the Getulio Vargas Foundation’s Sao Paulo School of Business Administration.

“And the economic conditions were much better.”

Then came the global financial crisis, which devastated export-dependent Latin America and triggered a mass reactive shift to the right.

But this generation of leaders could not or would not rise to the challenge of an economic crisis made infinitely worse by a pandemic that has underscored inequitable access to health care and education and exposed weak leadership.

As inequality grew, the electorate became more polarized.

Unlike last time, this “pink tide” — if there is one at all — doesn’t appear to be driven by a common ideological purpose, observers say.

“The left-wing governments that we have in Latin America today are very different,” Casaroes told AFP.

“You have authoritarian governments in Nicaragua and Venezuela, we have a left-wing populist in Mexico, we have relatively weak governments in Chile and Colombia and Argentina.”

And so, Lula—generally seen as a fiscally moderate and pragmatic leftist rather than a more radical or populist—would struggle with any project to promote regional political or economic integration.

“This turn to the left is less coordinated” than the first “pink tide,” said Leonardo Paz, Brazil adviser at think tank International Crisis Group.

“Why is it happening at the same time? Because the right has been in power in almost every country, but … these presidents have failed to bring about change.”

For Shifter, Lula’s win was part of a global anti-incumbent trend that suggests Bolsonaro was a “failed president.”

“Believe me, if Lula doesn’t succeed, it could go the other way in four years. If he doesn’t please Brazilian voters, they will reject him and go to someone further to the right.”