Revulsion at Venezuela is fuelling the hard right in Latin America

ONE EVENING last month Francisco Sagasti, who was Peru’s interim president for eight months until July, launched his new book in Barranco, a bohemian district of Lima. Mr Sagasti, an academic, is a centrist who steered the country through a divisive election. The event was disrupted by demonstrators who surrounded the bookshop chanting “corrupt” and “murderer” at the author while punching a journalist. They belonged to “The Resistance”, a group formed in 2018 under the banner of “God, Fatherland and Family” to oppose communism and liberalism. They are one of many facets of a new, more aggressive right wing in Latin America.