Latin America 2015: A leaderless region

The start of 2015 finds Latin America turned into a leaderless region, in which the countries with the biggest political clout in recent years — Brazil, Venezuela and Mexico — have been significantly weakened by domestic troubles.

Brazil, the biggest Latin American country, is beset by economic and political problems. President Dilma Rousseff starts her second term Thursday as her country’s weakest president in recent memory. She faces a stagnant economy, a sizable opposition in the Brazilian Congress, and a growing political scandal surrounding Petrobras oil company bribes to ruling party officials.

While the nearly half of Brazil’s population that voted against her in the Oct. 26 elections remain energized against her left-of-center government, many of those who voted for her did so with little enthusiasm, mostly out of fear of losing their government subsidies, pollsters say.

Despite the recent appointment of respected banker Joaquim Levy as finance minister, few expect Rousseff to have the political capital to implement much-needed economic reforms. “The outlook for the next four years is gloomy, ” the Economist magazine said this week.

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