By the final years of the Cold War, most countries in the Americas started showing weariness of authoritarianism and civil strife, and the bright future ahead only seemed to allow for the consolidation of democracy. This general trend, evidenced in the outburst of democratic fervor that shaped most of the 1990s and the early 2000s, had a deep impact in the most remote latitudes of the continents, bringing dictatorships both from right and left to an end. Even Cuba, perhaps the most intransigent vestige of the Cold War years in the continents, seemed to exhibit some signs of progress, including the later reopening of the American Embassy in Havana in 2015' and the end of six decades of government by the Castro brothers. 2 The times of the "Washington Consensus," characterized by economic opening
and neoliberal policies, were followed by the "Pink Tide," a shift towards democratically-elected governments with a clear inclination towards the left of the political spectrum. By the 2010s, a reverse trend came to ques�tion the predominance of the left, allowing for center- (if not outright) right politicians to grasp power through elections