GDP growth: - 1.7%

GDP per head: $2,110 (PPP: $4,480)

Inflation: 640%

Budget Balance (% GDP): - 16.7

Population: 27.8m

The president, Nicolás Maduro, will remain in office for now amid plunging living
standards and growing hostility abroad, but his regime is unsustainable. The longer he
survives the more chaotic his demise will be. If the army withdraws support, he is
finished. The economy, in dollar terms, contracted by two-thirds between 2018 and
2020 and will shrink again in 2021.

In Person

With Latin America’s age of dictators largely over, the route to absolute rule today starts
at the ballot box. The latest caudillo to tread this road is Nayib Bukele, president of El
Salvador, who won election in 2019 to become the region’s youngest national leader (he
turns 40 in 2021). Confronting the established parties, he campaigned against poverty,
crime and corruption, but the democratic mask quickly fell away. In February 2020,