The aim of this chapter is to provide an understanding of the structural constraints and opportunities for the populist radical right (PRR) in Latin America. Unlike Western Europe, material values are still of vital importance in many Latin American countries because of high levels of inequality in the region. This represents a major constraint for the emergence of the PRR, and only some parties have been able to overcome it. The author argues that the growth of the PRR relies on three factors: the appeal of the PRR’s hardline discourses, the mobilization of voters dissatisfied with sexual and reproductive rights and secularization, and a crisis of representation among the traditional parties, who are painted by PRR leaders as a corrupt elite.

The expansion of responsible relative laws, including property lien and recovery laws, generated significant opposition and activism against these provisions. This chapter addresses the key critiques of those provisions, relying in part on the voices of recipients of Old Age Assistance and their families. Opponents contested the administration of these laws and the family norms underscoring support obligations. Advocacy organizations fought these provisions’ enforcement and pushed for their repeal. The organized response to responsible relative laws, as well as protests by individual recipients via fair hearings and court challenges, represent an early version of the welfare rights movement. While the efforts yielded limited success until the 1970s, they did bring attention to administrative practices in public assistance administration and offered a voice to the elderly relying on public benefits and the families required to provide support.

Our final stop on this particular tour of security referents is the individual human being. In saying this, I do not mean to prejudge debate about exactly what the term ‘human being’ denotes; which attributes of human beings (if any) are essential and which accidental; whether it makes sense to speak of human beings in the abstract, as opposed to (only) in concrete social or cultural contexts; or whether speaking of the individual human being as ‘the’ human security referent is the best – or only – way to make sense of the concept of human security as it has been articulated, operationalized, explored, or criticized by scholars, policy makers, activists, or anyone else who has engaged with it. As we shall see, these are all live issues. I simply mean to say that I will land on positions on all of them. I will, of course, do my best to give satisfactory reasons for those positions as I go along.

The COVID-19 pandemic is broadly impacting global supply chains with enterprises being prevented from producing and shipping raw inputs, semi-finished articles and end products, and governments adopting and maintain exporting restrictions on ventilators, masks, gloves, personal protective equipment and relevant inputs. The pandemic amplifies and accelerates the decoupling of US–China economic relations, reflecting US President Trump’s maxim 'economic security is national security' and delivered by a US–China trade war with numerous trade measures, including sanctions against Huawei.The attachment to economic security reflects a reversal of economic globalisation which used to posit economic interdependence as a safeguard for national security, but there is now a theory that overdependence is a threat to national security. In this context, there is a need for fresh look at the law and politics on export restrictions and sombre thought on the restructure of the global supply chain. Three key elements will be of critical importance in the post-COVID-19 world: ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’, economic security and the decoupling of the US–China economy.