Latin America, Freedom of Ideas, and the Decisive Role of the United States in the Awakening of a Sleeping Giant

Perhaps 2026 will not be remembered for great speeches, but as the moment when a silent revolution began to reorder the rules of power

By: Pablo Rutigliano

-

Latin America is not facing a circumstantial crisis. It is facing a historical defining moment. And definitions, unlike crises, are not resolved with stopgap measures or speeches: they are resolved with structures, leadership, and decisions that reorder real power. Today, the region faces a profound dilemma: persist with exhausted models that concentrated wealth and destroyed the future, or advance toward an architecture of freedom based on rules, transparency, and the real participation of the people in the creation of value.

In this scenario, the role the United States is playing is central, decisive, and—above all—structural. Not as a rhetorical actor nor as a declarative power, but as a concrete driver of a framework of institutionalism, predictability, and defense of the popular will that is essential today for Latin America to reorganize its value structures.

For decades, freedom was used in the region as an empty concept. It was pronounced in campaigns, written in constitutions, and promised in speeches, but it was rarely converted into a system. Because real freedom does not exist when citizens do not participate in the value they generate, when strategic resources are captured by political or economic elites, when the State becomes opaque, and when rulers cease to be effectively accountable to society.

Latin America did not fail due to a lack of resources. It failed due to a lack of rules sustained over time. While the region accumulated critical minerals, energy, biodiversity, food, and human talent, it also accumulated an increasingly evident paradox: politicians becoming richer and peoples becoming poorer. That contradiction is not ideological; it is structural. It is the result of systems designed to capture value, not to distribute it.

This is where the freedom of ideas ceases to be a philosophical slogan and transforms into a problem of institutional engineering. Ideas, to transform realities, must become verifiable mechanisms. They must be expressed in clear norms, in auditable processes, in traceability. Without that, freedom becomes a dangerous illusion: it is proclaimed while being emptied of content.

One of the greatest damages Latin America has suffered was the confusion between leadership and personalism. When rulers believe themselves to be owners of power rather than temporary administrators of a popular mandate, institutions weaken, controls disappear, and ego replaces responsibility. That is where the deepest deterioration begins: the loss of the freedom of development.

The region’s recent history offers resounding examples of what happens when the will of the people is ignored. Closed states, cartelized economies, controlled information, persecution of dissent, and a total rupture of the productive fabric.

The result was always the same: social impoverishment, mass emigration, destruction of opportunity, and the loss of a future. Not because of external sanctions, but because of internal structural failures.

In this context, the United States has assumed a role that cannot be analyzed through ideological simplification. Its recent actions regarding regimes that denied democratic processes, regarding opaque economies, and regarding closed power structures, respond to a clear logic: without rules, no freedom is possible; without institutionalism, there is no sustainable development; without traceability, there is no trust.

The United States is not leading this process through discourse, but through the construction of frameworks that privilege transparency, predictability, and accountability. It is not about imposing cultural models or political identities, but about establishing minimum conditions so that societies can develop without remaining hostages to power-extracting elites.

Latin America, for its part, faces an opportunity that will not be repeated. The global energy transition has placed the region at the center of the geopolitical board. Lithium, copper, rare earths, energy, food, and knowledge converge in the same territory. But resources, on their own, do not generate prosperity. Prosperity arises when those resources are integrated into transparent, auditable, and participatory value chains.

Here, a concept emerges that deeply discomforts the old systems: traceability. Traceability is not just technology; it is the redistribution of power. It is the ability to know what is produced, how it is produced, who benefits, and how value is distributed. That is why traceability is the great enemy of structural corruption. Where there is traceability, discretion is reduced. And where discretion is reduced, privileges end.

For years, broad economic sectors in Latin America operated under cartelized schemes: manipulated prices, asymmetric information, artificial barriers to entry, and regulatory capture. That model not only impoverished the people; it also stalled innovation and expelled entire generations of young people who could not find a place to develop within their own countries.

The freedom of ideas, at this point, becomes freedom of design. Designing new economic systems. Designing new forms of participation. Designing mechanisms where the citizen ceases to be a spectator and becomes an active part of the value chain. This is not theory: it is a historical necessity.

Silently, far from the big headlines, a profound transformation is beginning to consolidate: the tokenization of real-world assets. Not as a financial fad nor as speculation, but as a structural tool to make transparent, audit, fractionate, and democratize access to value. Tokenization, combined with traceability, allows for something unprecedented in the region's economic history: that resources can be controlled socially, and not just politically.

This process is uncomfortable for those who built power upon opacity. Because when data replaces the narrative, structures are exposed. When systems become visible, corruption leaves a trail. And when the citizenry can verify, impunity is reduced.

The United States understands this dynamic and therefore promotes, accompanies, and orders a global framework where transparency and institutionalism are not optional. Not out of altruism, but because without rules, the global system becomes unstable. And stability, in the 21st century, is built with data, traceability, and citizen control.

Latin America stands before a historical decision. It can continue repeating cycles of frustration, or it can redefine its social and economic contract. It can continue exporting resources without added value, or it can build integrated productive chains. It can continue discussing slogans, or it can start designing systems.

The freedom of ideas is not an intellectual luxury. It is the structural basis so that the next generations do not inherit empty promises, but real opportunities. So that democracy is not just the act of voting, but the permanent exercise of control, participation, and development.

Perhaps Latin America has been a sleeping giant for years. But giants do not wake up by chance. They wake up when they understand that freedom is not declaimed: it is structured. When they accept that without rules there is no real sovereignty. And when they understand that the future is not awaited: it is designed.

Perhaps 2026 will not be remembered for great speeches, but as the moment when a silent revolution began to reorder the rules of power. A revolution based on ideas, systems, traceability, and verifiable freedom. And in that process, the role the United States plays today is not secondary: it is one of the axes that make that awakening possible.