For well more than sixty years, the joke about Latin America is that prosperity is always and forever a day away.  Maybe tomorrow has finally arrived.

A Trumpian movement toward free markets and lower taxes is taking hold in Central and South America.  In just the past year, conservatives have been elected in Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Costa Rica, joining Javier Milei of Argentina in pursuing free-market policies.

In long corrupt Colombia, the frontrunner for president is Senator Paloma Valencia, who dominated Monday’s primary elections in her bid to become Colombia’s first female president.

Paloma has called for a military offensive against cocaine cartels, lower taxes and an “austere” state that performs fewer functions but more efficiently.

On education, Valencia has pledged to introduce a school choice program to let children from low-income families attend private schools. The country’s teacher union has declared her “Public Enemy No. 1.”

She also promises to improve relations with the United States. By this time next year, President Trump could be joined on a podium by a football-team sized assemblage of reform minded, free-market Latin American leaders.