The history of South America during the 2010s covers political events which happened in the countries of the region between 2010 and 2019.

History by country

Argentina Cristina Fernández de Kirchner won the 2011 general election with 54.11% of the votes, the highest percentage obtained by any presidential candidate since 1983. The 37.3% difference between votes for hers and the runner-up ticket Binner-Morandini was the second largest in the history of Argentine general elections. he established currency controls during her second term, and the country fell into sovereign default in 2014. During her two terms as president, several corruption scandals took place and subsequently her government faced several demonstrations against her rule. She was charged for fraudulent low price sales of dollar futures, and later acquitted.

In 2015, she was indicted for obstructing the investigation into the 1994 AMIA Bombing, after Alberto Nisman's controversial accusation of a purported "pact" (a memorandum) signed between her government and Iran which was supposedly seeking impunity for Iranians involved in the terrorist attack. In 2017, an arrest warrant issued by Claudio Bonadio for Fernández de Kirchner charged her with "treason", but due to her parliamentary immunity, she did not go to prison, and the treason accusation was later dropped, while others charges related to Nisman's accusation remained. In 2018, she was also indicted for corruption on charges alleging that her administration had accepted bribes in exchange for public works contracts.

General elections were held in Argentina on 25 October 2015 to elect the President and National Congress, and followed primary elections which were held on 9 August 2015. A second round of voting between the two leading candidates took place on 22 November, after surprisingly close results forced a runoff.Es oficial: hay fecha para las PASO y las elecciones generales Diario Registrado, 2 September 2014 On the first runoff voting ever held for an Argentine Presidential Election, Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri narrowly defeated Front for Victory candidate and Buenos Aires Province Governor Daniel Scioli with 51.34% of votes. As of 2021, his vote count of nearly 13 million votes makes it the highest number of votes any candidate has ever received in Argentinian history. He took office on 10 December, making him the first freely elected president in almost a century who was not either a Radical or a Peronist.

One of Macri's first economic policies was the removal of currency controls, allowing Argentinians to freely buy and sell foreign currencies on the market. Another early policy was the removal of export quotas and tariffs on corn and wheat. Tariffs on soybeans, Argentina's most lucrative export, were reduced from 35 to 30 percent. And he also ended the national default. Though these measures where applauded by the experts and foreign trade organisations, it failed to produce the economic boom that president Marci had promised during his campaign. Inflation remained high and the overall economic growth was weak.

The 2018 Argentine monetary crisis was a severe devaluation of the Argentine peso, caused by high inflation and steep fall in the perceived value of the currency at the local level as it continually lost purchasing power, along with other domestic and international factors. As a result of it, the presidency of Mauricio Macri requested a loan from the International Monetary Fund.

In the 2019 election Alberto Fernández, Cristina Kirchner's former chief of the cabinet, was elected president. The new Kirchnerist administration immediately refused to take the remaining $11 billion of the loan and argued that that meant that it was no longer obliged to adhere to the IMF conditions. The value of the peso continued to plummet as foreign investors pulled out and the COVID-19 pandemic hit the country in early 2020. Fernández soon brought back some of Cristina Kirchner's more criticised economic policies often expanding on them. This included an extremely tight control on all currency exchange operations with a maximum of exchange of $200 US dollars per month for all citizen and a new 35% tax on all foreign currency exchange operations and froze the official exchange rate. By September 2020 the government had banned most exchange operations.

Bolivia The 2011 Bolivian protests were a series of demonstrations by indigenous peoples who opposed the construction of the Villa Tunari – San Ignacio de Moxos Highway through the Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory, the ancestral lands of over 12,000 indigenous residents, from the Chimane, Yuracaré, and Mojeño-Trinitario peoples. The highway project was supported by domestic migrants, highland indigenous groups affiliated with peasant organizations, and the government. During the protests the lowland tribes peoples briefly held Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca in their protests so as to pass through a police roadblock.Bolivia's foreign minister briefly held at Amazon highway protest Newser, 27 September 2011 Defense Minister María Chacón Rendón later resigned as a result of the violent crackdown on protests on 24 September that caused four deaths; due to the adverse reaction to the government crackdown Interior Minister Sacha Llorenty also resigned.

In April 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that the first term of President Evo Morales did not count towards constitutional term limits as the constitution of Bolivia had since been amended. On 20 May, Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera signed a bill into law in the presence of MPs, members of the armed forces and Movement for Socialism representatives. He said: "President Evo Morales is constitutionally permitted to run for re-election in 2015." This was despite Morales not having made an announcement to run. Unnamed opposition leaders said they would appeal the ruling in trying to overturn it. He was re-elected in the 2014 Bolivian general election. A constitutional referendum was held on Sunday, 21 February 2016. The proposed constitutional amendments would have allowed the president and vice president to run for a third consecutive term under the 2009 Constitution (which would be a fourth consecutive term, including his pre-2009 term). The referendum was voted down by a 51.3% majority.

In September 2017, the Movement for Socialism applied to the Plurinational Constitutional Court to abolish term limits. In November the court ruled in favour of their abolition, citing the American Convention on Human Rights.Bolivian court clears way for Morales to run for fourth term Reuters, 28 November 2017 The ruling allowed Morales to run for re-election in the 2019 elections. Disputes over the transparency and legitimacy of the elections prompted weeks of widespread protests in Bolivia after incumbent President Evo Morales was declared the winner with 47.08% of the vote; because this was greater than ten-point margin over his nearest competitor, Carlos Mesa, this was enough for Morales to be announced as a winner without a run-off second-round vote.Bolivia's Morales to call fresh election after OAS audit, BBC News (10 November 2019).

Following protests, as well as calls for a second-round election from several foreign countries, Morales agreed on 10 November to hold new elections,Anthony Faiola & Rachelle Krygier, Bolivia's Morales agrees to new elections after OAS finds 'manipulation', The Washington Post (10 November 2019). at a date to be determined. On the same day, Morales and his vice president, Álvaro García Linera, were forced to resign from office after losing support from the police and military.Ernesto Londoño, Bolivian Leader Evo Morales Steps Down, The New York Times (10 November 2019). Furthermore, the President of the Senate and the President of the Chamber of Deputies – both party allies of Morales, also resigned on the same day, thus exhausting the constitutional line of succession. As a result, the second vice president of the Senate, Jeanine Áñez of the opposition Democrat Social Movement, assumed the interim presidency of Bolivia on 12 November 2019. Due to the annulment of the 2019 elections, MAS retained their supermajority of more than two-thirds in both chambers in opposition to the government, although they would lose this in the 2020 elections.

Brazil The 2013 protests in Brazil were public demonstrations in several Brazilian cities. The demonstrations were initially organized to protest against increases in bus, train, and metro ticket prices in some Brazilian cities, but grew to include other issues such as the high corruption in the government and police brutality used against some demonstrators. By mid-June, the movement had grown to become Brazil's largest since the 1992 protests against former President Fernando Collor de Mello.."Nuestros 20 céntimos son el parque de Estambul El País

In February 2014, an investigation by Brazilian Federal Police called "Operation Car Wash" implicated the state-owned energy company Petrobras at the center of what became the largest corruption scandal in Brazil's history. In 2015 and 2016, a series of protests in Brazil denounced corruption and the government of President Dilma Rousseff, triggered by revelations that numerous politicians allegedly accepted bribes connected to contracts at Petrobras between 2003 and 2010 and connected to the Workers' Party, while Rousseff chaired the company's board of directors.

On 3 December 2015, impeachment proceedings against Rousseff were officially accepted by the Chamber of Deputies. On 12 May 2016, the Federal Senate temporarily suspended Rousseff's powers and duties for up to six months or until the Senate reached a verdict: to remove her from office if found guilty or to acquit her from the crimes charged. Vice President Michel Temer, of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, assumed her powers and duties as Acting President of Brazil during the suspension. On 31 August 2016, the Senate voted 61–20 in favor of impeachment, finding Rousseff guilty of breaking budgetary laws and removing her from office. Accordingly, Temer was sworn in as the 37th president of Brazil. Temer was himself accused by an Odebrecht executive of soliciting campaign donations in 2014 for his party.

Temer, whose age of 75 at inauguration made him the oldest to ever take office, broke sharply with his predecessor's policies and amended the constitution to freeze public spending. He was extraordinarily unpopular, reaching an approval rating of 7% versus 76% in favor of his resignation. Despite mass demonstrations against his rule, including a 2017 general strike and a 2018 truck drivers' strike, Temer refused to step down and served the duration of his term in office. Due to being convicted of breaking campaign finance laws, Temer was ineligible to run in 2018.

The candidacy of Jair Bolsonaro, a controversial federal deputy from Rio de Janeiro known for his far-right politics and defense of the former Brazilian military dictatorship, overshadowed other conservative candidates. The campaign was marked by political violence, with Bolsonaro being a victim of a stabbing attack at a campaign rally in Minas Gerais In the first round of the election, Bolsonaro received approximately 46% of the vote to Haddad's 29%, with Ciro coming in third place with over 12% of the vote. In the second round, Bolsonaro defeated Haddad by approximately ten percentage points, with the deputy receiving over 55% of the vote to less than 45% for Haddad. Bolsonaro took office on 1 January 2019 as President of Brazil.

Chile