Introduction: The objective of the paper is to describe the characteristics of the success and failure of COVID-19 vaccination policies in Latin America. The emphasis of the paper is strictly descriptive, as the first step in a line of research that continues with explanatory approaches. Methods: For the comparison of country performance, the following milestones were defined: 1) the start date of the vaccination program, which expresses the institutional capacity for implementation, 2) the number of days required to reach 50 % full coverage, 3) number of days elapsed between 50 % full coverage and 80 % full coverage, and 4) percentage of booster dose coverage. The Our World in Data (2) database of the University of Oxford was used for the analyses.