Latin America's Neopatriots

Global Resurgence of the Right. Conceptual and Regional Perspectives, 2021

The 2008 crisis marked the end of globalisation as a historical phase and hegemonic order. The end of the commodities cycle, as an expression of that change in Latin America, is the context for the rise of new neo-patriotic far-right forces, featuring a distinctly anti-globalist rhetoric and an extreme nationalism. Global and national structural and agency factors are examined as causes of the rise of Latin American neo-patriotic far right. The analysis of their foreign policy and international integration matrices shows that common elements include alignment with the United States and the contestation of multilateralism and regional institutions and norms. Finally, the chapter analyses the extent to which the rise of new Latin American far right- wing parties form part of a global trend or cycle of contestation of the liberal international order and globalisation.

NACLA Report on the Americas, 2024

Conjuntura Austral, 2020

Abstract This work argues that the new far-right, which we characterise as neo-patriotic, emerges through a combination of agency and structural factors amid a crisis of globalisation, understanding it as a crisis in the hegemonic order. The crisis of globalisation opens opportunities for the rise of a new far-right which redefines the popular, the national, and the international based on Schmittian friend-enemy distinctions, as an autonomous categorisation, which gives political meaning to their identity as a political actor. A key element of this identity is a reactionary internationalism based on the defence of tradition against cosmopolitan globalism. Thus, the reinstatement of a traditionalist “Arcadia” gives meaning to the process of re-politization and challenges to the liberal international order, its national, regional, and global dimensions, universalist and globalist discourse, and its teleologies of progress. In sum, these actors do not merely question globalisation as an established order but fight for the construction of an alternative international order of a reactionary type. Resumen Este trabajo argumenta que las nuevas extremas derechas, que caracterizamos como neopatriotas, emergen por una combinación de factores de agencia y estructura en el marco de la crisis de la globalización, entendiendo esta última como orden hegemónico. La crisis la globalización abre oportunidades para el ascenso de una nueva extrema derecha que redefine lo popular, lo nacional y lo internacional a partir de la distinción schmittiana de “amigo- enemigo” como categorización autónoma, dando sentido político a su identidad como actor político. Elemento clave de esa identidad es un nuevo internacionalismo reaccionario basado en la defensa de la tradición frente a la globalización y el cosmopolitismo. Así, la reinstauración de una “Arcadia” tradicional da sentido a un proceso de repolitización y contestación del orden liberal internacional, en sus dimensiones nacional, regional y global, de sus discursos universalistas y cosmopolitas, y de sus teleologías de progreso humano. En suma, estos actores no solamente cuestionan la globalización como orden establecido, sino que pugnan por la construcción de otro orden internacional alternativo de signo reaccionario

NACLA Report on the Americas, 2023

Across the hemisphere and beyond, right-wing forces are leveraging the power of internationalism to galvanize hardline “resistance” against a new wave of leftist governments.

Constellations, 2007

The turn of the century seven years ago -a crucial symbolic instance, it seems -has inspired both nation-states and entire regions to reinterpret their past and re-imagine the times ahead. Major international actors went through this experience. On the one hand, 2001 witnessed the inauguration of a new US administration 1 that decided to forget the nineties and restore the international situation to the period at the immediate aftermath of the Cold War. The goal was to recreate the conditions that would allow them to enact the international order that neoconservatives imagined in the early nineties but could not find the political agent willing to put it into practice until George W. Bush came to power. According to the neoconservative narrative, neither Bush father nor Clinton implemented a foreign policy inspired in the idea of a unipolar world -and that was a terrible mistake. Once in office then, the goal of deconstructing the system of international institutions in place during the Cold War was immediately visible. But it was 9/11 what created the conditions needed to speed up the implementation of the neoconservative vision.

Although many countries have seen the recent emergence of leftist governments, scholars have tended to distinguish between those that are governed by a moderate left and those ruled under a more populist or radical left. It is argued that it has been the internal characteristics, particular to each nation, that have determined which variety of left-wing government has come to power. Nevertheless, though they may differ in their approach, both the moderate and radical left share the same fundamental objective of addressing the shortcomings of the neo-liberal model. In that sense Latin America as a whole may potentially devise a new consensus on how best to pursue social and economic development.

Latin American Research Review, 1995

Latin American Research Review, 2008

How should we understand the left and the left turns in Latin America? I discuss both questions and move on to argue that winning elections might generate tremendous enthusiasm but it is a restrictive benchmark to measure the resurgence of the Left. This is because the performative dimension of politics also gives it an agenda-setting capacity and because the left is redefining the political and ideological center. Then I focus on another innovative aspect of these turns, the move outside a conventionally liberal setting of politics as actors experiment with forms of engagement we can describe as post-liberal.

In The Impasse of the Latin American Left, Franck Gaudichaud, Massimo Modonesi, and Jeffery R. Webber explore the region’s Pink Tide as a political, economic, and cultural phenomenon. At the turn of the twenty-first century, Latin American politics experienced an upsurge in progressive movements, as popular uprisings for land and autonomy led to the election of left and center-left governments across Latin America. These progressive parties institutionalized social movements and established forms of state capitalism that sought to redistribute resources and challenge neoliberalism. Yet, as the authors demonstrate, these governments failed to transform the underlying class structures of their societies or challenge the imperial strategies of the United States and China. Now, as the Pink Tide has largely receded, the authors offer a portrait of this watershed period in Latin American history in order to evaluate the successes and failures of the left and to offer a clear-eyed account ...