“There has been a lot of discussion and research on the rise of the far-right in Europe and the US. Much less on what happened in Latin America where we thought we were having a total different political landscape. Then Donald Trump’s unexpected victory came and someone started watching at our continent thinking “well, it might happen here too”. The first shock was when Jair Bolsonaro went to win the election in Brasil. Nevertheless, the Brasilan situation was a peculiar one because of a huge economic crisis and the corruption scandals that involved important government politicians. The circumstances made some observers think that it was the context that brought the the victory of such a far right candidate. After that we have observed that that was not one case, even after Bolsonaro lost he did so by just 1% of the vote and after that Nayib Bukele in Salvador in 2019 and Javier Milei in Argentina. In Chile, the far right candidate José Antonio Kast, who has left the traditional rightwing party to form his own, reached the second turn in the 2021 elections.
What we are trying to do with our research is to understand what is the far-right in the Latin American context and what are the differences and similarities with the European context. Which are the definitions that we need to use? We have do distinguish between two different camps, the mainstream and the far right. The mainstream will defend rightwing ideas in a relatively moderate way and, to make a north American example, accept the outcome of election. The far-right, by contrast is promoting its ideas in a radical manner and has a very complicated relation with the democratic system. Some are plainly authoritarian, most of them have a special relation with democracy for which the liberal part of it is the most problematic one. If we stick to this broad frame we can classify both European and American forces such as Le Pen, Bolsonaro or Trump as far-right.”
The article on Il Manifesto (in Italian)
What characterizes this contemporary far-right in terms of policy proposal, ideas?
The way in which we understand Latin-American politics is that the division between left and right is related to free market versus State intervention in the economy. But as Latin-American society is so unequal, it is very unlikely that someone with a very strong neoliberal project might be able win an election, because people have strong feelings about social inequalities and that is something that can be verified in public opinion polls. What we have seen after the transition to democracy is that mainstream right parties mainly tried to be silent on the socioeconomic dimension because they understood that that was not the way to win an election. This is also true for nowadays far-right, which tends to be very neoliberal but at the same time thy search and generate consensus on the moral and cultural issues. What they do is politicizing issues such as abortion, LGBTQ rights in combination with the socioeconomic dimension. This mix of different ideological positions makes them interesting for different portions of the electorate.
On the top of that we have to consider that our political systems are run-off presidential elections, so people votes for their candidate in the first round. The second round is different, whn you have two options you might vote for the lesser of two evil. In Argentina Milei gained more than 6 million votes between the first and second round. Data on that vote shows that a lot of those new Milei voters are not people that necessarily convinced by his ideas, but because he was the alternative to the government in a country where inflation is at 100%. They voted for him because they disliked the alternative, not necessarily because they like neoliberal or authoritarian ideas. This is a difference with the European political landscape because there you mainly have parliamentary system in which you vote for the party and often there are ruling coalitions.
These forces were able to present themselves as an alternative to both the traditional right and the left that governed many Latin-American countries in the 2000s…
The path of the Latin-American left is also part of the explanation. Latin America during the 2000s experienced a turn to the left almost everywhere, and we have seen many different kinds of left ruling different countries, from moderate left to populist left. This is not the case anymore and the reason is somehow a failure of the promise the victory of the left carried. The case of Argentina, which I mentioned, is the perfect example: a government that leaves the economy in disarray opens the door to Milei, even if people does not necessarily agree with his ideas. One of the reasons for the Left’s problems is related to commodity price trends that rose and then fell, depriving governments of resources to spend on the social programs they had promised. So, one part of the electorates in Argentina, Brazil and other countries turned to the “new” right to vote against the ruling parties. Bolsonaro who was not new to politics, did present himself as a newcomer.
How does the Latin-American right differs from the European one and in what are they similar?
If we look at the European and US far right, we can agree that one common issue is migrations, they all say “we are fed up with migrants, and particularly with muslims”. With the exception of Chile where the number of immigrants has risen in the last 10 years, immigration does not play a big role in the rhetoric of the Latin-American far right. This is why I think that we need to develop an abstract framework., Again, as I said, far right has a difficult relation with democracy and defending it ideas in a very radical manner. I think that at an abstract level, what the Latin American far right is against is the process of incorporation that democratic regimes have been able to develop in the last decades. If you watch at Europe, the big thing was the adaptation to multiculturalism. Bing an immigrant in the 70s or in 2020 is a different experience. Precisely for this process of adaptation we are experiencing a backlash articulated by the far right which in the case of Europe is against immigration. In Latin America we have seen advancements of the better incorporation of historical marginalized communities, which means women, to some extent the gay community and in some countries native minorities. Precisely because of these advancements we have a reaction that says enough is enough, let’s go back to where we were before. Which would in the US probably would mean a time where blacks could not vote, in Europe a place with no immigration and in Latin America a society where women stay at home. The paradox is that the very success of democracy is the reason for which we are seeing a reaction.
At a conceptual level we identify two version, the extreme authoritarian right, someone as Golden Dawn and the populist radical right, who claims to speak in the name of the people. Most of the Latin-American right belongs to the populist radical right The idea is that there is a native people that needs to be protected. In Europe this takes the shape of xenophobia: there is Italian people and the others. In Latin America it is ideas and then the good people and the bad people. And this is where the “Law&Order” or “Mano dura” kicks in. In the rhetoric of the far right in Latin America you have a clear understanding about who are the pure people and who are the enemies. You have the elites that are too progressives and the poor who don’t behave as they should and therefore need to be punished. El Salvador is the exaggeration of that, with massive and casual incarceration with no respect for the basic rule of law or civil rights through which you might solve the gang problem but you get rid of liberal democracy. That is one of the main dangers we are seeing: there are people that we need to protect and all the others who don’t behave properly need to go to jail.
Who are the voters of the populist right? Are they similar from country to country?
So far, we don’t have good empirical data to compare. We know something about Argentina and Brasil. There are similarities and huge differences: in Brazil the Bolsonaro voter is older, whike in Argentina the Milei voter is very young. In Brazil the richer and more educated you are, the more probability there is that you will vote Bolsonaro. This is a difference with Europe and also with Argentina. One important communality is religion: if you are an evangelical there is a huge chance that you will vote for the far-right (the difference is the weight of this vote, which is much higher in Brasil, middle level in Chile, low in Argentina). There are some ideological constants: they tend to have authoritarian ideas, very conservative on social issues, in favor of the free market and be very much anti-feminist. What the far right is doing is to mobilize a very clear segment of the population which not necessarily is similar in sociodemographic terms.
The difference with the 70s is that the contemporary far-right is willing to put its ideas into the electoral market, they want to win election, although we know that they are very bad at loosing election. In the 60s and 70s: Pinochet and the Argentinian junta did not give a damn about elections and in these terms, they were much closer to the extreme right than to the populist radical right. I am not claiming that the contemporary version does not bring dangers for democracy, but that the relation with the democratic system is a different one. They are willing to participate, and they might erode democracy from within, while the military in the 70s came to power through coup d’état.
What connections with similar forces in the rest of the world?
If you are a far-right politician in AL you have a lot of models to imitate, from which get ideas. There are a couple of actors that are crucial. One is Spanish Vox for geographical and cultural reasons. Santiago Abazcal has been building personal relationship with many Latin-American right leaders and is also trying to build an informal network. The other crucial component is the USA. Before Trump we had a mainstream right party that was slightly to the right compared with its Europeans equivalent. The mainstream right does not exist anymore in the United States and the far-right party (republicans under Trump) is building a network across Latin America through, for example, Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz, who have often meetings. This is new, because in recent years the international networks were those of civil rights or environmental issues. The right has learnt and imitated.
Are these forces leader’s parties?
They often are forces who grow thanks to the rise of a charismatic leader who is an outsider as Milei or presents as one, like Bolsonaro. These leaders have a political proposal that speaks to different segments of the electorate and set up an organization that they control. But this is not just personalistic, as we have seen in Brazil: Bolsonaro has been banned, but bolsonarismo is still there. That is the same for Trump and the Republican party he has built. These parties have built social alliances, that might be controlled by a single leader, organized by a party or by alliances, such in Argentina. Differences exist also in terms of behavior: the Chilean far right leader is no Milei, he is calm and well behaved. So we don’t have to confound this far-right populism with craziness because some of its leaders are behave in unconventional ways.