From Washington to Madrid: The Latin American New Right’s Spin on History
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21678/apuntes.101.3159Keywords:
Right-wing politics, neoliberalism, MemoryAbstract
This article argues that the Latin American new radical right differs from the neoliberal right of the 1990s through a major historical shift: whereas the neoliberalism of the Washington Consensus sought to overcome the past and embrace an ahistorical technocratic cosmopolitanism, the contemporary right, articulated around the Madrid Forum, reclaims history as a battleground for cultural and political struggle. The article identifies two key historical junctures that this new right reinterprets: the colonial past and the military dictatorships of the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on the cases of Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Mexico, and Bolivia, the article shows how these reinterpretations of the past provide the intellectual foundations for a project that seeks to restrict and reconceptualize citizenship by excluding historically marginalized groups. It concludes that, despite its hegemonic ambitions, the radicalism of this discourse limits its ability to secure broad electoral majorities.
Downloads
References
Atencio, R. J. (2014). Memory's Turn: Reckoning with Dictatorship in Brazil. University of Wisconsin Press.
Augusto, M. C., y Quiñón, A. (2026). La derecha radical peruana del siglo XXI: actores locales y narrativas globales. En A. Lerner y A. Vergara (Eds.). Perú Global 2: explicar el Perú con el mundo (pp. 453-474). Crítica.
Bohoslavsky, E. (2023). Historia Mínima de Las Derechas Latinoamericanas. Instituto de Estudios Peruanos.
Borges A., y Zanotti, L. (2024). Authoritarian, but not nativist: Classifying far-right parties in Latin America. Political Studies, 73(4), 1596-1591.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00323217241301317
Burgess, K., y Levitsky, S. (2003). Explaining Populist Party Adaptation in Latin America: Environmental and Organizational Determinants of Party Change in Argentina, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela. Comparative Political Studies, 36(8), 881-911. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414003256112
Centeno, M. Á. (1997). Democracy Within Reason: Technocratic Revolution in Mexico. Penn State University Press.
Confino, H., y González, R. (2024). Anatomía de una mentira: Quiénes y por qué justifican la represión de los setenta. Fondo De Cultura Económica.
Corrales, J. (2019). La expansión de los derechos LGBT en América Latina y la reacción. En M. Bosia, S. McEvoy y M. Rahman (Eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Global LGBT and Sexual Diversity Politics. (pp. 185-200). Oxford Handbooks.
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190673741.013.14
Díaz, C., Rovira, C., y Zanotti, L. (2023). The arrival of the populist radical right in Chile: José Antonio Kast and the «Partido Republicano». Journal of Language and Politics, 22(3), 342-359.
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.22131.dia
Dornbusch, R., y Edwards, S. (1990). La macroeconomía del populismo en América Latina. Fondo de Cultura Económica, 57(225), 121-162.
Fundación Disenso. (2021). Doce de Octubre. De la Hispanidad a la Iberosfera. Fundación Disenso, (12), 1-6.
Gruber, S. (2026). De Beltrán a De Soto: traducciones locales y huellas globales del neoliberalismo peruano. En A. Lerner y A. Vergara (Eds.). Perú Global 2: Explicar el Perú con el mundo. (pp. 249-268). Crítica.
Goldstein, A. (2022). La reconquista autoritaria. Cómo la derecha global amenaza la democracia en América Latina. Marea.
Hirschman, Albert O. (1991). The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy. Harvard University Press.
Hunter, W., y Power, T. (2019). Bolsonaro and Brazil's Illiberal Backlash. Journal of Democracy, 30(1), 68-82.
https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2019.0005
Knight, A. (1998). Populism and Neo-Populism in Latin America, Especially Mexico. Journal of Latin American Studies, 30(2), 223-248. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022216X98005033
Laje, A. (2022). La batalla cultural: Reflexiones críticas para una Nueva Derecha. HarperCollins.
Lvovich, D. (2025). El mileísmo y la llegada al gobierno de la extrema derecha en la Argentina. Ayer. Revista De Historia Contemporánea, 139(3), 281–297. https://doi.org/10.55509/ayer/3066
Mallon, F. E. (1995). Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru. University of California Press.
Mitchell, T. (2018). Society, Economy, and the State Effect. En G. Steinmetz (Ed.). State/Culture: State-Formation after the Cultural Turn (pp. 76-97). Cornell University Press.
Nicolazzi, F. (2024). El negacionismo como negocio. Usos del pasado y comercio de la historia en el bolsonarismo. En F. Wasserman (Ed.). Pasado presente. Historia, memoria y política en América Latina (siglo XXI) (pp. 195-222). Sílex Ultramar.
Payne, L., Zulver, J., y Escoffier, S. (2023). Introduction: The Right against Rights in Latin America. En L. Payne, J. Zulver y S. Escoffier (Eds.). The Right against Rights in Latin America (pp. 1-28). The British Academy.
Perochena, C. (2022). Cristina y la historia. El kirchnerismo y sus batallas por el pasado. Crítica.
Plehwe, D. (2015). Introduction. En P. Mirowski y D. Plehwe (Eds.). The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective (pp. 1-44). Harvard University Press.
Rovira, C. (2023). La ultraderecha en América Latina: Definiciones y explicaciones. Fundación Friedrich Ebert, 1-18.
Sanahuja, J., y López, C. (2023). Hispanidad e Iberosfera: imaginarios hispanoamericanos de la ultraderecha neopatriota. En J. Sanahuja y P. Stefanoni (Eds.). Extremas derechas y democracia: perspectivas iberoamericanas (pp. 137-171). Fundación Carolina.
Saidel, M. L. (2025). «Gender Ideology» as a Strategic Enemy of the Radical Right in South America: The Cases of Bolsonaro and Milei. Global Society, 39(4), 512–530. https://doi.org/10.1080/13600826.2024.2442990
Stedman Jones, D. (2012). Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics. Princeton University Press.
Tatyana, M. (2023). Historical Negationism and the Emergence of the Far Right The Crisis of the Modern Regime of Historicity in Brazil (2019-2022). Varia Historia, 39(81), 1-31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/0104-87752023000300013
Thomson, G. (2002). Liberalism and Nation-Building in Mexico and Spain during the Nineteenth Century. En J. Dunkerley (Ed.). Studies in the Formation of the Nation-state in Latin America (pp. 189-211). University of London Press.
Todorov, T. (1982). La conquista de América: La cuestión del otro. Siglo XXI.
Van Dijk, T. A. (2025). Discourse and Ideologies of the Radical Right. Cambridge University Press.
Vergara, A. (2022). An Eruption of History in Peru’s Bicentenary. Current History, 121(832), 57-62.
https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.2022.121.832.57
Vergara, A., y Barrenechea, R. (2023). Peru: The Danger of Powerless Democracy. Journal of Democracy, 2(34), 77-89.
Williamson, J. (1990). What Washington Means by Policy Reform. En J. Williamson (Ed.). Latin American adjustment: how much has happened? (pp. 5-20). Washington: Institute for International Economics.
Ypi, L. (2023). Libre: El desafío de crecer en el fin de la historia. Anagrama.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Soledad Sevilla
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Apuntes publishes all its articles and reviews under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license with the objective of promoting academic exchange worldwide. Therefore, articles and book reviews can be distributed, edited, amended, etc., as the author sees fit. The only condition is that the name of the author(s) and Apuntes. Revista de Ciencias Sociales (as the publisher) be cited.
.jpg){kind=logo}
