The presidential victories of Mauricio Macri, Mario Abdo, Sebastián Piñera, Iván Duque, and Jair Bolsonaro in recent years reflect a rightward shift at the polls in various parts of Latin America. Even earlier, the coup against Manuel Zelaya in Honduras in 2009, the removal of Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo in 2012, and the forced impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in 2016 were expressions of the advance of right-wing politics in the region. This shift appears to be further reinforced by the dominance of the Republican Party and Donald Trump in the United States, which have encouraged the entrenchment of values, ideas, and public policies clearly aligned with the right or far right of the political spectrum. This suggests that Latin America is crossing a new historical threshold, the nature of which is, in some respects, novel. What are these innovative aspects? What is new about the new right that has managed to defeat, displace or corner the governments of the pink tide of the beginning of the 21st century?

There are two elements in particular that this Working Group would like to address. On the one hand, the emergence of revisionist public expressions regarding recent dictatorial experiences. According to some of these discourses, human rights violations were neither so numerous nor so serious, and in any case, should be completely excused by the numerous economic and political advantages that these regimes supposedly generated. No one has expressed this with greater speed, brazenness, and brutality than President Bolsonaro. In this sense, the emergence of these discourses invites a more detailed review of the various public policies implemented by Latin American dictatorial regimes, in an effort to differentiate them from partisan narratives on the matter (Da Silva Catela 2010). The relevance of these public expressions has become more frequent in recent years due to the various "round" anniversaries of the beginning of dictatorships: in 2013, the 40th anniversary in Chile and Uruguay; in 2014, the 60th anniversary in Guatemala and Paraguay and the 50th anniversary in Brazil; and in 2016, the 40th anniversary in Argentina (AAVV 2014). We believe that a more detailed study of these experiences will allow us to appreciate the extent to which this retrospective idealization of dictatorial public policies in general, and of repression in particular, is ideological.

The second interesting aspect is the strong presence of young people and women in the marches opposing the administrations of Dilma Rousseff and, previously, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. These street interventions are reminiscent of the marches and pot-banging protests against the Popular Unity government in Chile (Power 2008; Palieraki 2000, 2001). This massive presence in the public sphere leads us to question the historical nature of the specific forms of political participation of young people and women who identify with right-wing parties and values. According to Kaysel (2015: 7071), it is inevitable to draw parallels between the UDN “moralism” of the 1950s and 60s and the crowds seen in the streets of Brazil, as well as between the criticisms of the interventionism of Dilma Rousseff’s first term and those leveled against the government of Getúlio Vargas (1951–1954). Today we know quite a bit about young people radicalized to the left in the 1960s and 70s (Gilman 2003; Langland 2004; Markarian 2001, 2011; Terán 1991; Zolov 1999) and about some of the social practices of contemporary youth (Alvarado and Vommaro 2010), but considerably less has been researched about right-wing youth in the last third of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. Consider the case of the youth of Santa Cruz, radically opposed to Evo Morales and the establishment of a multicultural state. Similarly, women involved in organizations seeking to break with traditional gender roles have been more extensively studied (Andújar et al. 2009), while right-wing women have received less attention (Power 2008; Céspedes 2015; Martins Cordeiro 2008). What do we know about the actions and cultural consumption of right-wing youth in the 1970s that allows us to better understand those of today? What political practices of right-wing women have remained stable in Latin American countries from the 1970s to the present? What has been and is the role of anti-feminist women's organizations?

The starting point of this Working Group is the assumption that to better understand the current growth of the right in Latin America, it is relevant to examine the recent past, in order to better identify which proposals and practices of contemporary right-wing movements are truly innovative and which are simply reinterpretations of old ideas. Through the activities of this Working Group, we hope to explore some of the links between current right-wing organizations (whether in government or not) and right-wing organizations of the recent past in countries of the region. In doing so, this Working Group will contribute to identifying the political and intellectual traditions with which Latin American right-wing movements sympathized, as well as their strategies of adaptation and resistance that allowed them to endure, and their relationships with transnational actors, even in unfavorable contexts such as the early 21st century in some countries. This Working Group aims to foster dialogue among researchers from a dozen countries with diverse disciplinary backgrounds and from different generations interested in the study of right-wing organizations that emerged during the "long 1960s" (Devés 2004) and in contemporary times, as well as the dictatorships of the National Security Doctrine established between the 1960s and 1980s in South and Central America. This Working Group will pay particular attention to the following problem areas for the period spanning from the 1964 coup in Brazil to the present.

1. Democracies and the Right: opposition and government, loyalty to democracy, desired and resisted reforms; limits of the link between capitalism and democracy.

2. Right-wing youth: identities, practices, discourses and sociability

3. Right-wing women: identities, organizations and gender readings

4. Transnational circles and networks: impacts, uses and promotion of knowledge, ideologies, interests and perspectives. Think tanks, NGOs and international organizations.

5. Right-wing Intellectuals and Social Sciences. The formation of expert and apolitical knowledge. Intellectuals and the general public. Consensus, hegemony, and disputes with left-wing and nationalist cultures.

6. Dictatorship and Public Policies: case studies, consensus building, state/society links

Based on the above, the questions guiding this project are: What were the most relevant right-wing groups and figures in Latin America from the second half of the 60s to the present? What were the recurring themes and discourses among right-wing groups, focusing primarily on their public pronouncements? How can we explain the identification of young people and women with “right-wing pride” (Kaysel, 2015)? What political practices were employed by right-wing actors (electoral alliances, group formations, dissolutions, relationships with government bodies, the Church, and civil society actors)? What similarities do their current practices and discourses share with those of the Cold War? What kind of right-wing opposition did reformist impulses generate in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Venezuela? How were these resistances linked to previous right-wing traditions? How much of these expressions is new and how much is old? To what extent are the “moralization of politics” (De Lima 2015) and the “securitization” of the public agenda (Faganello 2015) the articulators of the new South American right?

Sandra McGee Deutsch (2005) has pointed out that Latin American scholars have paid more attention to the ideas and practices of the left than to those produced by members of the right, even though the latter held power for longer periods during the 20th century. This has been partly due to the assumption that the right was a subject to be repudiated rather than studied, as it was seen as a mere ideological cover for the dominant interests of a society, or as an immutable actor lacking dynamism or historicity. In contrast, this Working Group is based on the following notions:

1) The ideologically plural character of the right wing (liberal, conservative, nationalist, neoliberal, corporatist, extreme, etc.)

2) The relational nature of the right wing: part of its identity and practices can only be understood as part of the dialogue and the struggle with other political traditions

3) The historical character of right-wing movements: this reflects their capacity to adapt to different contexts, to modify practices and notions based on new diagnoses and social alliances. This allows for the identification of “new,” “traditional,” or “emerging” right-wing movements, etc.

In this sense, the study of contemporary Latin American right-wing movements proposed here aims to account for the diversity of right-wing ideologies in the region over time, as well as their capacity for adaptation and the establishment of new patterns of behavior and alliances with local and transnational actors. This involves understanding their relationship with the Catholic Church (and other currently influential congregations, such as neo-Pentecostal groups), and with transnational actors and networks such as think tanks (Ramírez 2007), the World Anti-Communist League, the John Birch Society, and intellectual groups concentrated in journals and conferences.

This Working Group aims to contribute to what is currently a remarkable development in the field of the history of South American and Caribbean dictatorships, a field that has allowed for the examination of various issues. These include: the generation of consensus in authoritarian regimes, the multiple scales of repression deployed by state terrorism, public policies—primarily social and cultural—the memories and uses of the dictatorial past, the impacts on the world of work, political organizations and social movements, the characteristics of daily life, and so on. (Fico 1997, 2004, 2008; Tcach 2006; Ansaldi 2004; Corradi 1992; Marchesi 2004; Panizza 1990; Reis, et. al. 2004; Rico 1995; Rostica 2014; Valdivia 2009, 2012; Valdivia et al. 2006, 2012).

The other area this Working Group aims to address is the study of right-wing movements during the Cold War and in the present day. In recent years, a significant body of literature has emerged focusing on these topics, primarily in the Southern Cone. This field is interwoven with research in political science, the history of ideas, intellectual history, and political sociology. This project seeks to engage in dialogue, discussion, and continue the work begun some years ago by Sandra McGee Deutsch (2005), José Luis Beired (1999), and Marcus Klein (2000) in comparing the Argentine, Chilean, and Brazilian right-wing movements in the first half of the 20th century, as well as to draw upon the various compilations and books that contain references to authoritarianism and fascism in Latin America (Bertonha and Bohoslavsky 2016; Bertonha and Savarino 2013; Trindade 2000). In Latin America, a growing academic interest in new forms of the right wing is evident, particularly in its combination with populism, neoliberalism, and its close ties to the US Republican Party lobby (AAVV, 2014). Analysts of current politics have focused their attention on the right wing in government or in opposition to the "leftward turn" of the early 20th century (Dominguez et al., 2011; Luna and Rovira Kaltwasser, 2014; Morresi, 2008). Partly due to the electoral strength of some European right-wing parties, as well as the resurgence of far-right movements with strong levels of social support in Germany and France, and even due to the almost complete abandonment of principles by traditional left-wing parties in favor of neoliberal political economy and security fundamentalism, the fact remains that current and past right-wing movements continue to be an object of political, civic, and academic interest (Mudde, 2007). Several recent compilations have highlighted some of the characteristics of these new right-wing movements within the framework of the “pink tide” that swept through Latin America after Chávez’s victory in 1998 (Velasco and Cruz et al. 2015; Luna and Kaltwasser 2014). These works reveal some of the alliances forged by various right-wing organizations with international actors, in an ideological context where there seemed to be a consensus for implementing reforms aimed at mitigating or reversing the most negative social effects of the neoliberal reforms implemented in the 1980s and 1990s.

Since 2010, Ernesto Bohoslavsky has coordinated the annual "Workshops on the Right in the Southern Cone, 20th Century" discussion series, with the support of the Institute for Human Development (National University of General Sarmiento). Later, the National University of the Center of the Province of Buenos Aires (Argentina) and the University of the Republic (Uruguay), represented by Dr. Magdalena Broquetas, joined the initiative. The workshop has fostered an extensive network of researchers, comprising nearly 60 individuals from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Spain, the United States, France, Mexico, and Uruguay, who have participated in the eight editions (proceedings available at http://www.ungs.edu.ar/derechas/). Several participants from the International Colloquia "Thinking about the Right in Latin America, 20th Century," held in Paris in 2014, Buenos Aires in 2016, and Belo Horizonte in 2018, have also joined this network. In this context, one of the central objectives... The GT's aim is to strengthen and consolidate the extensive academic network among researchers from Latin American institutions that has been gathering around the Workshops and the Colloquium, and who have joined as members of this GT.

Furthermore, this Working Group aims to develop discussion and teaching materials in various formats (books, journals, podcasts, audiovisual materials) suitable for use in diverse settings and institutions. We propose actively producing materials that can be used in both formal and informal educational contexts.

The activities proposed by this Working Group aim to simultaneously reach diverse audiences and impacts. On the one hand, there are activities specifically designed for an academic audience, which is the one that attends the events that members of this Working Group have been organizing for the past decade. In this regard, the proposal is to maintain a regular schedule of meetings in different parts of the continent and beyond. In particular, the proposal includes holding specific panels on Latin American right-wing movements at events such as the congresses of the Latin American Sociological Association, the Latin American Studies Association, the National Association of History (Brazil), and the Inter-School/Departmental Conferences on History (Argentina). Likewise, it is also expected to maintain two series of specific events: the Discussion Workshop “The right wing in the southern cone, 20th century” in Tandil (2020), Montevideo (2021) and Los Polvorines (2022) and the International Colloquium “Thinking about the Latin American right wing” in Mexico City (2020) and in Toulouse (2022).

Furthermore, it is hoped that the members of this Working Group will be able to reach wider audiences through the production of other communication materials. In particular, we intend to continue the podcast “Up with the Right,” featuring interviews with researchers dedicated to the study of right-wing ideologies and social hierarchies. We believe it is possible to produce at least four episodes per year, which can be distributed through CLACSO's networks, as has been the case with the episodes produced so far. Additionally, given the presence in the Working Group of colleagues with experience in producing audiovisual materials for teaching, we plan to produce web-based resources for use in educational institutions. Specifically, we would like to move forward with the production of micro-documentaries on forms of authoritarianism across genders and generations in recent Latin America. The experience of Abra TV (National University of the Center of the Province of Buenos Aires) and Uni TV (National University of General Sarmiento) will be crucial for the development of these materials. Before developing these materials, several members of the PT will meet with various stakeholders in the education system to collaboratively and collaboratively gather a clear picture of the main problems observed in classrooms regarding intergenerational and youth authoritarianism. This diagnostic assessment is crucial for defining the topics and script to be developed for the production. Finally, further meetings with other stakeholders in the education system are planned to present the materials and their potential uses in educational settings.