For a little over a decade, liberal democracy has been repeatedly questioned. The rise of the far right in Europe, as seen in the recent Italian elections where the right-wing coalition triumphed, positioning Giorgia Meloni of the Brothers of Italy party as the figurehead of the extreme right, is a prime example. In Argentina, the attempted assassination of Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is part of a cycle of political and judicial persecution that began during Mauricio Macri's administration. Since then, the vandalism of several monuments to former President Néstor Kirchner and murals commemorating those disappeared during Argentina's last military dictatorship are expressions of political violence perpetrated by radical right-wing groups aimed at the destruction of the "other"—the political adversary—in physical, discursive, and symbolic terms. However, at the regional level, there is an escalation of political violence, evidenced by the radicalization of right-wing groups following the attack on the Capitol in the United States by supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump (2017-2021). During his administration, Trump reinforced the exaltation of values, ideas, and public policies aligned with the far right of the political spectrum and encouraged the mobilization and agitation of radical groups. Similarly, in Bolsonaro's Brazil, the presence of the military in government areas increased, and the use of violence was legitimized, leading to an increase in political violence and the assassinations of supporters of Lula. Globally, a shift in the times is evident, showing signs of acceleration following the COVID-19 pandemic and the war between Russia and Ukraine. The climate crisis, the technological revolution that tends to displace human labor from the production system, and the lack of political initiatives to generate quality employment with decent wages are resulting in serious social conflicts and crises of political representation that threaten the stability of democracies. In Latin America, even "progressive" governments have consolidated a return to primary commodity exports and the expansion of extractive activities (Svampa 2013).

Likewise, the challenges to the patriarchal system brought about by fourth-wave feminism and the struggles for sexual and gender diversity have challenged traditional gender and family roles and placed the demand for bodily autonomy in the public debate. The proliferation of anti-rights religious movements is part of this repertoire of sociocultural transformations. Furthermore, political and partisan disputes are shaped by the communications revolution and the influence of social media, mass media, and political influencers—a space where the production and reproduction of hate speech and contempt for political adversaries is quick and easy (cf. Stefanoni 2021). This environment facilitates the consolidation of new political leaders who advocate disruptive, conservative, and violent discourses (cf. Ahmed 2015). This contributes to a crisis of legitimacy in politics and a widespread distrust of representative democracy.

The limitations of the "pink tide" governments became evident in the identification of a rightward shift at the polls in various parts of Latin America following the presidential victories of Mario Abdo, Jair Bolsonaro, Mauricio Macri, Sebastián Piñera, Iván Duque, and Nayib Bukele. All of them represented right-wing movements with a popular base.

Previously, the coup against Manuel Zelaya in Honduras in 2009, the removal of Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo in 2012, the forced impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in 2016, and the arrest of Lula da Silva in 2018 were expressions of the advance of the political right and its alliances with lawfare in the region. This seems to indicate that Latin America is crossing a new historical threshold, the nature of which is novel in some respects (Bolcatto and Souroujon 2020).

In short, Latin America is experiencing a political and ideological context marked by growing intolerance and political authoritarianism that deserves our attention. The shift to the right appears to be strengthening in the region following the 2019 coup in Bolivia against the government of Evo Morales. In Chile, the social uprising following the austerity policies implemented by the government of Sebastián Piñera expressed a challenge to the foundations of the neoliberal system that has governed Chile since the dictatorship. In response to the uprising, Piñera declared a state of siege, a declaration of "internal war," and criminalized social protest and human rights violations in the form of mass arrests, torture, sexual abuse, and deaths. This conflict, in which young people played a prominent role, lasted for two years and culminated in demands for a new political constitution, the constitutional plebiscite for which was overwhelmingly rejected in 2022. Within the context of this social upheaval, the Republican Party emerged, led by former presidential candidate José Antonio Kast, a far-right figure known for his anti-statist, xenophobic, and ultra-Catholic rhetoric, and for defending the Pinochet-era constitution. Similarly, the 2021 protests in Colombia following Iván Duque's tax reform demonstrated the capacity for action by infiltrated far-right groups, including assassinations and armed responses against demonstrators. Despite the severity of the human rights violations, in the 2022 presidential elections, the right-wing coalition led by Rodolfo Hernández obtained approximately 47% of the vote in the second round.

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?

In the Working Group, we are interested in addressing the ideological and identity-based appeals generated by right-wing and far-right coalitions and parties, as well as drawing some comparisons with other historical experiences. There are two elements in particular that this Working Group would like to explore. 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 produced. No one has expressed this with greater speed, brazenness, and brutality than President Bolsonaro. In this sense, the emergence of these discourses invites us to examine in greater detail 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 significant anniversaries. From 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 understand that a more nuanced 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 administration of Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, or previously that of Dilma Rousseff. These street interventions are reminiscent of the marches and pot-banging protests against the Popular Unity government in Chile (Power 2008; Palieraki 2000, 2001).

The massive presence of right-wing groups—primarily young people and women—in public spaces 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 UDEN “moralism” of the 1950s and 60s and the crowds seen in Brazilian streets, 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; Bohoslavsky et al. 2019), but considerably less has been researched about right-wing youth in the last third of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century (Bohoslavsky et al. 2018). Consider, for example, the case of young people in Santa Cruz, who were radically opposed to Evo Morales and the establishment of a multicultural state. 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 can help us better understand them today? What political practices of right-wing women have remained consistent in Latin American countries from the 1970s to the present? What has been, and what is, the role of anti-feminist women's organizations?

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 merely an ideological cover for the dominant interests of a society, or as immutable actors lacking dynamism or historicity. 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 the relationship with the Catholic Church (and other currently influential congregations, such as neo-Pentecostal ones), 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 is based on the following notions:

1) The ideologically plural character of the right wing.

2) The relational character of the right: 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: which accounts for their capacity to adapt to different contexts, modifying practices based on new diagnoses and social alliances. This allows for the identification of "new," "traditional," or "emerging" right-wing movements, etc.

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 it in light of 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. This Working Group will pay particular attention to the following problem areas:

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, 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, the construction of hegemony, and disputes with other political cultures.

6. Dictatorship and Public Policies: 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 discourse? 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 is politics "moralized"? Are (De Lima 2015) and the "securitization" of the public agenda (Faganello 2015) the articulators of the new South American right?

This project aims to engage in dialogue, discussion, and continue the work begun by Sandra McGee Deutsch (2005), José Luis Beired (1999), and Marcus Klein (2000) in comparing the Argentine, Chilean, and Brazilian right wings 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 their combination with populism, neoliberalism, and their close ties to the US Republican Party lobby (AAVV, 2014). Analysts of contemporary politics have focused their attention on the right wing in government or in opposition to the "turn to the left." from the beginning of the 20th century (Domínguez 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 their principles by partisan left-wing parties in favor of neoliberal political economy and security fundamentalism, the fact is that current and past right-wing movements remain 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 Latin America experienced after Chávez's victory in 1998 (Velasco and Cruz et al. 2015; Luna and Kaltwasser 2014; Bohoslavsky et al. 2019). These works allow us to understand some of the alliances forged by the various right-wing organizations with international actors, in an ideological context in which there seemed to be a consensus for the deployment of reforms aimed at mitigating or reversing the most negative social effects of the neoliberal reforms deployed in the 1980s and 1990s.