The Sward, The Cross and The Condor: anticommunism and far-right in Latin America (1954-1984)

• Grant number: 22/16280-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: October 01, 2023
• End date: March 31, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - Political Theory
• Principal Investigator: André Kaysel Velasco e Cruz
• Grantee: André Kaysel Velasco e Cruz
• Host Investigator: Dylan John Riley
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), United States

Abstract

This Project approaches the circulation and translation of anticommunist discourse through the international far-right network laid-out buy the Latin American Anticommunist Confederation (CAL), regional branch of the World Anticommunist League (WACL), organization of global scope, founded int Taipe (Taiwan) in 1967. Founded in Mexico City in 1972, the CAL organized four public congresses, and several clandestine meetings, until 1982, being formally disconnected from the WACL in 1984. But the origins of this organization date back to 1954, with the first Latin American anticommunist congress, held also in the Mexican capital, with many of the actors involved in its organization being also founders of CAL, several years later. My aim is to understand the peculiarities of the reception and translation of anticommunist discourse by the Latin American far-right, specially in its ties to the national question. I depart from the hypothesis, based upon the extensive bibliography on the matter, that anticommunism was not a simple import of US Cold War discourse, but was deeply rooted in local political and intellectual traditions, having also other extra-regional sources and connections, with important ties in Europe and Asia. More than that, anticommunism fulfilled the role of a point of articulation or condensation for the ideological discourse that unified the continent's radical rights, gathering integralist Catholics, organicist nationalists and, to a lesser extent, neoliberals, around a hierarchical and exclusionary view of the nation. Finally, this ideological constellation, drawing on the Cold War's "east/west" grammar, produced a conception of its one about the west, different from the main-stream liberal-democratic view of the western camp, frequently accusing the former of complicity with the communist enemy. Thisresearch is based on documental research with primary sources from the Center and Archive for The Defense of Human Wrights (CDYA), of the Paraguayan Supreme Court of Justice, located in the Museo de La Justicia, in Asunción (Paraguay). Due to its role as the archive for "Operation Condor", the articulation of the repressive apparatuses of the South American dictatorships during the 1970s, the political police of Alfredo Stroessner's regime (1954-1989) gathered a recious repository of documents o the regional far-right networks, now at the public's disposition and greatly digitalized. With this research I aim at contributing to the understanding of the ootedness and historical persistency of anticommunism as a common denominator of the Latin American ight wing and its character as an ideological obstacle to he deepening of democracy in the region. (AU)