The Far-Right in Latin America: A Framework for Analysis

The irruption of the far-right is a reality across Latin America, with the emergence of leaders such as Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, José Antonio Kast in Chile, and Guido Manini Ríos in Uruguay. The rise of the far-right is a concern for experts, given its conflicts with the liberal version of democracy. At the same time, its agenda reinforces “moral conservatism” and “law and order” as two of its main issues. If the rise of the far-right has been interpreted, among other factors, as a reaction to the late diffusion of post-material themes and liberal values in Latin America, its programmatic platform has not yet been systematically analyzed theoretically and empirically in the region. This paper will study the discourse of far-right leaders and parties in Latin America from a comparative perspective. Its objective is to develop a typology to classify the variety of far-right in the region. With a framework of comparative politics that selected the cases of Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, this investigation has a qualitative approach and will use discourse analysis. It is expected to contribute to a better understanding of the challenges that these leaders pose to the continuity of the liberal script in Latin American democracies themselves.