32 The Americas The Economist November 6th 2021
O
ne eveninglast month Francisco
Sagasti, who was Peru’s interim
president for eight months until July,
launched his new book in Barranco, a
bohemian district of Lima. Mr Sagasti, an
academic, is a centrist who steered the
country through a divisive election. The
event was disrupted by demonstrators
who surrounded the bookshop chanting
“corrupt” and “murderer” at the author
while punching a journalist. They be
longed to “The Resistance”, a group
formed in 2018 under the banner of “God,
Fatherland and Family” to oppose
communism and liberalism. They are
one of many facets of a new, more ag
gressive right wing in Latin America.
Its breakthrough came with the elec
tion in 2018 of Jair Bolsonaro as president
of Brazil. A former army officer scornful
of democracy and nostalgic for his coun
try’s military dictatorship of 196485, Mr
Bolsonaro marked a break with previous
political norms in the region. Since
democratisation in the 1980s, with one or
two exceptions, conservative political
forces were generally moderate, often
influenced by Christian Democracy.
Mr Bolsonaro has spawned wouldbe
imitators, of different kinds. They in
clude Guido Manini, a retired army
commander who promised to crack
down on crime and who as a political
outsider won 11% of the vote in Uruguay’s
presidential election in 2019. In Peru
Rafael López Aliaga, a businessman who
is a member of Opus Dei, a Catholic
movement, won 12% in an election in
April on a platform of social conserva
tism and extreme economic liberalism.
In Argentina Javier Milei, a libertarian
economist, is poised to win a seat in
Congress in an election this month,
running against the main centreright
coalition as well as the ruling Peronists.Closest to power is José Antonio Kast, a
former legislator who in his first presi
dential campaign in 2017 said that, if he
were alive, General Pinochet, Chile’s dicta
tor in 197390, would vote for him. For the
presidential election later this month he
has promised to “restore Chile” with mano
dura(“a firm hand”) against crime and
violent disorder, a border ditch to stop
immigrants, withdrawing from inter
national humanrights bodies and tax cuts
to promote economic growth. He also
claims to defend Chile’s European heritage
and national unity against the left’s es
pousal of indigenous groups and multi
culturalism. Mr Kast looks set to contest a
runoff election for the presidency against
Gabriel Boric of the hard left.
Mr Kast is not Mr Bolsonaro. Rather, he
represents a radical populist right, more
in the mould of Álvaro Uribe, Colombia’s
president from 2002 to 2010. He insists he
is not “extremist” and now doesn’t deny
that there were abuses under Pinochet.
Not all of the new rightists represent a
clear threat to democracy itself. But some
do. All of them are less conciliatory thanthe old conservative parties. Minority
groups have reasons to worry.
What explains the rise of the new
right? One factor is the formation in
recent years of grassroots groups with
Catholic and evangelical ties which have
campaigned against abortion, gay rights
and feminism. Another is a popular
demand for protection against crime. As
with the radical left, the radical right is
benefiting from public disillusionment
with economic stagnation and main
stream democratic politicians, who are
seen as selfserving if not corrupt. But
what unites all these new rightwing
forces, says Ariel Goldstein, a political
scientist at the University of Buenos
Aires, is “the spectre of Venezuela” which
has sought to export its povertyspread
ing leftist dictatorship. In that sense, the
radicalisation of the right is a mirror of
the same process on the left. If Mr Kast
has a chance of winning, as he does, it is
partly because Mr Boric, though himself
a democrat, espouses a statist economic
programme and has communist allies.
Latin America’s new right is also part
of a broader international trend. Donald
Trump’s victory in the United States in
2016 paved the way for Mr Bolsonaro. Mr
Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo has close links
to the nativist fringe of the Republican
Party. Now Vox, a Spanish antiimmi
grant party, is acting as an agent uniting
the new right in Latin America. In Sep
tember it published a “Letter from Ma
drid”, denouncing communism in the
“Iberosphere” and signed so far by al
most 9,000 politicians or activists in
cluding Messrs Kast, López Aliaga and
Milei, as well as Eduardo Bolsonaro.
Liberal democrats in Latin America now
have to deal not just with an authoritar
ian left but with a right that is far more
intolerant than in the recent past.A more extreme kind of right-wing politics is emerging in Latin AmericaBelloSpooked by Venezuela
there, more than any other region. Some
what conservative themes resonate with
many Latin Americans. “We like big fam
ilies, big dinners, and we value things like
respect for elders,” says Ozlem Ozsumbul
of Madd Entertainment, a distributor.
From Ecuador to Mexico, primetime
slots are now filled by Turkish shows. “Ka
ra Para Ask” (Black Money Love) counts Lio
nel Messi, an Argentinian footballer, as a
fan. In 2018 Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás
Maduro, visited the set of“Dirilis: Ertu
grul” (Resurrection: Ertugrul), where he
tried his hand at blacksmithing, wore a traditional hat, and is said to have compared
himself to the show’s hero, the father of the
founder of the Ottoman Empire.
But the biggest fans of Turkish tele
novelas are señorasof a certain age. They
like them because they are less raunchy
and gory than local shows, with their gun
toting drug lords. It takes 28 episodes be
fore Sherezade and Onur share their first
kiss, which even Argentina’s leading con
servative newspaper complained lacked
“fervour”. Norma, an 82yearold in Buenos
Aires, likes Turkish shows because “they
are so decent, so romantic.” Her carer, Karina, adds: “Argentine telenovelas are too
extreme, on the first date they already have
sex!” They watch Turkish shows every day
from 4pm until Norma goes to sleep.
It also helps that, in contrast to Turkey,
where dramas are shown once a week and
can run for over two hours, in Latin Amer
ica these shows are chopped up into shor
ter chunks. This makes them far easier to
watch; it also helps boost the ratings of the
tvchannels, which can spin out the tales
over hundreds (if not thousands)of epi
sodes. The formula may featurefew besos,
but it brings in plenty of pesos.n