Political rights generally like to label themselves liberal, although most of society perceives them more correctly as conservative. However, after the recent public statements by different leaders and some groups of this ideological orientation in Spain, it would be more accurate to speak of the retrograde Right.
The dictionary defines the qualifier of retrograde as a person who is a supporter of ideas or political and social institutions of the past. And what but this is what the Spanish rights have shown when they recently referred to Latin America. A closed defense, a deep sigh for the lost empire and a repetition of a colonial denial of the right to dignity and sovereignty of an entire continent.
We could suppose that racist and neocolonial discourse reappears around what this same ideological current defines as October 12: its Hispanic Day. But the different statements of some former president of the government, of some president of the autonomous community and of current party leaders, including spokespersons and those in charge of the (neglect) of Spanish as a language, denote an ideological rearmament campaign that has to do with pretending recover the essences of a past of supposed imperial glory.
This campaign rests on everything that the Francoist school taught to some and some, the oldest of the place, and that dominated the political and cultural scene for forty years of what another old leader of the right described as “placidity”, even if it was dictatorial. They taught us then that at some unforgettable historical moment the sun did not set on Spanish possessions throughout the world; they educated us in the idea that America received the blessing of the arrival of Columbus, opening centuries of luminosity towards Christianity and freedom. They told us, as they repeat today, that this continent was populated by savage and cannibalistic peoples and that, thanks to Hispanic determination, they were freed from backwardness and led to a good civilization. It was lied then and, nevertheless, the Hispanic rights today retake those old speeches without even putting makeup on them.
The retrograde rights take off the other mask of the forty years of dictatorship to show, at least in their statements and we fear that in their actions if they could, their racism and colonial contempt for hundreds of peoples
They are proud, exultant and self-confident, and they lose the mask they have worn somewhat for the past forty years when they struggled to appear liberal despite their conservatism. They say that the pandemic is over and that we will soon be able to leave at home, just in case, the mask that has accompanied us for the last year and a half. Meanwhile, the retrograde rights take off the other mask of the forty years of dictatorship to show, at least in their statements and we fear that in their actions if they could, their racism and colonial contempt for hundreds of peoples and dozens of countries that today they continue to make up the entire Latin American continent.
That same territory that in recent decades has provided the world with new political, social and economic proposals as possible alternatives to unjust societies and systems, as has been demonstrated with capitalism, at least in its neoliberal aspect. Thus, from a contemptuous and cocky consideration, even towards presidents like Mexico’s, with respect to whom they do not keep even the slightest diplomatic respect, they insult and refuse to recognize that that continent is today constituted as a laboratory of transformative proposals that already go beyond the seas. That would be to acknowledge their own political-ideological misery and, therefore, they never will. They prefer, on the contrary, to continue shielding their weakness in this field after easy insult, misunderstood irony or arrogant sarcasm.
But, all this that we see today on this side of the sea, finds its direct reflection in the Latin American continent itself. In fact, the reactions of the Hispanic rights are not limited in the borders of the insult and the contempt.
The meetings of the Spanish and Latin American rights multiply to agree steps that seek to recover the spaces lost in recent decades after the successive social and electoral defeats and, consequently, of a power that they always considered exclusive.
For years, certain political and intellectual leaderships of this current have defined action strategies in Latin America. The meetings of the Spanish and Latin American rights multiply to agree steps that seek to recover the spaces lost in recent decades after the successive social and electoral defeats and, consequently, of a power that they always considered exclusive.
And it is not just a political game to recover spaces and presence in the different societies of the continent. In many cases what is defined, and on what is acted upon, is on channels outside the democratic game. It was just said by an intellectual from the Spanish-Peruvian right when he spoke openly that the important thing is not the exercise of democracy by the peoples, but that they vote well. And we all understood perfectly what he meant by that expression, openly applauded by the right-wing convection in which it was held: to vote well is to vote for us; democracy is oversized and is only useful if we put it at our service.
Hence, the radical nature of the right-wing in Latin America is better understood when, in recent years, they exhibit strategies that border on the margins of the democratic system or, directly, are located outside of it. They lose elections and accuse the political adversaries who won them of tyrants; They activate pseudo-judicial processes to remove social or political leaders from the democratic career and thus have the path open to the government palaces. They use and abuse the mass media for smear campaigns and lies that wear down governments and processes. And when all this is insufficient, boycotts and economic sabotage, blockades, and even coups are put in place, yes, with different qualifications to sweeten them: soft, parliamentary, etc.
So we understand that today the actions of the Spanish and Latin American rights are fed back and coordinated. The latter were always the direct descendants or gifted students of the former. For times, and especially in the economic sphere, they set their sights on the United States, but their ideological reference largely continues to be on the other side of the sea. After all, two hundred years ago, when the independence processes took place, they replaced the metropolis in positions of power, but without altering the oppressive system towards the great majorities.
No, the sighs and statements of these weeks have a direct relationship with the actions of recent years in Latin America. They are not the result of a rebirth around October 12, but of a trend of retrograde ideological radicalism that, now, is recovering the colonial and racist tics towards peoples and people that they always considered inferior.
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