Seven Essays on Populism. Paula Biglieri

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      1  1 These soft coups began in 2009 with the removal of Manuel Zelaya in Honduras, followed by coups against Fernando Lugo in Paraguay in 2012, Dilma Rousseff in 2016, and Evo Morales in 2019. And we consider these to be “paradoxically” democratic coups for two reasons. In the first place, because they do not break with the institutional order in the old style of the civilian–military coups of the second half of the twentieth century in Latin America, which explicitly suspended the rule of law and functioned through a permanent state of exception with an alternative juridical order. And, in the second place, because juridical–mediatic complicity creates the fiction of a procedure regulated within the rules of the institutional game.

      2  2 For the Latin American right, it has become common practice to persecute judicially popular political leaders once their mandates have ended. This persecution has been called “lawfare” and consists of establishing a link of complicity between some sectors of the judicial branch, corporate–media power, and right-wing presidents. This complicity consists of creating mediatic–judicial cases without any proof or constitutional guarantees whatsoever, through which misleading corruption charges are filed. These cases are managed and tried by judges allied with the mediatic–judicial apparatus, with the goal of damaging the leader’s image nationally and internationally and preventing their return to electoral politics.

      3  3 Recall that, in Colombia, during the second term of Juan Manuel Santos, a peace agreement was signed between one of Latin America’s oldest guerrilla organizations (the FARC) and the Colombian government. This peace agreement meant the end of the armed struggle, the disarming of guerrillas, their transition into a political party, and a pact to carry out a series of key reforms for the country. However, after the victory of far-right leader Iván Duque in the most recent elections, the peace process suffered a setback at the hands of the current government, which has translated into the suspension of the process and the return of the logic of war.

      4  4 Biglieri and Perelló (2007).

      5  5 Coronel and Cadahia (2018).

      6  6 Cadahia, Coronel, Valeria, and Ramírez (2018).

      7  7 This project was financed by the British Academy, led by Mark Devenney and Paula Biglieri, and carried out by the Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics, and Ethics at the University of Brighton, and the Ernesto Laclau Open Seminar at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Buenos Aires.

      8  8 The Consortium is co-directed by Professor Judith Butler (University of California–Berkeley) and Professor Penelope Deutscher (Northwestern University). See https://criticaltheoryconsortium.org.