Neo-patriotic far-right and the armed forces in Latin America

civil-military relations analysis

Abstract

This paper offers a contribution to extreme right studies by focusing on the interaction between these movements and the armed forces, with a focus on Latin American cases. Despite the closeness and growing interaction between the two, including in the United States and European countries, the way in which neo-patriot rights and the military interact has not yet been the object of study, neither by the literature on the former nor by Latin American civil-military relations experts. Since democratization, specialists have been observing progress in terms of political neutralization of the armed forces, mainly represented by the absence of coups. However, as we argue, there are more subtle forms of military involvement in politics that need to be evaluated. In this sense, this paper analyzes four cases – Chile, Peru, Uruguay and Brazil – in which, on the one hand, the extreme right seeks allies in the military – civil activation – and on the other, indicators of political activism by the military, thus abandoning the democratic norm of nonpartisanship and apolitical nature to establish relations with extreme right-wing neo-patriots. Despite not configuring practices of serious regime break – such as military or self-coups – we consider it relevant to include in the literature a concern with the impacts that the interaction between these rights and the armed forces has on democracy.