Conspiracy Theories and Latin American History

Lurking in the Shadows

Luis Roniger, Leonardo Senkman

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000438727
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Historia
• Categoría: Historia del mundo

This book is a systematic inquiry of conspiracy theories across Latin America.

Conspiracy theories project not only an interpretive logic of reality that leads people to believe in sinister machinations, but also imply a theory of power that requires mobilizing and taking action. Through history, many have fallen for the allure of conspiratorial narratives, even the most unsubstantiated and bizarre. This book traces the main conspiracy theories developing in Latin America since late colonial times and into the present, and identifies the geopolitical, socioeconomic and cultural scenarios of their diffusion and mobilization.

Students and scholars of Latin American history and politics, as well as comparatists, will find in this book penetrating analyses of major conspiratorial designs in this multi-state region of the Americas.

1

The logic of conspiracy thought

A major research challenge is to carry out analysis at the edge of effective plots and fantasized conspiracy theories. Using the analytical categories and theoretical frameworks of political sociology and the history of ideas, in addition to contextualizing the specific narratives of each case, we propose to deconstruct narratives and constitutive elements to understand why some of these theories have had great popular repercussions, while others remained ancillary. A first step is to understand the logic of conspiracy thought, and particularly, how it magnifies the nature of an anticipated or imagined threat, denouncing it as part of a coherent plan by forces that allegedly conspire backstage against social structures and institutions, threatening society.

Conspiracists project not only an interpretative logic of reality, but also a theory of power that ponders the world as the object of sinister machinations and aims to mobilize against them. Those who follow a conspiratorial worldview imagine reality as resulting from omnipotent voluntarist wills, as if two colossal wills confront each other in a titanic struggle in which only one of them can prevail. ‘Truthers’ feel an urgent need to unmask and punish those who, according to them, conspire to threaten the welfare of society, the integrity of the nation or the destinies of humanity.

When people adopt a vision of that character, the inquiry moves into the realm of collective mentalities, of credible and less credible narratives and theories, and their political implications. Conspiracists assume the existence of a unique historical causality, operated by sinister social forces and underground powers whose motives are dire. Believing in conspiracy theories, people merge actual information with fragmentary data and false clues, and refuse to question their truthfulness, arguing that doubting their veracity is precisely proof of their truth, since those doubting that a covert plot exists are merely trying to preclude ‘true believers’ from unmasking the truth ‘out there’, keeping it hidden from public scrutiny. With such a worldview, they are critical of others who prefer to ignore the threat and accept candidly appearances at the risk of doom. Above all, such ‘truthers’ believe that while the naive rely on existing routines and institutions, internal and external enemies covertly conceal projects of domination or destruction. Under such circumstances, those who claim being aware of hidden intrigues assume the supreme duty of alerting the naive, unmasking the conspiracy plot, and acting with proper urgency to save the integrity of the nation, its collective spirit, or even humanity as a whole.

Conspiracy theorists propose to approach the political and historical reality by distrusting appearances. They affirm a worldview about the existence of parallel powers and sustain a series of premises, namely:

• Malevolent forces operate underground; they stalk, seduce, penetrate and control the thinking of the masses, undermining the social, psychic or biological integrity of society, while hiding their plans of domination or destruction
• Nothing happens randomly; history has an inner meaning, and that meaning is not given by structural forces but by a confrontation of individual wills and designs, and the central question is which will and design will take precedence over the other(s)
• Institutions are ineffective because they are pervaded by malignant forces or they are unaware of the danger; either way, they should not be trusted
• Moreover, various social sectors collaborate, naively or maliciously with those seeking to affect the social and moral fabric of society
• Alternative and good-intentioned social forces must mobilize to confront the hidden nefarious powers, defeat their vicious plan of domination and thus defend the nation or humankind
• This confrontation is not a mere competition for power; even if focusing on politics and power, the struggle is waged in terms of a moral confrontation, which tends to acquire an almost apocalyptic symbolism

Such worldview supports a narrative mode that aims to be a mobilizing myth. Although it operates – in Max Weber’s terms (1974) – in terms of functional–instrumental rationality (Zweckrationalität) aimed at achieving specific goals, conspiracy plots integrate value rationality (Vertrationalität), in this case, as a substantive rationality that professes to be defending core, vital values. Conspiracist rationality leads believers to position themselves and adopt lines of action conceived in dichotomous moral terms, imagining themselves as waging a confrontation of possible imposing consequences.

Conspiracy theories can flourish at any end of the political spectrum. Both conservative right-wing forces resisting social change and left-wing forces advancing radical transformations can uphold them. Likewise, such theories have been launched by both individuals holding power and looking to delegitimize opposition forces, as well as by those who challenged established elites and used them to convince public opinion of the backstage machinations of elites and of the existence of what today is called a ‘deep state’.

Social scientists and historians, experts in the humanities and cultural critics have suggested various analytical approaches to the study of conspiracism and conspiracy theories. In his book Philosophy of conspiracy, Horacio González suggested a typology of conspiracies to characterize a rather broad and somehow confusing semantic field:

In conspiracies, all these movements – which are perhaps their proper masks – obtain a historical dignity. If the conspiracy reverts to domestic scenes, it tends to cover an intrigue; if it gears towards priestly styles, it attracts the label of conspiracy; if it does so for state motives, the term plot can be invoked; and if it is for war, perhaps the word conspiracy would be heard. In any case, we call it conspiracy when it remains outside the achievement of precise and immediate objectives. Having immediacy and urgency, conspiracy, plotting or intrigue seem appropriate terms.

2004, 19–20

Classical sociologist Georg Simmel analyzed the fascination of networks sharing a secret, as well as the twin fascination of betrayal on the human psyche. According to the sociologist, while the secret circle often relies on interpersonal contacts, presupposing internal cohesion and separation from the external world, treason is inscribed in the precariousness of competitions for power; by virtue of this, a conspiratorial image is attached to every secret association. Simmel concluded that “the secret association is in such bad repute as enemy of central powers that, conversely, every politically disapproved association must be accused of such hostility” (Simmel 1906, 498; Wolff 1950, 376).

The episteme of conspiracy theories is well characterized by historian Ernesto Bohoslavsky, following Geoffrey Cubitt (1993, 1–2), as “the propensity to consider that politics is dominated by malicious and secret machinations of a group with interests and values opposed to the bulk of society”. This implies that the conspiracy myth denotes that the true meaning of things hides behind appearances, and that what is relevant in politics actually occurs behind the scenes. In the logic of the plot, there is no place for chance and involuntary results, but the events are rather presented as the looked-for result of a secret intention (Bohoslavsky 2009, 17).

Those who think this way and imagine reality try to unmask, expose and punish those who behind the scenes plot to affect the integrity of a nation, a society or the whole of humanity. Given the perception of living an existential threat, the fight against the hidden and exposed danger has a substantial symbolic value, which often transforms its confrontation into a moral crusade. Let us quote Horacio González again:

Conspiratorial thinking starts from a doctrine of mutations, by which what must be known is an unveiling that, in the very act of giving itself as discovery always fights against what it brings out: Evil. Act of emerging and act of fight merge into a single political gesture. […] Conspiracy mentalities postulate that power necessarily makes its true purposes invisible, “unspeakable”. Legitimate institutions are eternal, but in front of them, the conspiracy of the blind powers that cannot stop their drive for absolute domination arises.

2004, 297

In the domain of individual and mass psychology, there is today a vast literature that attempts to explain the tendency of many normative individuals to confer credibility on conspiracy theories whose grip on factual reality is, at best, tenuous or partial. To a large extent, as analyzed for example by psychologist Rob Brotherton on the basis of empirical studies, conspiratorial suspicion should not surprise us when we understand our brain tries to find order in chaos (Brotherton 2015).

Since the plots imagined by those who have a conspiratorial view of the world often exaggerate and distort reality, research has highlighted their resemblance to delusional or paranoid psychological states. Analyzing American political culture, historian Richard Hoftstadter identified paranoid streams of thought, using the term metaphorically to characterize a phenomenon of a collective nature:

Paranoid writing begins with certain defensible judgments (…) and with a careful accumulation of facts, or at least of what appear to be facts, and to marshal these facts toward an overwhelming “proof” of the particular conspiracy that is to be established. (…) It is, if not wholly rational, at least intensely rationalistic; it believes that it is up against an enemy who is infallibly rational as he is totally evil, and it seeks to match his imputed total competence with its own, leaving nothing unexplained and comprehending all of reality in one overreaching, consistent theory. (…) What distinguishes the paranoid style is not the absence of verifiable facts (though it is occasionally true that in his extravagant passion for facts the paranoid occasionally manufactures them), but rather the curious leap in imagination that is always made at some critical point in the recital of events.

1963, 36–37

Likewise, criminologist Jorge Contreras Ríos stressed the threatening character as well as the political functionality of conspiracy theories. Such theories

warn of a danger whose nature is unknown, for which we are unprepared biologically or psychologically. They always describe a villain. They seek to accentuate a feeling of helplessness. … Always [or rather] usually somebody is about to be their main political beneficiary.

2015

Our approach aims to identify the contextual scenarios that lead to the emergence and adoption of conspiracy theories at specific historical circumstances and locations. In doing so, we search to assess the impact of conspiracy theories by ascertaining those collective scenarios rather than postulate a psychosocial dysfunction. Similarly, Michael Butter and Peter Knight (2016) have criticized the way that much research in psychology and, to a lesser extent, political science have tended to consider conspiracy theorizing as dysfunctional. Probably following on otherwise path-breaking analyses such as Hofstadter’s on the paranoid style present in US history or Poliakov’s analysis of demonization in European history, indeed much research searched for universal traits and stressed delusional aspects in conspiracy theories, attributing them to cognitive biases or aberrational epistemological modes of thinking. Such approaches failed to escape the assumption of a social dysfunction similar to an individual psychosis. In their critical review of previous studies, Butter and Knight also indicate that the conspiracists’ propensity to look “for big causes to explain big effects” is not peculiar to them. Rather, in their view,

what makes a conspiracy theory distinguishable from other interpretations of current events is not solely an effect of the individual psychology of the believer or the structure of the belief, but a product of the particular content and social function of the story that is told in opposition to received wisdom.

2016, 7

In other words, the appeal of conspiracy theories as heuristic interpretations derives from their ability to make contextual sense of social, political, economic and cultural processes, while their endorsers question established truths. For multiple reasons, the so-called ‘truthers’ may distrust accepted explanations seeing them as misrepresenting reality, and as products of indoctrination or brainwashing.

Truthers may be inclined to distrust such truisms for multiple reasons. Political institutions may have deceived them, authority figures and scientists may have ignored their qualms, perhaps they fear minorities or another social category and network, or maybe they face complex developments and changes beyond their control, which nonetheless affect their lives. When people distrust official explanations, which they see as deceiving, they may trust that there is a greater truth ‘out there’, and that by following conspiratorial assumptions, they will be able to uncover the truth against those willing to silence it, assuming a protagonist role in history. It is in this collective interface between the personal, interpersonal and the broader social and institutional context where conspiracy theories thrive. Conspiracy theories find fertile ground for their development under certain conditions. Above all, when a deep sense of crisis exists, fueled by socioeconomic problems, political instability, and a sense of cultural fracture and institutional weakness. In the face of collective anxiety, those who share a conspiratorial outlook contrast the certainty that, once the forces of evil are unmasked and their evil designs revealed, it will be possible to challenge and defeat the internal and/or external enemies that, according to their interpretation, are behind the crisis. When there is distrust of institutions, the authorities, the media and even science, this adds functionality to those who seek to explain in conspiratorial terms the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the institutional frameworks to protect society.

Not by chance, texts that expressed and propagated the view that, for different reasons and motivating interests, appearances deceive and hide deeper realities, including the existence of secret societies, were widely disseminated in the United States. Likewise, in Latin America, the reception of Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier’s works was exponential in the 1960s and 1970s. Their books and essays, translated from French, had tens of thousands of copies printed. People read them with great interest during the Cold War, coinciding with the fascination of the literary boom and the popular curiosity geared at recognizing the existence of alternati...