Authoritarianism and Developmentalism Framing 'Progressive' Governments in Mexico and Argentina

Abstract

In the past years, a new wave of progressive governments emerged in the Latin America region. Andrés Manuel López Obrador (Mexico, 2018), Alberto Fernández (Argentina, 2019), Pedro Castillo (Perú, 2021), and Gabriel Boric (Chile, 2022) present themselves as 'democratic' candidates in opposition to authoritarian and right-wing governments. In the eyes of many, this turn still represents hope, a way to confront oppressions and inequalities, strengthen democracy, promote development, and achieve social justice. Their contradictions or 'betrayals' are seen as errors, individual mishaps, or even as external intrusions; they are never understood as the result of a violent and oppressive process of 'othering' within the logic of accumulation rooted in the capitalist state. Mexico and Argentina exemplify this particular form of how capitalism operates in Latin America today. These countries illustrate how the production and reproduction of capital combine violence and extractivism, authoritarianism, and developmentalism via the state's use of 'progressive' rhetoric. Inspired by state derivation theorists, this chapter aims to answer the following questions: do progressive strategies differ from those of the far-right? Does this kind of government impact the form of the state differently? Or is it that both progressive and right-wing, are these two facets equally necessary to reproduce capitalist social relations?