Delinking rhetorics of neoliberalism: An analysis of South American leftist presidents’ speeches

ABSTRACT

We analyze the so-called Socialism of the twenty-first century in which nine South American governments turned to the left over the last 15 years. This South American socialist turn is seen as a delinking from the logics of dependency and pure neoliberalism. To explore the rhetorics that underlie this delinking process, we conducted both a macroanalysis and an intradiscursive rhetorical analysis of the inauguration and most significant speeches of all of the leftist South American presidents elected after 1999. We claim that a common critique of neoliberalism underlies the South American presidents’ speeches, which manifests through specific rhetorics concerning participatory democracy, social inclusion, and environmental protection. When they became transnational, these delinking rhetorics crafted a decolonial critique that calls for more indigenous models of development.

KEYWORDS:

• Delinking rhetoric
• transnational rhetoric
• South America
• decoloniality
• Socialism of the twenty-first century

Notes on contributors

Adriana Angel PhD in Communication Studies at Ohio University (USA), professor at the School of Communication at Universidad de Manizales (Colombia).

Luis Miguel López-Londoño Doctoral student at the School of Communication Studies at Ohio University (USA). Assistant professor at the School of Communication at Universidad de Manizales (Colombia).

ORCID

Adriana Angel http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0667-0553

Luis Miguel López-Londoño http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7542-4121

Notes

1. The Washington Consensus is understood here as the set of neoliberal and macroeconomic prescriptions that Washington, DC-based organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund imposed on Latin American countries in the late 1980s in order to “help” them overcome underdevelopment and corruption.

2. Guyana and Surinam are also located in South America, but they are often considered part of the Caribbean region because of their strong cultural, social, and political ties with other Caribbean countries. French Guyana, also located in South American territory, is a region of France. Because of this legacy and classification we did not study any of these three countries as a part of the post-neoliberal trend. Therefore, when we talk about South America we refer to the 10 countries illustrated in Figure 1 as citizens, scholars, and politicians often do.

3. Colombia was the only country that had not turned to the left or embraced a socialist government. This absence of leftist presidents can be explained by considering that Colombia has suffered the longest armed conflict of the entire continent with different guerrilla groups that represent those leftist and socialist ideologies. Because citizens relate left and socialism with guerrillas, they might not elect politicians with these ideologies.

4. Mostly speeches given at the United Nations and other international organizations.

5. We understand populism as Weyland (2004) does, that is, as a “political strategy through which personalist leaders seek or exercise power based on direct or non-mediated institutionalized support over a large number of followers who are mainly disorganized” (p. 36).

6. We found these speeches on the Web either as YouTube videos or as transcription documents. The analysis of all speeches (32 in total) was done in their original language, that is, Portuguese for the Brazilian presidents and Spanish for the rest of the South American presidents. The authors of this manuscript translated all of the excerpts presented in the article. Both authors are native Spanish speakers, understand Portuguese, and have certified knowledge of English. We completed two rounds of revisions in order to guarantee the fidelity of the translations (the second author reviewed the individual translations made by the first author). All of the excerpts cited here are included in their original language and English as supplementary material linked to the online version of the article. Considering that the transcriptions are more than 200 pages long, the reader can contact the authors of the manuscript if they want to access the material.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Universidad de Manizales [Grant Number A0601X0415].