Between past and present. A reflection on the authoritarian legacy

Abstract

Authoritarian regimes in the Iberian and Latin American world have been the subject of different studies in the social sciences and humanities. Throughout the years, we have questioned ourselves about the nature of dictatorships, the mechanisms of repression and the fate of their victims. There have been many investigations that have tried to respond to a specific need: do not forget one of the darkest pages of the history of the Latin American subcontinent and the Iberian Peninsula. In recent years, phenomena such as the denial of dictatorships or the number of victims that occurred during dictatorial trials, as well as the appearance of the idea of a "dictablanda" or nostalgic movements for Videla, Pinochet or Franco have led to a new politically oriented reading of these historical phenomena. The past, in essence, has been charged with new meaning, capable of articulating agendas, narratives and symbologies of new illiberal and authoritarian movements. This dossier starts from this point, from the recognition that the relationship between the past and the present constantly changes the perception of history and the deep meaning attributed to it by collectivities.

Keywords

• authoritarianism
• memory
• representation
• military