Illiberal Memory in the Peruvian Far-Right Discourse

This article analyses how the denialist memory of the far-right (known as “illiberal memory”) operates in the contemporary mnemonic dispute. Specifically, I study the case of Peru, a representative country in the political struggles over the meaning of the past that the populist radical right has been waging in Latin America. I resorted to the study of a set of pronouncements (published by civilians and military officers sympathetic to the Peruvian ultra-right) in which they demanded the censorship of a documentary film on the peasant struggles of the last century. These texts were analyzed using the linguistic-discursive tools provided by critical discourse analysis (specifically, the tools of transitivity, lexical analysis and modality). The results show the strategies and tactics through which illiberal memory seeks to legitimize itself. The negationist practice developed by this memory is characterized by being authoritarian (demanding and imposing its interpretation of the past), resorting to victimization (relativizing its own guilt and appropriating the struggles of others), presenting itself cynically (appealing to political incorrectness as a populist measure) and stigmatizing its opponents (disqualifying and subordinating them through “terruqueo”). These characteristics, typical of the Peruvian context, are also common to other Latin American countries, where the denialism of the far-right actively participates in discursive disputes over the social past and the historical-cultural memory of nations.