‘Los Duros’: The Neo-Fascist Opposition to Chile’s 1980 Constitution, and its Francoist Connections

Abstract

The article explores the activity of Chile’s unique neo-fascist movement from the early 1970s until 1990. Whereas Jaime Guzmán and his ideological group (the gremialistas) believed that the military dictatorship should conclude with the creation of a protected parliamentary democracy, the so-called hardliners thought that the dictatorship’s mission was to institute a fascist-corporatist regime in Chile. First, the article shows that while Guzmán became the regime’s chief ideologue, the hardliners operated as outsiders and harshly opposed both the regime’s neoliberal model and the 1980 Constitution. Second, it examines the hardliners’ campaigns against the constitutional process, and delves into their links with Spanish neofascist elements. It argues that, ironically, these campaigns helped Guzmán propagate the 1980 Constitution as a moderate position between two statist ideological extremes. On the other hand, their intransigence hindered the efforts to unify Chile’s right-wing sectors into a single electoral front ahead of the 1988 constitutional referendum and 1989 elections, thus going against their intentions to control the constitutional process after 1988.