A NEW THEOLOGIZATION OF CHILEAN POLITICS
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(...) In these terms, the “Mother of God” presents herself as a weapon against the powers of darkness, against the enemies of the soul, as the leader Kentenich said in reference to the Virgin of Fatima in 1944. Plínio Corrêa de Oliveira and, later, Jaime Guzmán Errázuriz considered the Virgin of Fatima the main symbol of the anti-communist struggle. (...) To understand the crux of this brief genealogy, we must remember that in 1961 two Brazilians arrived in Santiago to give two lectures. One of these was held at the Sacred Hearts School in Alameda and the other at the headquarters of the Conservative Party Youth. But who were these gentlemen? Both Fernando Furquim de Almeida and Paulo Corrêa de Brito Filho were members of the Brazilian Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) , the anti-communist organization founded and presided over by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, one of the “principal soldiers of the counterrevolution” of the 20th century in the West, and they aimed to spread their mission among young Chilean Catholics.
Now, what is sometimes forgotten is that one of their listeners at the Sacred Hearts Institute was the student Jaime Guzmán Errázuriz, who later became the mastermind of the renewal of the Chilean right wing and dictatorial regime, who at that time in the School Magazine emphasized the counterrevolutionary momentum as an urgent necessity for Catholic youth. After these meetings, Chilean conservatives continued to communicate with the Brazilians, until the following year when the magazine Fiducia appeared in Chile, similar to the Catholic magazine directed by that Paulistano.
But why is this relevant to Kast's trajectory? For now, suffice it to say that at that time, the Chilean right was in a serious ideological and electoral crisis, caused by the political rise of the lower classes and the growth of the Christian Democratic Party. Finally, the victory of Frei Montalva, first, and more clearly of Salvador Allende in the subsequent presidential elections, highlighted the catastrophic ideological situation of the right. For this reason, among others, the renewal of the Chilean right began, with Guzmán as a key figure, culminating in the 1973 coup d'état.
At that time, just after leaving the magazine Fiducia, Guzmán began to form gremialismo, a movement that became a party during the dictatorship. The first militants came from both the Sacred Hearts School in Alameda and the PUC in Santiago. Guzmán studied, and later taught, law at that university. It was no coincidence that it was there that one of the main reactionary forces in the Popular Unity government would later emerge. And then, through his training with the Chicago Boys, he would see the creation of the UDI from the very faculty where Kast had studied.
Guzmán was the leading political theologian of the right at the time, and it was he who succeeded, to a large extent, in bringing some of Plinio's concepts to fruition in Chilean politics after the coup. Even when the lawyer stopped collaborating explicitly with the magazine to create gremialismo, letters and archives show that he continued to be close to the group, and there are several common ideological axes between the two proposals. Not surprisingly, both his Marianism and his idolatry of Luís María Gringnion de Montfort remained steadfast until his death, and this is where the “Plinian counterrevolution” begins.
However, the resonance of this doctrine of Catholic traditionalism through its militants clearly did not end with Guzmán's death in 1991. On the contrary, even today there are Plinian militants who continue the “cultural counter-revolution,” influencing Chilean public opinion with discourses against divorce in the 1990s, against abortion in the 2000s, and against any policy related to what they now call “gender ideology.” For the most part, Plinianists and Guzmán sought to restore a “natural order” that had been destroyed by various revolutions throughout history and which, according to Plinian doctrine, was in its final phase: communism, due to the “cultural revolution” developed by the left.
For this reason, a veritable crusade against communism was launched, which chose to characterize Marxism as the true catastrophe of civilization, described as a spiritual evil, of an alleged intrinsic perversity. In other words, a process that we have defined as a theologization of politics, provoked by the dissemination of Plinian notions through the magazine Fiducia, a project that allowed for ideological resonance within Chilean conservative circles and influenced the production of catastrophic and confrontational rhetoric on the right at the time. In this way, they succeeded in spreading the demonization of the political enemy, which is now being actualized by the future Chilean president of the extreme right: José Antonio Kast. (...) The narrative of the “cultural battle” promoted by the “new right,” including Kast himself, has theological roots and uses that rhetoric, namely the fight against feminist movements and woke culture, using arguments that are based on Plinian traditionalism. (...) For this reason, Kast's election represents the victory of a new process of theologization of Chilean politics and the so-called “cultural battle,” which is nothing more than a “cultural counterrevolution,” represented by the figure of the future far-right president.
(Note: for more on this topic, see 2022 - Por una teologización de la política: la …