Not Europe, not the United States.
The great gathering of ultra-conservative politicians and activists has chosen Latin America for their meeting, a region that in recent months the leading left-wing governments have been winning, with the auction of Brazil, which Jair Bolsonaro recently lost.
The Conservative Action Political Conference (CPAC) brings together for two days in Mexico well-known names such as the American Steve Bannon, the Chilean José Antonio Kast, the Argentinean Javier Milei, the Spanish Santiago Abascal, or Bolsonaro's son, Eduardo, as well as numerous Catholic, anti-abortion, anti-feminism or LGBT rights and anti-communist activists.
The Polish leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Lech Wallesa, has also intervened, who has made a defense of anti-communism, but has mentioned climate change as a real problem,
Contrary to what the presenter, the Mexican Eduardo Verástegui, had said before, who considered it ¨ideological¨ and that ¨limits private property and employment¨.
Wallesa was definitely a rare bird in this meeting, with whose participants he barely coincided in anti-communism and religious fervor.
The words of Steve Bannon, who offered them by videoconference, were eagerly awaited.
It has focused on one of the obsessions of American Republicans, who feel that they have been robbed of the elections in which they lost, although they do not provide proof of this.
Bannon, the great ideological leader of ultra-conservatism, has warned of the risks of electronic voting, something that "Mexico and Brazil seek to steal the elections, to steal sovereignty", he has accused.
And he has said that "they will not give up", that they will continue to investigate and hold Biden's "illegitimate regime" to account.
And the same in Brazil: ¨Look at the streets of Brazil, the great patriots are in danger while the global media focuses on Lula¨, whom he called a ¨transnational criminal¨.
The host, Eduardo Verástegui, president of CPAC Mexico, has sent a similar message.
"We will not stand idly by."
He has strongly accused the classical right of being "wolves in sheep's clothing," a "cowardly right."
In his opinion, the true right is "orphaned."
He has defended Christian values, family and life from conception to death, with which he has received good applause.
“We want to build a conservative movement throughout the hemisphere, with well-prepared leaders.
With God's help we began our work."
He has announced surprises in the hours that follow.
Latin America still has some recent military dictatorships, which, although they are taken up nostalgically in some political discourses, such as those heard in Brazil, still do not reach certain more traditional right-wing groups, such as those recently experienced in Argentina or Chile, with Macri or Pineira.
So the ultra-conservative currents are not hegemonic at the domestic level.
In Mexico, for example, the conservative National Action Party (PAN) has completely disassociated itself from that meeting.
The barrage of criticism and the breakdown that this party experienced when a good handful of its senators received the leader of Vox, the Spanish Santiago Abascal, who likes to show off in photos, wearing the iron helmet of Hernán Cortés, still weighs heavily.
Latin America does not seem like a fertile ground for these currents to take root, even though "in crisis situations the ultra-right always reappears, or as they say, the right coagulates and the left splits up," says Ricardo Yocelevzky Retamal, a professor at the Autonomous University de México on the Xochimilco campus.
“The Latin American region suffers from so much inequality that it is unlikely that the middle classes will be a counterweight, even though, in crisis, they always move closer to the right to continue keeping their distance from the popular classes.
The migratory phenomenon will continue to be unstoppable, people go where they think they will find something to eat”, says the expert on Political Parties and Party Systems.
Yocelevzky Retamal points out another factor that, in his opinion, closes the door to far-right ideologies:
.@EVerastegui takes the stage at #CPAC Mexico pic.twitter.com/Z2dteqxUIj
— CPAC (@CPAC) November 18, 2022
Indeed, the helmet of Hernán Cortés clashes with the new left currents that have conquered Latin America, which place a strong emphasis on the rights of indigenous peoples, from Mexico to Argentina, even in the United States, throughout the continent.
The agenda of governments such as that of Gustavo Petro in Colombia or the Chilean Gabriel Boric stops insistently, also on feminism, for example, far from the message of the CPAC, which considers these movements a danger to traditional Catholic values.
Just a few days ago, last week, the Puebla Group met in Colombia, a country called to be the epicenter of the agenda of the new Latin American left, where former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero insisted on placing feminism at the center of the politics.
There was also talk of an economic unit,
The conference that is held in Mexico begins its sessions with the celebration of masses, not in vain, it is markedly Catholic, and that is fertile ground in the region, although other currents also have great strength, such as evangelism that triumphs in Brazil or in Mexico itself.
The intersection between Catholicism and anti-communism is mentioned by Mexico-based Cuban historian Rafael Rojas.
"There is a tradition of the Latin American right indebted to Catholicism, because it moved towards liberalism in the last decade of the last century and the first decade of the current one, as the last authoritarian and dictatorial regimes fell, Catholicism became liberal," He says.
And the liberal is not neoliberal.
In fact, not all Catholicism landed on the right,
For these reasons, those consulted do not find that Latin America can reproduce an advance of ultra-conservative policies like the one experienced in Europe, where they achieve good results in Spain, excellent results in France or conquer governments like Italy.
Without forgetting its penetration in Nordic countries.
The case of Chile, where Boric rose up at the polls against Kast, who sold homeland, family, order and freedom as political claims.
Phrases like “if Pinochet were alive, he would vote for me” were slogans in his campaign.
Nor did the promise of "kicking the ass out" of the "political caste" of the ultra-Argentine Javier Milei achieve great things, rather dividing his followers, since he barely gathered a little more than a thousand acolytes at his rally last year. June in Buenos Aires.
Why Mexico, one wonders, for a date like this.
The UNAM internationalist, Juan Manuel Portilla Gómez, recalls that "Mexico has always had an important ultra-conservative stronghold, the synarchism, the organization of El Yunque", of the Catholic extreme right, or now Viva México, whose leader, the former actor Eduardo Verástegui , is the host of the appointment.
“The political polarization that is taking place these days, with marches and counter-marches in the streets, encourages extremism and perhaps makes a meeting of this type appealing,” says Portilla Gómez.
For the ultra-conservatives it would be, he explains, "a spearhead in Latin America from Mexico, where certain rights are being conquered, such as abortion, gay marriages, etc., and that raises the anger of the right."
But, he concludes, "I don't see much strength in these ideologies,
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