The Andes encounters the Iberian dictatorships: Perceptions of Salazarism and Francoism in Ecuador, Peru, and Colombia (1930-1950)

During the interwar period and the Second World War, conservative, Catholic intellectual-politicians aligned with small, but influential, radical-right movements in a number of Andean countries and promoted corporatist institutional designs while seeking to redefine the concept of nation. While many admired the fascist regimes in Italy and Germany, the Iberian dictatorships of Franco and Salazar offered versions of authoritarianism that were more compatible with Catholicism and traditionalism. The regimes of Salazar and Franco were viewed as models of corporatism; however, Franco’s regime proved more influential in Latin America, as its discourse of Hispanism notions of a Hispanic raza (race) offered a vision of a transnational community and the basis for racialized national identities.