Denouncing the Right, Defending the Left: A Content Analysis of the Declarations and Communiqués of CLACSO’s Working Groups (2018-2026)

Abstract

For more than half a century, the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) has represented the largest network of social research institutions in Latin America. However, although it emerged seeking to protect academic freedom and the rights of intellectuals persecuted during the Southern Cone dictatorships between 1960 and 1980, today the institution gives differentiated treatment to Latin American governments depending on their ideological orientation and political system. This article argues that CLACSO’s institutional discourse presents a systematic ideological bias in the evaluation and attribution of responsibility to governments in the region, harshly denouncing the policies of democratic right-wing governments while discreetly favoring left-wing authoritarianisms. Based on a content analysis of the declarations and communiqués of its Working Groups published between 2018 and 2026, a corpus of 443 pieces from which 130 mentions of eight countries in the region were extracted, the research identified patterns of thematic selection, frequency, tone, and discourse among the different political regimes and determined that between 87% and 90% of the mentions directly hold right-wing governments responsible, while only between 0% and 5% denounce left-wing governments and authoritarianisms.