Hispanic Technocracy explores the emergence, zenith, and demise of a distinctive post-fascist school of thought that materialized as state ideology during the Cold War in three military regimes: Francisco Franco's Spain (1939–1975), Juan Carlos Onganía's Argentina (1966–1973), and Augusto Pinochet's Chile (1973–1988). In this intellectual and cultural history, Daniel Gunnar Kressel examines how Francoist Spain replaced its fascist ideology with an early neoliberal economic model. With the Catholic society Opus Dei at its helm amid its 'economic miracle' of the 1960s, it fostered a modernity that was 'European in the means' and 'Hispanic in the ends.' Kressel illuminates how a transatlantic network of ideologues championed this model in Latin America as an authoritarian state model that was better suited to their modernization process. In turn, he illustrates how Argentine and Chilean ideologues adapted the Francoist ideological toolkit to their political circumstances, thereby transcending the original model.

‘Through astute research and groundbreaking analysis, this book reveals the post-fascist networks that shaped a conservative brand of modernization across the Atlantic. Kressel shows how technocratic authoritarianism emerged and persists in contemporary democracies in Argentina, Chile and Spain. It offers a new historical perspective on the roots of neoliberalism.’

Pablo Piccato - Columbia University

‘In his fascinating exercise in transnational history, Daniel Kressel illustrates how technocratic intellectuals and fascist-era authoritarian models were transformed and adapted in the Ibero-Latin American world in the second half of the 20th century, studying their circulation between Francoist Spain, the Argentine dictatorship of Ongania, and the Chilean dictatorship of General Pinochet.’

António Costa Pinto - author of Latin American Dictatorships in the Era of Fascism: The Corporatist Wave

‘A nuanced and bracing excavation of fascism’s afterlives in the Spanish-speaking world. Chronicling how right-wing thinkers worked to promote an alternative authoritarian modernity envisioned as a spiritual crusade against Enlightenment values, Daniel Kressel offers important context for the contemporary global wave of anti-democratic politics.’

Kirsten Weld - Harvard University