Fernanda Martínez Varela Conducts Research on Chilean Supremacist Groups
With the support of a GAI student grant, Fernanda Martínez Varela traveled to Chile to gather information on Chilean supremacist groups from libraries and archival collections, including journals.
This was part of her research for the third chapter of her thesis, which broadly examines rhetorical devices and aesthetics employed by various supremacist movements. Analyzing supremacist movements in ethnically diverse countries is intriguing because it reveals common structural characteristics shared with supremacism from other regions, transcending local contingencies.
Regarding some noteworthy findings, she found it fascinating to observe the antiquity of the supremacist movement in Chile, traceable back to 1929. This movement had intense political activity, establishing radio programs, publishing in newspapers, and even forming a political party. However, this activity has not been continuous over time.
Additionally, she frequented the National Library of Chile and the Library of Congress, where she accessed books and materials published and circulated by the Chilean Nazi party. She also examined congressional discussions from the 1930s and 1940s, revealing concerns among congress representatives about the Nazi movement in the Southern Cone region and specifically in Chile, where criminal incidents involving these groups occurred.
In this context, the contemporary Chilean supremacist movement inherits from earlier movements originally inspired by the European situation. Another interesting point to highlight is that, like other supremacist movements, the rhetoric of these groups strongly emphasizes the concept of spiritual decline, Norse mythology, and opposition to liberal principles.
Thanks to the GAI grant, she could trace an evolutionary line from current supremacist movements in Chile to the older ones. The grant also facilitated access to unknown literature by discovering discontinued books produced by the movement for its followers. This allowed her to build a bibliographic corpus on Chilean supremacism, which will be valuable for comparing its rhetoric with that of American and European cases.