In 2015, the wealthy, right-wing businessman Mauricio Macri won the Argentine presidency and set about dismantling the ambitious social programs created by his predecessors Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. To the historian Ernesto Semán, the language weaponized by Macri and his followers seemed familiar: the ascendant Right denounced “populism” and aimed its vitriol at “choriplaneros,” lazy, poor people living on government handouts. Semán's new book, an extended essay rather than a scholarly monograph, does more than trace the origins of this language. Written in urgent, sometimes thrilling prose, Breve historia del antipopulismo builds on recent historiography to fundamentally recast Argentine history.
The classic versions of the national narrative were written by scholars who considered Juan Perón's first two presidential terms (1946–55) a fateful turning point, the moment when Argentina began a descent into underdevelopment and ungovernability. Many historians have refuted this story, but they tend to accept its...
