Unraveling the dictatorships of the Southern Cone: Reflections around their approaches

Abstract

The article seeks to reflect on the main approaches to the dictatorships of the Southern Cone, creators of a dense analytical framework that has not only deepened the empirical perspectives on such processes, but has put in tension a theoretical methodological apparatus that dialogues with and questions history as a whole. This proposal intends to offer an extensive description of such intellectual enterprise, emphasizing both the classical proposals and those that represent particular or innovative lines in such analyzes. Specifically, we will refer to the perspectives that sought to understand that object ontologically, its causal nature and those that were articulated with specific political objectives, among the most important ones. In search of a synthesis, we explore the comparative, transnational possibilities, that value the structures together with the conjunctures, the dialectic between internal and external factors, through disciplinary and interdisciplinary views, which can help us to overcome the local academic limits in order to understand a phenomenon that has a more or less common regional matrix, but that had specificities that cannot be obliterated.

Keywords: Southern Cone dictatorships, Theory, Epistemology, Historiography.