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Humour plays a key role in the political communication of rightwing populist leaders in Latin America. Politicians including Javier Milei in Argentina, Nayib Bukele in El Salvador and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil have all used humour to engage with and solidify their support base, normalise extreme ideologies and deflect criticism.
Humour also circulates constantly among their followers. In October 2022, a few months before Brazilians went to the polls in their last general election, I carried out fieldwork at a Bolsonaro rally in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro with a group of colleagues.
We overheard a Bolsonaro supporter joking about a stray dog. “Watch out for that dog!” he shouted. “If Lula wins, we’ll have to call him picanha [a type of beef].”
The crowd laughed, with another supporter adding: “If Lula wins, he’ll be the first to eat it.” Lula went on to be elected as Brazil’s president by a razor-thin margin.
Argentina held elections the following year to appoint successors to President Alberto Fernández and his vice-president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner – who had dominated Argentinian politics for two decades alongside her husband, Néstor Kirchner. Together, they had forged Kirchnerism, the country’s main leftwing populist movement.
At a campaign event, we observed a Milei supporter also making a joke about dogs (and cats). “Milei is good; he’s a man who likes dogs. His dogs are part of his thinking,” they said. Another remarked: “But the Kirchneristas eat cats. Soon we’ll be eating dogs if that mafia continues to rule.”
Such remarks may seem trivial. But they reflect a broader narrative used by rightwing populist politicians and their supporters in Latin America. Jokes about leftist leaders often portray them as inhuman, making it easier to attack their character and policies.
This use of humour by rightwing populist politicians also serves as a shield. If their statements are criticised, they can claim “it’s just a joke”. This enables them to dismiss their detractors as humourless, out-of-touch elites who do not understand ordinary people.
Milei has repeatedly dismissed objections to his branding of critics as zurditos (“little left-handed ones”), a pejorative term for leftists in Argentina. He has, at times, defended or downplayed such language as “just humour”, irony or part of his unfiltered communication style, rather than serious political discourse.
Bukele, too, has used humour on social media to downplay accusations of authoritarianism. He changed his title on Twitter (now X) to “dictator” in 2021, an ironic comment on protests against him over perceived democratic backsliding that year. He later changed it to “the coolest dictator in the world”.
Roots of humour
Latin American rightwing populist movements are not alone in their use of humour. Similar political movements elsewhere also use it as a strategic tool for recruitment, to deflect criticism and to normalise extreme ideologies.
But to understand why humour so effectively supports political polarisation in Latin America, it’s important to recognise its history in the region.
Across centuries shaped by inequality, slavery and authoritarian rule, repression has been normalised through subtle means. This has included humour.
The 20th-century dictatorships of Jorge Rafael Videla in Argentina (1976-1981) and Augusto Pinochet in Chile (1973-1990) justified violence and repression by using tactics similar to those employed by contemporary rightwing movements. Perhaps most notably, this took the form of portraying opponents as inhuman.
In both countries, official state media in the dictatorship era used caricatures to depict dissidents as grotesque figures or dangerous animals. Terms like subversivos (subversives) were deliberately woven into jokes by military officials and regime-aligned entertainers to trivialise repression and present persecution as something that could be laughed at.
Cartoons and TV sketches often portrayed trade unionists and student activists as bumbling subversivos whose supposed incompetence made them ridiculous, rather than politically legitimate. In Chile, jokes circulating in mass media likened alleged subversivos to infiltrators or vermin who needed to be “cleaned up”.
Nowadays, memes and online jokes targeting political adversaries and marginalised groups replicate these patterns. Authoritarian leaders in Latin America are often depicted on social media platforms as hyper-masculine heroes, while their enemies are mocked as creatures like rats or cockroaches.
This dynamic was seen during Brazil’s 2022 election. Fernando Haddad, a key ally of Lula and now the country’s minister of finance, was frequently depicted as a cockroach in memes circulating around pro-Bolsonaro groups on Telegram. Such messaging portrayed him as a parasitic figure threatening the nation’s economic stability.
Such strategic use of humour by rightwing populists and their supporters poses a significant challenge for democracy in Latin America. It can undermine public trust in institutions, encourages reactionary movements and weakens social cohesion by fostering division.
A deeper understanding of humour’s role in radicalisation not only helps reduce its corrosive effects. It also creates opportunities for building more inclusive, resilient and democratic forms of political discourse.
This article first appeared on The Conversation.
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