Configuration of Subjectivities and the Application of Neoliberal Economic Policies in Medellin, Colombia

Abstract

(1) Background: This article aims to understand the forms and elements through which the inhabitants of the city of Medellin have configured their subjectivity in the context of the application of neoliberal policies in the last two decades. In this way, we can approach the frameworks of understanding that constitute a fundamental part of the individuation processes in which the incorporation of their subjectivities is evidenced in neoliberal contexts that, in the historical process, have been converging with authoritarian, antidemocratic and neoconservative elements. (2) Method: A qualitative approach with a hermeneutic-interpretative paradigm was used. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 41 inhabitants of Medellín who were politically identified with right-wing or center-right positions. Data analysis included thematic coding to identify patterns of thought and points of view. (3) Results: Participants associate success with individual effort and see state intervention as an obstacle to development. They reject redistributive policies, arguing that they generate dependency. In addition, they justify authoritarian models of government in the name of security and progress, from a moral superiority, which is related to a negative and stigmatizing perception of progressive sectors and a negative view of the social rule of law and public policies with social sense. (4) Conclusions: The naturalization of merit as a guiding principle, the perception of themselves as morally superior based on religious values that grant a subjective place of certainty and goodness; the criminalization of expressions of political leftism, mobilizations and redistributive reforms and support for policies that establish authoritarianism and perpetuate exclusion and structural inequalities, closes roads to a participatory democracy that enables social and economic transformations.

1. Introduction

Neoliberalism has profoundly marked economic, social and cultural policies in Latin America. According to Martuccelli (2021), the implementation of the neoliberal project in Latin American countries has brought about a rapprochement between the popular and middle classes, in contrast to the reality of the upper classes, which have improved their living conditions in relation to economic income, legal protections and security. Popular-intermediate class societies face a growing malaise, derived from an increasingly marked experience of leading a “hard life”. Faced with this situation, and as a result of the neoliberal policies implemented in the region, the inhabitants of Latin American countries have had to individually and competitively address and solve social problems, thus assuming responsibility for their living conditions—something that is closely tied to the growing positional instability many individuals are facing (Monsiváis 2017). All this has contributed to political disaffection and a generalized sense of frustration, originating from the gap between personal aspirations and the actual opportunities available (Martuccelli 2021; Martuccelli and Santiago 2017; Crespo and Serrano 2012).

In the case of Colombia, several studies have shown how neoliberalism has shaped the country’s economic, social and cultural structures, often exacerbating existing inequalities. According to Brando and Kalmanovitz (2010), since 1974 and until the end of the 20th century, this South American country presented a trend towards deindustrialization and the reduction in public investment by the state. Grinberg (2022) states that, similarly to other Latin American countries, neoliberal policies played a role in the crisis of industrialization due to import substitution in the 1980s and 1990s.

According to López (2010), while Colombia’s 1991 Political Constitution established the country as a social state based on the rule of law, democratic, participatory and pluralistic, the so-called “Economic Opening”, implemented under the government of César Gaviria (1990–1994), marked a structural shift towards a neoliberal economic model, which was contradictory, as they developed opposing rationales regarding the role of the state and the economy. The enactment of laws that restricted or dismantled key social welfare institutions, under the argument of protecting the economy from practices considered inefficient and attracting private investment, as occurred with the labor reform of 1990 and that of 2002 (Law 789), and the social security reform of 1993, promoted highly precarious hiring models, without developing palliative measures for the population or to contain tensions arising from these structural changes (Díaz 2009). In addition, privatization policies were implemented in essential public services, such as energy, telecommunications and health. At the same time, the country signed several free trade agreements to promote the opening of markets, eliminating trade barriers and allowing the entry of foreign capital. Although this policy stimulated certain sectors, such as finance and infrastructure, it also weakened local production, particularly affecting farmers and small entrepreneurs (Valencia-Mosquera 2021).

Medellín has not been immune to these situations. Although the city has experienced remarkable urban expansion and economic development, this growth has not benefited all its inhabitants equitably. Neoliberal policies have favored private investment and the modernization of central areas, while the peripheries have been left behind, exacerbating socio-spatial segregation and the exclusion of vulnerable communities (Álvarez-Galeano 2023). Sánchez (2013) argues that the combination of factors such as the dismantling of import substitution, the cheapening of international products and the increase in violence associated with drug trafficking plunged Medellín into a deep urban crisis, marked by notable institutional instability and widespread pessimism. Medellin’s working class neighborhoods took a turn marked by the control of organized crime, linked to drug trafficking, which became a source of ‘employment’ for young people without access to education or salaried work, offering them opportunities for social mobility (Hylton 2007).

Some initiatives that began to take shape in 2004, when the mayor’s office of the time gestated a plan to make Medellin a city of knowledge (Higuita-Palacio 2015), oriented the industrial productive structure towards the service sector. This process was evidenced in the dynamics of employment, highlighting an increase in jobs in this sector. According to Vélez-Tamayo (2014), although this contributed to reduce unemployment rates, important challenges persist, such as low remuneration, precariousness and labor instability. As in other contexts worldwide, in Medellín and Colombia, these economic policies were combined with forms of government that restricted democratic rights and applied repressive practices that blocked citizen participation, in order to maintain this social order, sustained with technocratic arguments. This ensured that privatizations, regressive tax reforms and deregulation benefited economic elites, increasing inequalities and configuring a model of authoritarian neoliberalism (Bojórquez et al. 2022; Bruff 2014; Clua-Losada 2019).

In addition to the above, the armed conflict of several decades became a pretext for the government of Álvaro Uribe Vélez (2002–2010) to deepen this authoritarian neoliberal model, focusing on security, militarization of everyday life, reification of the Public Force, diminution of the social rule of law and a marked social, cultural and moral conservatism (Cruz Rodríguez 2018). For Mejía and Múnera (2008), force was used and abused, seeking legitimacy from social and political actors to curtail freedoms and reduce the social rule of law, adopting the signifiers ‘work’, ‘order’ and ‘discipline’ as moral referents. Power was centralized in the presidency; at the same time, the political opposition was delegitimized and repressed, relying on the support of military sectors and the media, and almost all public companies, which were patrimony of the nation, were privatized (Cruz Rodríguez 2018; Londoño 2020; Torres 2009). This position has been deepened and radicalized by the Democratic Center, the party of the former president, until today (Restrepo 2023).

In the face of these neoliberal measures, some resistance was generated in the country, especially from unions and social movements. However, their impact has been reduced, because this authoritarian neoliberalism closes effective spaces for citizen action, operating an alienation of the exercise of citizenship in broad sectors of the population, which restricted their action and mobilization by being forced to reduce their activity to survival and satisfaction of basic needs (Bojórquez et al. 2022; Castells 2017; Zakaria 2023). For Bruff (2014), at the global level, citizens have been distanced from welfare policies and institutions that protected their social rights, so that popular demands were left without the possibility of vindication against the de facto powers of a techno-bureaucratic state. Society became increasingly individualistic, morality became detached from democratic values, and political action was emptied of content, because the political, social and legal order ended up being governed by institutions over which there is no power of incidence, since the ‘technical’ arguments of the market economy prevail (Clua-Losada and Ribera-Almandoz 2017).

According to Kaipl (2020), Osorio et al. (2022) and Zakaria (2023), technocratic neoliberalism converges with reactionary expressions of politics, configuring subjectivities with authoritarian traits, establishing a social order that instrumentalizes democracy, strengthens authoritarian logics and exacerbates inequalities. This concept of subjectivity in neoliberal contexts has generated a broad debate in the social sciences, analyzing how people internalize logics that prioritize self-efficiency, competitiveness and individual responsibility, limiting their political action and their awareness of citizenship. Thus, Rodríguez (2023) studies the mutation of class consciousness, suggesting that the dynamics of consumption have reconfigured the way in which workers perceive themselves as agents of change, evidencing how neoliberalism disguises class inequalities and disarticulates their social action and their consciousness of citizenship of rights.

According to Fernández-Rodríguez and Medina-Vicent (2023) individuals adopt practices that reflect market dynamics, even in contexts of global uncertainty, blurring their political awareness. In turn, Höfer (2024) argues that an impoverished vision of the self is generated, limited to survival, since neoliberal structures promote emotional and existential alienation, leaving individuals trapped in an incessant search for external validation, limiting their political action. For their part, Stecher and Roy (2022) explore the fragmentation of occupational identities in Chile, observing how flexible labor dynamics promote the emergence of individualized subjectivities, centered on generic competencies and strategic mobility, with profound disengagement from collective action.

For Sennett (2006), this model demands a subject with few ties to the past, with greater capacity to adapt to new contexts, a situation that implies constantly challenging oneself from personal achievement, detracting value from social institutions. The subjects, instead of resisting, adapt to this system by internalizing its ideology, perceiving it without contradictions or impositions, naturalizing it. In this sense, Ovejero (2014) highlights that neoliberal hegemony allows it to be assumed without resistance, since, once incorporated, this vision permeates all reality and defines the way in which the world is interpreted.

In this sense, it can be affirmed that, in Medellín, these conditions have also shaped subjectivities. Thus, the question of this research has emerged in relation to a central axis in the academic debates on the effects of neoliberalism in contemporary societies: What are the subjectivities that are configured in the city of Medellin in an authoritarian neoliberal social, political and economic framework? Our interest focuses on the process by which individuals internalize values and logics of this neoliberalism, and how they adopt behaviors and attitudes consistent with it.

Authoritarian Neoliberalism and Neoconservatism: Markers of Contemporary Subjectivity

For Bruff and Tansel (2019), the term “authoritarian neoliberalism” is a central category for critical social science studies, given the frequent approach around its coercive practices, in the name of ‘free markets’ and capital accumulation. According to Wendy Brown (2006, 2015, 2020), neoliberalism has been usufructuated by the political right, in a de-democratizing process that uses an instrumentalized morality. The author argues that the expansion of this model has weakened democracies, their fundamental principles and institutions, imposing the preeminence of an economic logic, centered on financial capital, limiting the role of the State as manager of social issues. Rights such as health, education and public services become merchandise (Castells 2017; Marey 2025).

For Chantal Mouffe (2002, 2007, 2014), the establishment of a neoliberal hegemony, which would globalize democracy and the model of individual freedom in the world, brought with it, in practice, the emergence of populist and illiberal movements. Liberal democracy is doomed to fail to fulfill its promise of social equality and plural political participation, because its neoliberal version is designed to protect and promote the market system, prioritizing the private over the public (Kaipl 2020), leading to three phenomena that the author calls post-political moment, populist moment and appropriation of the populist moment by the right (Mouffe 2002, 2007, 2014).

For the author, there is a primacy of the techno-bureaucratic (the objective and instrumental, based on empirical evidence) over citizen political action. This constitutes the post-political moment: debate is suppressed, idealizing consensus, since the arguments would be based on technical certainties that replace the old political deliberation. The latter is no longer sufficient to defend social rights, because its arguments are considered ideological, politicized and ‘anti-technical’ (Mouffe 2002, 2007, 2014). The role of the State to regulate the market, redistribute wealth and democratize goods and services is minimized; the social demands of the population are considered inefficient, as they would create inflation and reduce benefits to the business sector, limiting the exercise of citizenship: a crisis of the Welfare State that results in a crisis of democracy as a political system (Davies and Gane 2021; Diehl and Mendes 2020; Ramas 2019). The latter is limited to maintaining the established order, managing security and justice, strengthening the public force and other repressive instances, while various sectors of the population are left in a situation of defenselessness and extreme economic and social vulnerability, prone to find solutions to their problems in authoritarian policies (Kaipl 2020; Osorio et al. 2022; Zakaria 2023).

According to Bruff and Tansel (2019), this neoliberal capitalism is governed in a way that tends to reinforce and rely on practices that seek to marginalize, discipline and control oppositional sectors. To this end, the “market” or “economic necessity” is repeatedly invoked, as a ‘technical-scientific’ condition, justifying a wide range of restructurings, resorting to mechanisms that invoke constitutional and legal consensus rather than debate and participation. According to Diehl and Mendes (2020), the disappearance of the Soviet Union in 1990 was instrumentalized and resignified as a triumph of capitalism over the left, establishing a hegemonic thinking whose objective was, in the name of market autonomy, to dismantle the Welfare States, propitiating the rise of authoritarian models of government. All this took place within the framework of what Fukuyama (1989) called ‘the end of history’, taking for granted the triumph of capitalism (now neoliberal) over other models of society. A hegemony was established that required particular forms of subjectivity, which no longer denoted the search for social and political transformations, but the acceptance of this regime, which, in addition to being victorious, responded to ‘technical’ arguments presented as incontrovertible.

The minimization of the social rule of law deepened popular unrest, bringing with it the populist moment (Mouffe 2007, 2014). The economic crisis of 2008 played an important role in the rise of anti-democratic tendencies existing in neoliberalism since its beginnings (Bruff 2014; Bruff and Tansel 2019). Various researchers claim that it was linked to phenomena of right-wing, conservative, authoritarian, radical and sectarian populism, in “anti-rights” logic, attacking the achievements not only of the working class, but also of women, the LGTBIQ+ population and ethnic minorities (Brown 2015, 2020; Morán-Faúndes 2022, 2023; Kaipl 2020). This seems to reintroduce the idea of debate and conflict in politics, but in a discursive game that uses rhetoric of popular sovereignty, antagonizing, polemicizing and attacking alleged political elites (liberal, progressive and social democrats), whom they conceive as corrupt and incapable of solving basic problems, without offering real solutions to their discomfort. A sectarian division is generated, which diverts the discomfort towards an external ‘other’ that is forged as an enemy: the immigrant, the communist, the militant of the “gender doctrine”, the Afro, the Indian and a long etcetera, depending on the context (Benczés and Szabó 2022; Carrillo and Carrillo 2023; Carrión and Korman 2023; Hoetmer 2020; Martínez-Castillo 2023; Mudde 2010, 2016, 2021).

Thus, for Mouffe (2002, 2007, 2014), there is an appropriation of the populist moment by right-wing, conservative, anti-democratic, nationalist and moralizing sectors, on which new subjectivities are constituted in contexts that approach radical right and ultra-right proposals (Benczés and Szabó 2022; Carrillo and Carrillo 2023; Carrión and Korman 2023; Martínez-Castillo 2023; Mudde 2010, 2016, 2021; Vázquez-Salazar 2020; Veiga et al. 2019). Specifically, the failed attempts, from the liberal and social democratic perspectives, to face the 2008 crisis in the global north and 2013 in Latin America were capitalized on by these reactionary groupings that found fertile ground to spread and expand their values and practices, linked to populist, xenophobic, sexist and anti-rights discourses, authoritarian options to which is attributed the task of restoring a presumed lost order that rejects the different (Abrahamsen et al. 2024; Castells 2017; Finchelstein 2018; Veiga et al. 2019). Rigid and politicized subjectivities are assuming an attitudinal and political extremism that rejects, excludes and expels other points of view, especially progressive ones (Hur 2021). They promote illiberal logics close to conservative and anti-progressive movements (Abrahamsen et al. 2024; Griffin 2021; Mudde 2016, 2021) that put democracy itself at risk.

Thus, a fundamental element, which appears in contemporary research on subjectivity in neoliberal contexts, is neoconservatism. It is important to state that when neoliberal ideas took hold in the world, in the 1970s, there was an enormous distance between ‘neoliberals’ and traditional conservatives, who, for Brown (2006, 2015, 2020) and Applebaum (2021, 2024), identified with various forms of protectionist nationalism, were characterized by an anti-internationalist ideology and professed modesty, isolationism, frugality and defense of fiscal rigor. They believed in limits, moderation and the aristocratic virtues of refinement, rectitude, civility, education and discipline, all compatible with the rule of law, free competition and open markets.

For Abrahamsen et al. (2024) and Brown (2006, 2015, 2020), most traditional postwar conservatives had accepted liberal democracy as a form of government, but the radical neoconservatism of the ‘new right’ believes that contemporary society has fallen into such a ruinous path that only a truly radical solution will work, which exacerbates patriotism and nationalism. It therefore wraps itself in a cloak of ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, is anti-elitist only insofar as the elite are educated in liberal values, is anti-globalist, but not anti-internationalist. It asserts the need to monopolize power in the face of the decline and crumbling of morality in the West, of which liberal progressivism is accused. Equality is not a significant value; egalitarianism is understood as demagogy and contrary to meritocracy. It considers redistribution as a grievance. It believes in nativism and the values of each nation. Global liberalism, they claim, has flattened and ruined this diversity, and they therefore express their animosity towards liberal universalism. They distrust liberal democracy, promoting what Viktor Orbán has called “illiberal democracy”.

According to Abrahamsen et al. (2024), this rise of ‘radical conservatism’ not only responds to economic problems and increased inequality generated by the neoliberal economy, but also to a historical-political process that, since the 1970s, set itself the objective of transforming liberal hegemony into a conservative counter-hegemony. The French “Nouvelle Droite” and the American paleoconservatives set out to develop the so-called ‘cultural battle’ into an ideological project of at least fifty years, using the ideas of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, who argued that political power is never simply a matter of coercion, but also of consent. This counter-hegemonic struggle has taken place on various levels, in social networks and the digital universe, in universities and academic publications. In this way, they configure a dynamic of opposition to the system, but within the electoral framework, with the aim of consolidating their political and cultural hegemony (Balinhas 2020; Seco 2022; Sanahuja and López Burian 2020, 2023).

According to Slobodian (2019), from its beginnings, this version of neoliberalism, inspired by Murray Rothbard, was linked to the libertarianism of the so-called American ‘Alt-right’, which considered biology and race sufficient explanation for the hierarchy and difference in the capabilities of each group. Rothbard believed that social equality and cooperativism were typical of tribal and primitive societies, and therefore considered anyone who defended them to be barbaric and intellectually inferior. Rothbard also used “racialist” arguments about immigration and the decline of civilization, advocating white nationalism. The American Alt- right and Latin American politicians of the ultra-right consolidated this agenda during the 21st century, contemplating economic freedom as the most essential of human beings, moralizing and naturalizing the market, aiming at a policy of order, reluctant to radical changes, deeply permeated by Judeo-Christian principles (Rueda 2021; Cooper 2021; Álvarez-Benavides and Toscano 2021).

In Colombia, starting with the government of Álvaro Uribe (2002–2010), a securitarian state model and a related citizenry took shape, which massively supported neoliberal policies and the curtailment of civil, social, economic and cultural rights, in addition to a moralizing and conservative discourse, under the slogan: “the good ones are more”, all under the pretext of an offer of security (Cruz Rodríguez 2018; Londoño 2020; Villa-Gómez et al. 2024). Similarly, Clua-Losada (2019) and Slobodian (2019) note that, from Pinochet’s Chile, Thatcher’s Great Britain, to post-2008 crisis Europe, neoliberalism has appealed to anti-democratic authoritarianism. Minimal State in social matters, but strong in punitivism, security and police, creating internal enemies that justified repression and the disarticulation of social mobilization. And for Bruff (2014), this has been an aspect that has been linked from the beginning to neoliberal governance.

This logic, authoritarian, anti-progressive and ultra-capitalist, is refractory to any proposal that implies systemic changes and closes roads to the protection of economic, social, cultural and environmental rights (ESCR) by the State—a libertarian vision from the economic and neoconservative from the political point of view, which has created increasingly convulsive social climates (Gutiérrez-Peña et al. 2025; Velasco-Arias 2023).

In summary, for Saidel (2021), authoritarian neoliberalism, as a system of power that governs our lives, is ideologically conservative, especially because of its anti-progressivism, its rejection of egalitarianism and social democracy and the naturalization of social inequality; it combines anti-democratic authoritarianism, economic nationalism, social and moral conservatism and an expanded capitalist rationality. It would seem to be a contradiction, given that freedom is a pillar of the neoliberal doctrine, but in its materiality, it seems to have taken a different path from its free market utopias and to consolidate a hegemony, through an authoritarian and antidemocratic project.

Taking advantage of this situation and the crisis of liberal democracy that it has provoked and continues to aggravate, this neoliberalism/neoconservatism radicalizes inequality, favoring the emergence of a novel synthesis of nationalist protectionism, economic-financial liberalization and political moralization, which relies on a new state of legality. This consists of a reinforcement of security mechanisms based on the counterinsurgency war paradigm, applied to the citizenry itself, calling into question central aspects of the rule of law. Thus, subjectivities emerge that embody forms of activism linked to the agenda of confessional institutions, political parties of religious matrix, conservative Catholic movements, evangelical churches, study centers and think tanks that defend not only this economic order, but also a moral and political order that tries to impose as true, authentic and morally correct their points of view, linking millions of sympathizers, followers and militants in the United States and Latin America (Morán-Faúndes 2022, 2023).

2. Methodology

A qualitative method was developed from the hermeneutic-interpretative and critical paradigm (Estrada-Mesa 2010), through a narrative design that seeks to understand facts, situations, trajectories, processes and events in order to involve the experiences told by the participants of the study, making it possible to understand how they elaborate their points of view (Creswell and Plano 2011).

2.1. Participants

A non-probabilistic, typological and convenience sampling was applied, following the snowball dynamic, in which one participant leads to others. For Sandoval (2002), this type of sampling allows the production of significant information, since it takes into account the particular conditions of the participants, their beliefs, lived experiences and representations, generating deep, rich and high-quality qualitative data, with which the results can be reliable, congruent and coherent, without having to go through standardization devices. In turn, although the intention is not to generalize, sample units were included until saturating the sample and having a more robust framework of understanding (Hernández-Sampieri et al. 2014), selecting participants on the basis of recognizing themselves politically as right-wing or center-right, a political position that, as we saw in the introduction, is associated with neoliberalism.

In this sense, the following were the inclusion criteria: men and women, identified as right-wing (D) or center-right (CD), of legal age, inhabitants of the metropolitan area of Medellín, who were ordinary citizens, that is, who were not militants of political parties, nor members of non-governmental organizations or social movements, nor academics working on issues related to those addressed. The study was carried out in this territory, as it has been characterized by a majority of followers of right-wing political parties that have promoted neoliberal reforms, which have become more radical in the last two decades. Thus, a total of 18 men (10 right-wing and 8 center-right) and 23 women (14 right-wing and 9 center-right) participated in the study, for a sample of 41 people.

2.2. Data Collection Technique

A semi-structured interview was applied which, according to Vallés (2004), promotes conversation, to achieve an approach to what a participant thinks or feels—in this case, about the frameworks of understanding of the neoliberal model, which allows a qualified inquiry to subjects who are social and political actors, as citizens who have their own beliefs, deepening their frameworks of meaning. For its elaboration, we took into consideration what Josselson et al. (2003) pointed out, in that the interviewer should keep his or her research objectives and personal interests in mind, while allowing space for the conversation to flow and for the participants to express their beliefs and feelings freely and in depth.

2.3. Data Analysis

A thematic analysis was developed in two parallel processes. First, the interviews were transcribed and categorized intratextually, through an intrasubject coherence matrix, an exercise in which the accounts of each participant were segmented and reorganized according to analytical categories. Secondly, we continued with an intertextual analysis, elaborating a matrix for each analytical category, with the intention of comparing what was expressed by all the participants.

Subsequently, within each intertextual matrix, an inductive process was carried out, in which a first-level theoretical coding was developed, which has a descriptive character that reorganizes the accounts of the participants within the matrix (See

Table 1. Intertextual matrix—subjective configurations—right.

Category (Second-Level Theoretical Code)	First-Level Theoretical Code	Right Men (RM)	Right Women (RW)	Center-Right Men (CRM)	Center-Right Women (CRW)
1. Merit, conceptions of success and personal well-being as a product of individual effort	Personal effort and sacrifice
	(Market) freedom and prosperity
	Justice to the best: the entrepreneur model of subjectivity.	Stories and narratives of the participants.
	Justice and responsibility: ‘the poor are poor because they want to be’.
2. Order and progress: neoliberalism and the securitarian state	Privatization and the need for security
	Authoritarianism: the State as guarantor of order and progress
	Public forces, security state and repression
3. ‘We are good people1’. Social and moral conservatism	Moral superiority
	Following a leader who upholds and defends these values
	Monopolization of patriotism
	Aversion towards progressive and leftist people.
4. Negative conceptions of social policies that include diversities and minorities	Welfare and market distortions
	Reduction of the social rule of law—confrontation of ESC rights
	Anticommunism and stigmas to progressivism and social democracy: catastrophist vision (‘Seremos Venezuela’)

). A second moment was the second-level theoretical coding, an interpretative, synthetic and inductive exercise that allowed the construction of the thematic categories that guide the drafting of the results (Gibbs 2012). This type of analysis enables the organization and identification of categorical patterns (theoretical and thematic) by reading and rereading the data, in order to be able to infer results that allow the understanding of the phenomenon (Mieles et al. 2012). The resulting categories guide the construction of the results and are presented in the following table, an outline of this procedure.

3. Results

The order of presentation of the results follows that of the categories, according to Table 1, in relation to four thematic nuclei of the subjectivity of participants who identify themselves with right-wing political parties related to authoritarian neoliberal policies.

3.1. Merit: Conceptions of Success and Personal Wellbeing as a Product of Individual Effort

From the interviews conducted, it became evident that the participants consider that neoliberal policies stimulate personal effort and, therefore, reward those who strive to improve their quality of life. Thus, the first characteristic with which they identify this subjectivity is personal effort and sacrifice. They consider that the sum of individual efforts allows development and prosperity, because it enables the generation of companies that bring wealth, employment and welfare to a nation: [referring to an entrepreneur] “a guy with money who does not need to steal from anyone and is a very good manager, because he has a company that he created with intelligence, with a lot of struggle, coming from the bottom” (RM-1).

They consider that hard work is a pillar for acquiring wealth and achieving success, “the only way for a country to move forward is for all of us to roll up our sleeves and work” (CRM-1). From this viewpoint, centered on merit, prosperity comes from a permanent sacrifice, a struggle that makes it possible to succeed. They emphasize that anyone can reach this state if they work hard to achieve it. They believe that competition and (market) ‘freedom’ should be the foundation for a sociopolitical order that promotes individuals according to their capabilities,

I am referring to the country’s tradition of freedom and work. That is, what [former president] Uribe used to say, that of ‘work, work and work’ and get things on your own.

(RM-3)

We on the right prefer to work, to have our own things and to be able to make decisions, to say whether things are being done well or badly, that is, freedom, which is the priority for a citizen.

(RM-5)

For the participants, the attainment of wealth is represented as a hard struggle, full of hardships, suffering and sacrifice; that is, one does not reach the top without going through vicissitudes, which shows tenacity, temperance and perseverance. Thus, it is those who have greater capacities who reach success. This would do justice to the ‘best’, so that the entrepreneur is the model of subjectivity. Therefore, a socioeconomic order that favors free competition rewards the most skilled, the most hard-working, those who struggled and were not lazy, those who faced suffering and made sacrifices: “all enterprises have arisen because people got up earlier, went to bed later, risked their capital, risked their lives, have gone bankrupt a lot of times” (RW-2). This brings with it an equally prosperous state:

How have these rich people made their savings, their properties? With immense effort, they have worked, they have saved, how are they going to take from them to give to someone who has done nothing? You have to give the person the hook to fish, not the fish.

(RW-8)

On the contrary, a social-democratic system would favor people without merit or sufficient capacities, which they consider unjust, because their vision of merit entails, at the same time, a labeling of those who live in precarious conditions as “lazy”, who do not want to work and want everything for free. In this sense, they propose a kind of distributive justice, centered on personal responsibility, which is synthesized in the popular saying: “the poor are poor because they want to be”. They consider that they are irresponsible, that they have no criteria and that they try to live off others, using the State as a provider, without working to obtain what for them are goods, not rights. In addition, they argue that, in a social State under the rule of law, the rich are ‘taken away’ or ‘expropriated’ to benefit the poor. A conception that highlights a basic injustice, because, for them, the poor are the only ones responsible for their vulnerable condition:

They say that they are going to take from the rich to give to the poor, but do you know what I think? That when people are given things without any effort, they do not value it and they do not go to work, they expect the government to give them. What happens in Venezuela, why all those people who came to Colombia are practically criminals, why? Because there they were given everything and they did not work; then, when there was nothing left to give them, they started […] What happens is that they are not taught to work, so they do nothing.

(RW-8)

Effort, discipline and responsibility are presented as the main drivers of economic prosperity. The participants exalt the figure of the entrepreneur as a symbol of development, attributing to him qualities, even moral ones, that legitimize his privileged position; at the same time, they delegitimize those who live in vulnerable conditions, perceiving them as guilty of their situation, due to their deficient performance. It reinforces a distributive justice perspective that individualizes responsibilities and establishes individual merit as the guiding principle that naturalizes social inequalities, minimizing the structural dynamics that perpetuate exclusion.

3.2. Order and Progress: Neoliberalism and the Securitarian State

From a political point of view, these participants identify order and security with progress and economic development. Therefore, good business development must be accompanied by a state that guarantees legal and police security. From their point of view, democracy is identified with freedom, but of the market, and with private initiative, which, in its meritocratic logic, as we saw in the previous point, would reward the most skillful and hard-working, the most hard-working, those who put capital into production:

I: So you represent democracy and freedom and they don’t? [referring to the leftist and social democratic political parties].

P: I think so. People know that. I didn’t like Fico2, until he started to say that he defended democracy, enterprises and freedom. They are different models of country, some seek to create companies and others to expropriate.

I: What is democracy and freedoms for you?

P: Defending the liberal model as we know it. With free economy and private initiative.

(CRW-1)

From this point of view, all productive goods and services can be privatized, everything becomes an object of commercial transaction, a commodity. Public services, education, health, transportation can be commodified and managed by ‘free’ agents, within a market economy, in which the State should not intervene or regulate. This would be the most efficient way to manage society for progress and development,

I love the private sector, the scope it can have […] The little that the State manages, is extremely bad, they are inefficient. Likewise, health. For me, the best thing that has happened is Law 1003. All things have their pros and cons, but if we look at Law 100, there are more pros than cons.

(RW-11)

In order to preserve this social order within the framework of unequal social and economic relations that are becoming more acute, as indicated in the introduction, the State, more than a ‘provider’, is an arbiter that regulates and guarantees this order, generating conditions of legal stability for doing business, mediating conflicts of interest, strengthening arbitration institutions through the justice system. And, above all, guaranteeing security through police forces, intelligence, army and judicial control, applied to whoever wants to alter this order. In this sense, order is a guarantee of progress, and for this, security is a fundamental bastion,

Things should be done in the established order. The constitution is a magna carta, it cannot be corroded, it cannot be changed, just as one can change one’s shirt; therefore, if there is an established order, it cannot be interrupted.

(RW-2)

Institutionality and the defense of good customs—(laughs) it sounds very facho,4 but, if you look at it, we are the ones who have defended institutionality.

(RM-3)

In their discourse, security takes a leading role, above democracy, freedom and other elements, constituting a framework of subjectivity that takes on an authoritarian nature. In contexts such as those of Latin America and Colombia, with high levels of poverty, inequality and exclusion, crime is a factor that permeates social and economic relations and daily life in cities and rural areas. But, in addition, there were also revolutionary processes that attempted to transform the established social order towards more equitable conditions. This is why, for these participants, security is understood in some cases as repression of those who oppose it.

The securitarian discourse becomes the center, since they perceive in opponents and criminals (sometimes without distinction) a threat, not only to stability and the prevailing order, but also to the privileges obtained, according to their discourse, with effort, sacrifice and work. Hence, they end up endorsing authoritarian, illiberal and securitarian models of State, as long as they guarantee the permanence and stability of the status quo,

I think that societies and peoples need a ‘firm hand and a big heart’5 and today the world has Nayib Bukele as a reference.6 He is applying a model of government in El Salvador and is achieving a great political, social and economic transformation. Because this is the way things should be. Tough and firm decisions generate respect for the power of the State, that coercive power to enforce respect for institutionality and the legal system… I think that today the country needs a Bukele, it needs a man capable of applying a firm hand.

(RM-4)

In this sense, they end up endorsing repressive actions of the State and the Public Force without respecting due process, disregarding human rights, since they end up identifying the criminal and the rebel in the same conception: anyone who opposes this regime. Thus, the opponent, who in a context such as the Colombian one is part of social movements (unions, feminists, LGTBQ+, indigenous, Afro, excluded in general), from these discourses, ends up deserving sanction, repression, exclusion or elimination. Mobilization and social protest cease to be a right, instead becoming subversion and, therefore, objects of repression. Those who commit crimes cease to have the status of human beings and become the objects of security or prison measures that, in an expeditious manner, solve the problem of insecurity: “to build a prison, like the one Bukele built, to put them all there” (RM-1).

I support the police and I agree that, if that one is a vandal, who is destroying this bank, who is destroying the traffic lights, simply because I felt like it […] Why do they leave him in jail to fatten them up and let them continue committing crimes? The bullet and see you later […] Every day it was riots [Referring to the social outburst of 2021] ending with everything […] that is vandalism. That is not protest.

(RW-6)

The opponent ends up in the place of the ‘vandal’. His political agency is not legitimized. He is the one who installs disorder, he is the subject to channel, to correct, both from a moral and a juridical perspective. It is not surprising, therefore, that in opposition to this ‘deviant subjectivity’, the participants identify themselves from a connotation, also moral, by calling themselves ‘good people’.

3.3. “We Are Good People”: Social and Moral Conservatism

Most of the interviewees see themselves as morally superior; they associate their current state of life as a consequence of their personal effort and moral goodness, of the fulfillment of norms and precepts. This reinforces their conception of justice, in that they are getting what they deserve. Self-describing themselves as ‘good people’, as opposed to these other deviant subjectivities, brings with it a personal affirmation that makes it possible to legitimize repressive measures and ‘good governance’:

[We are] The good people… People who do not sit with narcos, nor with corrupt people nor with bandits… we defend institutionality, we are not criminals.

(RM-3)

The good ones are more […] the normal, working people, the normal families […] people who go out to work, who go out to fight for it. For me, those are the good guys. The people who are responsible…

(RW-13)

It is important to note that there is a hegemonic and homogenizing aspiration that articulates authoritarianism and conservatism, by promoting a moralizing vision that separates ‘good people’ from those who do not meet the expectations of the prevailing model. In this sense, they perceive themselves not only as builders of the social, economic and political order, from an established normative and moral framework, but also as its defenders, as opposed to people or social groups that want to disrupt it. An order based on the family, institutional stability, tradition, the free market, competition and the defense of private property: “I defend the family, institutionality, a free economy and freedom” (RW-5).

They invoke a leader to lead the destiny of the country, according to the values they profess, whom they intend to follow, because he would gather and embody with ‘authority’ their project of society. The vision of God from a moralizing religion, the defense of the traditional heteronormative family, the mystification of private property, even when it is concentrated in few hands, the preeminence of freedom (of the market) and the application of an iron fist to guarantee security and the maintenance of the status quo,

Today the country needs a man who is capable of applying an iron fist, starting with education, training and at the same time investing in infrastructure, in weapons, so that the State can enforce the law. The Colombian army and the national police must be given an example so that they fulfill their duties.

(RM-4)

I believe that a believing president is necessary, with very good ideas, because he will not expropriate private property and will preserve the moral order.

(CRW-5)

Two characters seem to embody this ideal. One from the past, but still active in Colombian politics: former president Álvaro Uribe Vélez, who continues to be a reference for the participants in this research. The other is Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador, a more current referent of this framework of understanding that integrates authoritarian neoliberalism with neoconservatism:

P: What a marvel Bukele. I like his style very much. He picks up what most people are looking for […] I wish we had someone like Bukele here. He is the answer to the fear of staying in a society full of violent people, of losing democracy and falling even deeper into poverty. If you eliminate all criminals from society, you can have better results to overcome inequality and poverty […] How can we not want a Bukele?

I: When you say ‘we want’, who do you mean?

P: Not only conservatives, but people who defend the country and democracy.

(RW-5)

Uribe’s first government was the best in the history of Colombia, because he tried to impose order, security. The only thing Uribe did was to try to impose democratic security and that worked. He put an end to the FARC.

(RM-8)

In this order of ideas, they identify themselves as ‘authentic patriots’. Since their commitment to the established order, with conservative values, as ‘good people’, gives them legitimacy to feel that they are the only ones who love the country and who fight so that it can progress and remain stable, defending a militaristic vision that would guarantee this order,

If you were taught from childhood to love the country, to respect the civic minimums, the constitution and authority, you would not have a country full of narco-terrorists […] Here we need to strengthen the armed forces, the love of the citizen for those men and women who go through hardships in the jungles and mountains. I am not ashamed to say that I like authority.

(RW-5)

This element of subjectivity can be called “monopolization of patriotism” (Bar-Tal 1995), which limits the definition of patriot to identify with ideologies, values, policies and leaderships related to an authoritarian neoliberalism, as a unifying element of the nation. It is of an us grouped according to conservative ideas and values, denoted as morally good and desirable, without recognizing differences, nor questioning privileges, inequalities and social and historical injustices; supporting, in addition, policies that reproduce systems of oppression and exclusion, underpinned and protected by the Armed Forces and an authoritarian State that must ensure the maintenance of that established order (Gutiérrez-Peña et al. 2025).

Some link this type of conservative conception to a sociocultural identity specific to the city of Medellín and the department of Antioquia, of which it is the capital. This culture, called ‘paisa’,7 has been associated with hard work, personal effort, struggle, colonization of other territories, domination of nature and superiority over people and peoples from other regions of the country. The framework of traditions of this culture is also defined by conservatism, giving a superlative value to a traditional and moralizing religious vision, to the heteronormative family, rejecting feminist and LGTBIQ+ movements, union movements and other expressions of popular mobilization:

Because I am paisa and very conservative in my traditions. I like us paisas to be the best, to be recognized […] The economic opening in general, is something inevitable and important for what the world demands nowadays […] For that reason, the indigenous people are a very serious problem… I have jokingly said several times…. I feel that the indigenous are a demographic problem, because the indigenous close roads, take away productive land to make it unproductive or to plant coca.

(RM-10)

3.4. Negative Conceptions of Social Policies

For the participants, leftists, to the extent that they do not conform to the established order, are negatively connoted and identified with evil or subversion, with the destruction of what has been built with sacrifice, struggle and effort. In addition to their aversion towards progressive and leftist people, who are viewed with distrust, attributing evil intentions to them, they develop a very negative view of the leftist government that currently governs Colombia, because it would generate chaos and destruction of the established order:

I feel anger because I see that this gentleman [Petro8] is leading us to the chaos typical of 21st century socialism. They arrive with a discourse of citizen indignation, full of angry slogans and end up worse.

(RM-2)

They are people who have no sense of responsibility, they do not want this country, which is rich in everything, but what did they do? They mounted that guerrilla [referring to Petro] and they are ending up with everything.

(RW-6)

They consider that social policies are detrimental to the development of the country, that they generate distortions, both in the markets and in the role of the State, because, from their point of view, the State should be directed to administer without interfering in economic life and not to guarantee social rights. For this reason, they allow themselves to criticize a government that tries to implement the social rule of law,

The current model [referring to the Petro government] is more about giving away, subsidizing health, limiting the quality of the service, right? Because it is so subsidized, it limits its evolution and technification. So, that is where we are getting stuck.

(RM-9)

The one who should manage a country is an economist or a businessman. The State is an administrator of resources, it is a company, the country has to generate money to improve the quality of life.

(CR-9)

They do not agree with social security systems, nor do they consider health, education, services and public transportation, among others, to be rights, but rather goods and services that those who work and are successful can acquire with quality. This also leads to value judgments and stigmas that are directed more strongly towards poor people and young people, who end up being stigmatized:

Now young people want to stay at home without making an effort. There are very few who really want to study and get ahead. They want to sit around, receiving subsidies.

(RW-13)

A boy who is given a million pesos? That destroys a country. Because that comes out of the taxes we all pay. And apart from that, they are not encouraging him to study and make an effort. This happens with leftist governments, like Venezuela, which did away with subsidies. That was a rich country, can you imagine what Colombia is going to be like?

(RW-13)

They argue that these behaviors are encouraged by a government, which they describe as welfarist, as having no strategy, as being incapable of governing the country, because they conceive social policies as incentives for dependency and inactivity. They consider that such policies, far from fostering progress, promote a welfare culture that threatens economic sustainability,

They strive to turn the people into beggars, who no longer want to do anything, but are only waiting for aid, why don’t they teach people to work?

(RW-6)

I feel anger, because the fools9 want everything to be given away, everything to be easy.

(RM-3)

To the extent that governments in Colombia have historically assumed economic positions in line with neoliberalism, the participants in the study, who recognize themselves politically as right or center right, express fear towards the reforms that the current government has wanted to implement:

I think that the reforms of this government have been disastrous and have thrown the country backwards. The country is in a very big decline, insecurity has increased, we are in an unattainable free fall, unfortunately. If this is not stopped in time, there will be no one who can save Colombia. Colombia could end up worse than Venezuela.

(RW-5)

The policy that Gustavo Petro tried to establish… what socialism, what communism, what the damned Yankees; this anti-capitalist discourse makes the common people celebrate him, but this does not necessarily mean that it is good for the country.

(CRM-1)

This perspective is driven towards a catastrophic vision of economic policies with social sense, which is disseminated in daily conversations, in the media, in the rhetoric of the opposition, creating emotional climates of fear, anguish, uncertainty, mobilizing indignation and anger against a government that, according to their point of view, intends to generate chaos and destruction and alter the established order,

How are we living now? With fear of everything. Look at the cost of living […] I have already started to cut back on the market, because I can’t anymore, everything is going up […] It doesn’t seem fair to me, everything is too expensive […] We are going to end up like in the 90’s, when they started killing policemen […] sometimes I feel anguish and disappointment when they start saying that they are going to leave us pensioners without a penny […] What am I going to do on my own, how am I going to live, I have all these unpleasant emotions…

(RW-6)

The first thing the leftists want to do is to create total chaos, so they can make laws and take over the country, it’s as simple as that.

(RM-1)

They associate leftist economic proposals with business decline, capital flight and weakening of the economy, reinforcing the fear of any reform that departs from the traditional neoliberal model. In this sense, reference is made to the cases of Venezuela or Nicaragua as examples of what public policies that promote equity, redistribute wealth and configure health, education, household services and transportation as human rights would imply,

Companies are running out, people are leaving the country, they have left their companies and are going to invest elsewhere, because it is difficult here. Think about it, people who have money and who are going to take a little bit of land to give it to others, they will surely sell and take everything, because it is their life savings, their work. It seems terrible to me.

(RW-8)

Argentina was ruined by the left, so was Chile, the same thing happened to Ecuador, Bolivia, let alone Bolivia. Venezuela is next door, it was the richest country in Latin America and ended up the poorest. The left sells the idea that the State is the father of everything and will give you everything and people do not go back to work. They expect the market, that they will pay for school, that services will be free, that everything will be free. That does not work, that leads to failure.

(RM-8)

In this way, social policies are delegitimized, they are accused of being populist, that they will lead the country to chaos, to an unprecedented economic crisis, as has happened in other latitudes in Latin America. In many cases, these accusations are made with partial information and by putting in the same bag different realities and processes, some of which are far from the real situation of these countries.

4. Discussion and Conclusions

The results of the present research allow us to identify some of the referents that constitute frameworks of meaning and units of sense, conceptions that are typical of a neoliberal context, which in the participants are intertwined with deeply rooted beliefs that find their frame of reference in values and units of sense of a conservative framework, in such a way that it can be stated that these logics are adhered to and intertwined in their daily lives.

Among the main elements found in the interviews, it can be observed that participants associate success and personal well-being with individual merit in a regime of competition, understood as effort, hard work and responsibility. In this way, the discourse of merit validates the status quo and social divisions, by positioning ‘good people’ as opposed to those they consider as ‘lazy’. They moralize their own discourse to the detriment of others who oppose the established social order. Moreover, if they are successful, it is because they are ‘good’, in moral terms, ‘hard-working and better’ in terms of competitiveness, more intelligent than the rest of society. This is why they support not only this neoliberal capitalist economic model, but also an authoritarian and conservative social and political order, as stated by Abrahamsen et al. (2024), Brown (2015, 2020), Morán-Faúndes (2022, 2023) and Vásquez-Salazar (2020).

Thus, merit and goodness, sacrifice and success, are linked in a framework of meaning that configures a way of being, a subjectivity that, in the words of the participants, is condensed in being ‘paisa’, ‘good people’. They are part of a conservative vision that advocates a traditional morality based on the family, the centrality of order to maintain the status quo, privileging security over the freedom they claim to defend, since, in the end, it is all about market freedom and protection of private property. This leads to neoliberal policies being moralized as ‘good’ in themselves and true in economic terms, while everything that opposes them is negatively valued, susceptible of being extirpated from the social body, as Morán-Faúndes (2022, 2023) and Soto Bouhier (2024), among others, have addressed in other contexts. Hence, other expressions such as those of feminist women, LGTBQ+ people, leftist or progressive militants can be questioned, insofar as that which is diverse and different is a threat to the social order (Vásquez-Salazar 2020).

In the same sense, it reinforces an individualistic subjectivation that normalizes structural inequalities, reproduces social hierarchies and defends the status quo by legitimizing exclusion, while weakening the possibilities of collective resistance and citizen mobilization that, as could be evidenced, end up being stigmatized and criminalized, as they oppose the established social order, which for these participants is the only legitimate one in political terms, prosperous and generator of progress and development in economic terms and the ‘correct’ one in moral terms. This allows them to accept, legitimize and support repression and securitarian state models, as well as to follow and promote political leaders who support these perspectives of society, state, economy and subjectivity.

It is noteworthy that these participants are not exclusively from the wealthy classes, but from all social sectors. They internalize structural inequalities, presenting them as individual failures rather than as the result of economic and social dynamics. Furthermore, they do not understand or approve of the State fulfilling a social function as a guarantor of rights, questioning subsidies, redistribution of wealth or reforms proposed by leftist governments, as is currently happening in Colombia, as they consider them to encourage dependency, laziness and vagrancy, contrary to their image of distributive justice, as they would threaten the economic sustainability of the country. It could be argued that the social unrest that can be generated with the increase in inequality, labor precariousness and economic difficulties that are experienced, ends up being transferred to other social groups, to that external ‘other’ that is forged as an enemy—in this case, the leftist militant, the communist, the vandal, but also the Afro, the Indian, the poor and the young (Benczés and Szabó 2022; Carrillo and Carrillo 2023; Carrión and Korman 2023; Gutiérrez-Peña et al. 2025; Hoetmer 2020; Martínez-Castillo 2023). In turn, their conception of the state as a resource manager reinforces the notion of self-sufficiency and dismisses the concept of social rights.

The position that social policies encourage dependency and are barriers to individual success can be found in other studies, such as those conducted by Jessen (2021), which explains how neoliberalism transforms civil society, the inactive, by promoting the corporate figure as a model for social life. Thus, the neoliberal state reduces the power of individual and collective subjects, making it difficult to support redistributive policies, affecting their participation as citizens and subjects of rights (Kaipl 2020; Osorio et al. 2022; Zakaria 2023), promoting the idea that well-being must be earned exclusively through individual effort and is the fruit of a ‘moral superiority’, which, according to Morán-Faúndes (2023), ends up inserting the imported conceptions of the theology of prosperity, more typical of the North American context.

Such viewpoints are related to studies such as those of Skilling (2021), who argues that these subjectivities have been molded, and although they may raise criticisms and discontent, they perceive the system as immutable, thus inhibiting their support for transformative proposals. Similarly, the application in Colombia of this authoritarian neoliberalism (Bojórquez et al. 2022), which combines its economic policies with repressive practices to maintain social order and social conservatism, encourages the natural acceptance of these conditions and therefore the delegitimization of any type of reform, added to the fact that protests against the system end up criminalized and strongly stigmatized by media that respond to particular interests (Atiles 2023).

Finally, it is very interesting to note that the reforms currently being discussed in Colombia, of a progressive and social democratic character, from a capitalist conception alternative to neoliberalism, are viewed with fear by the interviewees, relating them to a scenario of socioeconomic collapse, under the accusation of being ‘communist’ policies, in such a way that Colombia could become ‘another Venezuela’. This fear is based on a mistaken and almost conspiratorial association between state intervention in the economy and redistribution of resources with communism and the weakening of the productive apparatus. This is also linked to the rejection of people related to the political left and militants of counter-hegemonic social movements. Thus, these subjectivities are linked to radical right or ‘new right’ perspectives, given their intransigence with any viewpoint that is not framed within this neoliberal, authoritarian and conservative framework, from which they end up discrediting, disqualifying and attacking any opinion, way of thinking, and even people recognized as progressive, social democrats or left-wing militants.

For Maristella Svampa (2020) and Abrahamsen et al. (2024), this radical anti-garantist, anti-rights right wing is mobilized in a neoconservative logic and actively militates against progressivism and the left, attacking social science intellectuals, public universities and social movements. In practice, this stigmatizes progressive, social democratic and democratic left discourses as radical or extremist, as can be seen in the participants of this research. Therefore, they block the debate on pressing problems of society, given that from their place of truth, they pose a polarizing logic in which they are the good guys, and those who think differently are the bad guys; or failing that, they are the ‘technicians’ against the ‘ideologized’, thus reducing, more and more, the social achievements of the Social State of Law, which took decades to build (Velasco-Arias 2023). Thus, center-right neoliberal politicians such as Juan Manuel Santos in Colombia, Emmanuel Macron in France or Joe Biden in the United States ended up being labeled as perverse communists who attempt against Christian civilization, against society, against the State, against the welfare of all, building a fallacious discourse that runs the limits of political polarization and configures forms of sectarianism, as exposed in the introduction.

As long as this moral superiority that is linked to religious values that grant a subjective place of certainty and goodness persists, as well as the naturalization of merit as a guiding principle, and as long as expressions of political leftism, mobilizations and redistributive reforms are criminalized, a vicious circle that perpetuates exclusion and inequality will continue. Overcoming these dynamics requires not only political proposals that challenge neoliberalism and its antidemocratic, authoritarian and neoconservative expressions that converge in the current radical right, but also efforts to transform the narratives that have rooted these logics in the daily lives of people in a ‘cultural battle’ that has made conservatism an identity place for those who see themselves as ‘bearers’ of truths, values and social orders that they are not willing to negotiate or reach consensus on. It is a challenge for the social sciences and other disciplines if democracy, the social rule of law, respect for minorities and the generation of equity and social justice are to be preserved (Bruff and Tansel 2019).

In the context of the current situation in Colombia, Latin America and the world, the subjectivities constructed by neoliberalism are increasingly abandoning progressive views in order to identify with neoconservative values, traditions and social and moral orders. This would not be a problem if it were not complemented with beliefs, desires and actions oriented to delegitimize, disqualify, exclude and eliminate any other liberal, progressive, social democratic or leftist point of view, considering it to be the bearer of evil, chaos and destruction, as well as unpatriotic, since it does not seek the preservation of what they consider to be the values that underpin the welfare of the nation. This logic, which, as expressed in the introduction, is beginning to take hold in the world, is a profound challenge not only for democracy, but for all humanity, since a view that does not accept the existence of other subjectivities could become, if the course is not changed, a logic of extermination. The problem is that Colombia has not been exempt in its history from this type of logic: the extermination and political genocide of the UP party9 still hangs over the country as a wake-up call on the ways in which subjectivities such as those of the participants in this research are anchored, which supported political projects that, underpinned by security, deepened for decades logics of conflict, violence and war (Villa-Gómez et al. 2024).