Dictablanda

Dictablanda is a dictatorship in which civil liberties are allegedly preserved rather than destroyed. The word dictablanda is a pun on the Spanish word dictadura ("dictatorship"), replacing dura, which by itself is a word meaning 'hard', with blanda, meaning 'soft'.

The term was first used in Spain in 1930 when Dámaso Berenguer replaced Miguel Primo de Rivera y Orbaneja as the head of the ruling dictatorial government, and attempted to reduce tensions in the country by repealing some of the harsher measures that Primo de Rivera had introduced. It was also used to refer to the later years of Francisco Franco's Spanish State,^[1] and to the hegemonic 70-year rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in Mexico.^[2] Augusto Pinochet used the term when he was asked about his regime and the accusations about his government.^{[citation needed]}

Analogously, the same pun is made in Portuguese as ditabranda or ditamole. In February 2009, the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S.Paulo ran a controversial editorial classifying the military dictatorship in Brazil (1964–1985) as a ditabranda.^[3]

In Spanish, the term dictablanda is contrasted with democradura (a portmanteau of democracia and dictadura), meaning an illiberal democracy – a system in which the government and its leaders are elected, but which is relatively deficient in civil liberties.^{[citation needed]}

In Uruguay, the short-lived dictatorship of Alfredo Baldomir in 1942 was nicknamed dictablanda, in contrast to the previous harsh dictatorship by Gabriel Terra.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• Benevolent dictatorship
• Caudillo – Type of personalist leader wielding political power
• Operation Condor – US-backed repression campaign in South America
• Reign of Alfonso XIII of Spain

References

1. Jackson, Gabriel (Spring 1976). "The Franco Era in Historical Perspective". The Centennial Review. 20 (2): 103–127. JSTOR 23738276.
2. Vaughan, Mary Kay (2018). "Mexico, 1940–1968 and Beyond: Perfect Dictatorship? Dictablanda? or PRI State Hegemony?" (PDF). Latin American Research Review. 53 (1): 170. ISSN 0023-8791. JSTOR 26744297.
3. Ribeiro, Igor (25 February 2009). (in Portuguese). Portal Imprensa. Archived from the original on 1 February 2012.