The Neuquenian Popular Movement and the construction of a populist political identity: the neuquinidad. Contributions from a Laclaunian reading (1963-1983)

Abstract

In this article, the historical process of structuring the identity discourse of neuquinidad was analyzed as a pretense of populist political articulation promoted by the Neuquenian Popular Movement, a provincial party that has managed to maintain itself, uninterruptedly, in power since 1963. For this purpose, we took care of the electoral conjunctures of 1963, 1973 and 1983, circumstances of updating and continual updating of identities that, through an elastic bordering process and, therefore, a logic of displacements, resignifies, all the time, the place of the homogeneity. For this purpose, the contributions of Ernesto Laclau on populism were taken as a special and particular way of political articulation and construction of the political.