Dictablanda

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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

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

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