ABSTRACT
Despite the expansion within the field of conspiracy theory research, Latin America remains largely overlooked. However, the region has a complex culture of conspiracy theory, because of its postcolonial status, centuries-long struggle against the spectre of U.S. hegemony and the legacy of military intervention in politics. In Argentina, the death of Alberto Nisman – chief investigator into the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre – provided fertile ground for numerous conspiracy theories that tell of government-ordered assassinations, cover-ups and rogue intelligence officers (Rodriguez, Smallman 2016). In Chile, ex-president Salvador Allende’s body was exhumed in 2011 to lay to rest the conspiracy theory that he was actually assassinated during the 1973 military coup (Guardian 2011). In Mexico, the death of one of ex-President Felipe Calderón’s interior ministers in a helicopter crash equally engendered a wide range of conspiracy theories that he had been murdered – by the military on the order of the President, a drug lord or by the Partido Revolucionario Insitucional (Herrera 2018). The list goes on. Yet, there is no denying that conspiracy theories have captured the Venezuelan imagination perhaps more than any other Latin American nation.
