https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642241267897 American Behavioral Scientist 1–20 © 2024 SAGE Publications Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/00027642241267897 journals.sagepub.com/home/abs Article Fifty Years of Secrecy: The Politics of Oblivion and Perpetuation of the Dictatorship’s Impunity in Contemporary Uruguay Mariana Achugar 1 and Gabriela Fried Amilivia 2 Abstract This article explores the long duration of posttransitional authoritarian discourses of “national security” in Uruguay, in the five decades since the coup that led to a State terrorist regime. We posit that the current deployment of Cold war era discourses justifying state terrorism constitute foundational master tools that enable modern-day military and alt-right autocrats to conceal human rights violations and appropriate the liberal human rights discourse for illiberal political ends. Authoritarians of this new type use these resignified democratic discourses to perpetuate their power, gain influence, and legitimize their repressive illiberal practices. The article uses three public debates relating to the military’s illicit actions in the dictatorship and their involvement in contemporary politics via the new military political party, Cabildo Abierto, to show how these authoritarian tools are deployed in political discourse. We analyze a corpus of texts from recent judicial documents with military “confessions,” official withholding of secret archives, and law proposals presented in Congress. Our findings show that dictatorship-era discourses of “national security” are employed by contemporary military and right-wing political actors for the purpose of sustaining their power. We reveal continuities in dictatorship era discourse practices and strategies that contribute to the emergence of new autocratic social actors who enter the political sphere to capture state resources and protect their group interests. 1 Departamento de Medios y Lenguajes, Facultad de Información y Comunicación, Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay 2 Department of Sociology and Latin American Studies Program, California State University Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA Corresponding Author: Mariana Achugar, Departamento de Medios y Lenguajes, Facultad de Información y Comunicación, Universidad de la República, San Salvador 1944, Montevideo 11200, Uruguay. Email: Mariana.achugar@fic.edu.uy 1267897ABS XX X 10.1177/00027642241267897American Behavioral ScientistAchugar and Fried Amilivia research-article 2024