Neutralization through the anti-gender network: How Latin America’s Far Right contests the OAS

Latin America’s far right is structured around the pairing of religious conservatism and sovereigntist nationalism, rather than immigration-centered nativism. This article shows how that configuration travels transnationally through the anti-gender network linking churches, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and populist radical right parties. Focusing on the Organization of American States (OAS), it examines how the far right engages international organizations (IOs) from within, mapping the network’s actors and the coordinated strategies—performative politics, lobbying, and reactive litigation—deployed to contest sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) and reproductive rights. The article argues that such networked contestation can neutralize IOs even without far-right control over national governments, a modality of influence it conceptualizes as neutralization: the disabling of an IO as a driver of norm expansion, while prior commitments stay nominally in place. At the same time, the IO arena strengthens the anti-gender network by providing a forum for transnational coalition-building.