Latin Americans Have A Name for What Happened on January 6:  "Conato"

As Confucius said, the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.  What happened on January 6 at the US Capitol was so un-American at its core, so contemptuous of the political compact among us, and so daring in its ambition, that when it was over we citizens, still shocked, defaulted largely to the habitual algorithms of our ideological thinking rather than to our more composed, truth-seeking inclinations.  We have not yet found a language robust enough to encompass all that happened.  Here is a small contribution to that vocabulary.

In Latin American political discourse one common term for what happened here on January 6 is a "conato."  According to the online dictionary of the Real Academia Española a conato is "an illegal action that was initiated but was not consummated." (my translation) This word is commonly used by the political class to refer to a failed action intended to interrupt constitutional rule, as in the case of January 6, the official certification of a presidential election.  Latin America's political experience includes many efforts, failed or successful, to interrupt constitutional norms, and the vocabulary that stems from that experience is rich and instructive.

I was in downtown Santiago, Chile, on the morning of June 29, 1973, when a conato took place.  Lt. Col. Roberto Souper, commander of the 2nd Armored Regiment, acting, by his account on his own, ordered six Sherman tanks and dozens of troops into the streets.  They stopped at traffic lights, calmly surrounded the Moneda Palace, the seat of presidential power, and began pumping bullets at it.  About two dozen people were killed.  I witnessed the dead body of photo-journalist Leonardo Heinrichsen being lifted into an ambulance and carried off.  I knew he was dead because a woman at the scene pointed out to me a piece of his brain splattered on the wall of the building ten feet above the spot where he was shot.  Later I saw a film he took of soldiers killing him.  As his body falls, the camera loses its target--the soldier shooting at him--and the video falters and goes dead--a case of dueling targets.

The Commander of the Army, General Carlos Prats, immediately called troop commanders around the city, brought in artillery, and personally confronted those in the tanks, who surrendered.  The exact intent of the action (a probing operation directed by others to see what the reaction by pro-Allende sectors of the population might be?  A rallying cry for other troop commanders to join in? Had he been goaded into this by civilian interests?) is still a matter of controversy in Chile.  The moment passed but the conato was a prelude to more decisive military action later on. On September 11 of that year the armed forces, acting in unison, would overthrow Allende, who was killed in the attack on the same Moneda Palace.  Souper ended his military career about twenty years ago as the head of a symbolic cavalry unit.  He was indicted with others in 2012 for homicide in the death of the famous singer/songwriter Victor Jara at the Coliseum of Santiago in October1973.  The conato has gone down in Chilean history as the tanquetazo (the tank attempt), a more specific reference than the generic term conato.

Just as the exact motives of the tanquetazo remain obscure, the true motives of President Trump in inviting his supporters to the Capitol are not quite clear.  Consider this scenario for a moment.  Had Vice President Pence been killed (we've all seen the video of his rushing out moments before the rioters broke into his office) that day, what might have happened next?  Would this act have prompted the President to declare martial law and command the National Guard to restore law and order?  With the Vice President dead, the nation in shock, and generalized confusion, might the President have postponed the certification of Biden's presidency that day?  Might he have postponed the January 20 swearing-in ceremony?  Might he have remained President after January 20?  One can imagine many possibilities stemming from the scenario of a dead vice president.

While all of this is far too iffy to amount to any theory, these questions underscore the vulnerabilities present in the official timelines and details of our "orderly transition of power," and the great fluidity of possibilities in the conjuncture of political forces present in early January of this year.  What was on President Trump's mind as he told his followers for months that the only way he might not win was through a stolen election?  We may never know.  The term conato highlights not only the failure of a given political action, and the daring of an actor to intrude illegally into a given political scenario, but it also invites us to inquire about its intent.  It invites us to ask which actors, serving which interests, and for what purposes, were willing to interrupt the constitutional order, and to wonder what might lie ahead.