Abstract

Starting from a historical reconstruction of the phenomenon in Latin America, the author centers the ideological core of Latin American Populism in the persistence of an ancient social imagery: the centrality of the people understood as organic community that counters liberal-democratic institutions in the name of organicistic instances. The author concludes by individuating the three elements that make Latin America the home of Populism: a strong social fragmentation, a vital holistic imagery, the peripheral charachter of Latin American modernization.