Caudillismo: Identity Landmark of Hispanic American Authoritarian Political Culture

The construction of identity, in the case of the turbulent history of Hispanic American states, was a process which involved the proliferation of authoritarian figures and an unremitting adaptation to local conditions. A distinctive landmark of this identitary crystallization, caudillismo was intimately bound to the disintegration of the colonial system and to the mass-scale social turmoil that escalated during the first half of the 19th century. Its entire phenomenology was highly influenced by the social, economic and political superstructures formerly created by the Spanish authority whose collapse represented a turning point for Hispanic America’s faltering political culture.

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