A Changing Re-meaning

Paths of the Concept «Democracy» in Iberoamerican World (1770-1870)

Abstract

During the period here investigated (1770-1870), the use of the word democracy was becoming popularised in Latin America in a progressive way, experience varied important shifts in meaning and was located in an increasingly extensive and complex conceptual network, within which it was building its diverse senses, his ambiguities, his disputed contents and his radical polysemy. It was successful to some extent just because it moved away from its classical roots and, especially, from its association with the «jacobinism» and its connotations related to tumult and radicalism. Moreover its crosses with the «question of the representation» and with the «liberalisms» of the period enabled an intense re-meaning of the word. Its changing «capacity» and its easy adaptation to mutate, had as a result a much more complex concept that allowed it a widespread diffusion, maybe more extensive that intense. In order to cover from a transversal perspective the paths of the concept «democracy» in Latin America, in this text of synthesis, prior attention is paid to the cases of Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Peru and Mexico, specific cases that the articles included in this dossier deals with.