A book that sheds new light on the cultural roots of the great historical plights of Latin America: authoritarianism, poverty, and inequality.

“Jesuit populism” is an old and robust thread that runs through Latin American history. The most powerful Latin populist movements -- Peronism, Castroism, Chavezism – are joined by this thread.

Latin America is the home of “Jesuit populism.” Certainly not all Latin American populisms are “Jesuit,” and not all Jesuits are populists, and “Jesuit populism” is not exclusive to Jesuits. At times, their role has been substantial and evident, at other times it has been indirect, episodic, and implicit. There also are and have been Jesuits hostile to “Jesuit populism” and populisms unaware or unconscious of their Jesuit roots. Nevertheless, Jesuit populism has been a constant element of Latin American history. It dates back to the conquest, passes through the missions of Paraguay, undergoes the Bourbon expulsion, crosses swords with liberalism, and resurges with 20th century populism and finally lands in Rome, at the threshold of the papacy. Jesuit populism is the custodian of a formidable worldview that is an integral part of the moral and material universe of Latin America. Its cardinal principle is the Christian utopia, the dream of the Kingdom of God on Earth, impermeable to the corruption of the world and its history; its model is Christian colonialism, a Christian State that fused together political unity and spiritual unity, subjects and faithful. The social order? A natural organism in conformity with the will of God. Hierarchy, unanimity, and corporatism are its pillars; faith its cement, the ethical State its guardian. There was once, Jesuit populism preaches, a pure and innocent people that lived in harmony and shared a common culture formed by their faith. But then “foreign” ideas, liberalism without a country, Protestant individualism, egotistical capitalism, amoral secularism corrupted the soul of the people, fragmented heir unity, threatened their identity. Against these eternal enemies of the peoples of America, there rises the populist leader, the redeemer, who, brandishing the cross of the faith and the sword of justice frees the chosen people from slavery and leads them to the promised land. . .
A political theology that now, with Pope Francis, has arrived all the way to the Vatican.