The democratic wave that lead to the transition from dictatorships to democracies In Latin America brought great expectations for the political future of the continent. Most States, with their own timing and particular contexts, adopted the model known as constitutional democracy. However, history is demonstrating that in a complex context, the sole adoption of democratic procedures and institutions has not shown the necessary strength to maintain and adopt decisions with social content on a very unequal continent. Even though the transition brought relevant changes, the environment in which it is taking place requires specific public policies that tend to eradicate poverty, violence and inequality. Governments tend to worry less about the actual quality of their representative role and turn democracies into elitist governments; this appears to be the tendency of most Latin American democracies. The intention of this article is to show that as a consequence of this lack of representation, a new phenomenon with strong similarities to populism is unfolding in the region.