Letras bordadas con seda y oro: los intelectuales latinoamericanos frente al asedio de la democracia (1870-1900).

The present paper studies narratives strategies used by a fair part of Latin-American intellectuals in order to defy the rapid changes taking place in urban society in the late nineteenth century. Furthermore, the paper explores the rhetoric models men of letters used to qualify the limits of the notion of democracy, with the hope that these discursive interventions would limit the access to places of influence where new social actors struggled to enter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]