How to Use caudillo in a Sentence

caudillo

noun
  • By now he was seen as a man of the right, sometimes a caudillo himself.
    — The Economist, 23 June 2018
  • And this caudillo style (to put it politely) is ensconced in the United States.
    — Jay Nordlinger, National Review, 6 June 2024
  • Third, Chile lacks a populist movement, or a canny populist caudillo politician.
    — John Authers | Bloomberg, Washington Post, 22 Oct. 2019
  • In Latin America, the specter of the caudillo, or military leader, has made a comeback.
    — Ian Bremmer, Time, 3 May 2018
  • His fellow populist caudillos in Latin America are each in varying degrees of trouble.
    — The Economist, 26 Apr. 2018
  • Between his daily fulminations against the press and his fondness for campaign pageantry, there’s something of the tropical caudillo about him.
    — Jonathan Blitzer, The New Yorker, 16 Sep. 2019
  • The deal intends to shift TikTok’s cloud business to Oracle, which nevertheless doesn’t yet seem to have convinced the caudillo that a non-ownership deal is a good idea.
    — Adam Lashinsky, Fortune, 17 Sep. 2020
  • As the Cold War wound to an end, however, the dictatorships fell, and the caudillo generals retreated into the historical shadows.
    — Ioan Grillo, The New Republic, 6 June 2018
  • Latin America is inured to strongmen and demagogues, but Bukele appears to be something new, a caudillo for the digital age intent on spreading his brand of populist politics across the region.
    — Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times, 16 May 2021
  • Because Cuban history is full of strongmen and caudillos, ideological political leaders.
    — Abraham Jiménez Enoa, The Dial, 9 Dec. 2025
  • Hatuey, the Taíno chief who fought the Spanish conquistadores and is known as the Americas’ earliest revolutionary, was a caudillo.
    — Abraham Jiménez Enoa, The Dial, 9 Dec. 2025
  • Instead of building strong political parties with coherent platforms, the country ended up with rival caudillos— Sandinista on the left and anti-Sandinista on the right.
    — Tim Brinkhof, JSTOR Daily, 8 Oct. 2025
  • Others were more sanguine, confident that after more than two decades of reforms designed to modernize the country, Mexican institutions were strong enough to contain the ambitions of the 65-year-old caudillo.
    — Mary Anastasia O’Grady, WSJ, 20 Nov. 2022
  • Deriving from the word caudillo, or strongman, caudillismo is a quintessential Latin American political phenomenon.
    — Omar G. Encarnación, Foreign Affairs, 16 Jan. 2025
  • Maduro’s arrest is being compared to the 1989 invasion of Panama and rendition of its caudillo, Manuel Noriega, to Miami to be convicted of drug trafficking and other crimes.
    — Graeme Wood, The Atlantic, 3 Jan. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'caudillo.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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