 Scholars who have sought to distance themselves from the traditional history of ideas thus understood have been motivated by various theoretical concerns. Some political theorists have attempted to show that Latin American liberals were not mere “imitators” engaged in the application of foreign models but also did produce “original” ideas that are relevant to “western thought” (Aguilar 2000 &amp; 2010). Intellectual historians, on the other hand, have been motivated to avoid anachronisms that inevitable arise when current definitions are assumed in the reconstruction of past political thought and movements (Palti 2005 &amp; 2007). They have also been reluctant to impose preconceived theoretical dichotomies in carrying out this reconstruction, such as tradition/modernity and organicism/individualism, and to avoid teleological approaches that regard history as pointing towards the triumph of liberalism. Instead, intellectual historians have attempted to offer sympathetic reconstructions that seek to capture what intellectuals and political actors meant (explicitly or implicitly) when they advocated or criticized liberal ideas and institutions. There has been a growing interest to seek to understand what nineteenth century liberal political actors and intellectuals meant when they affirmed a liberal view or other in the particular circumstances in which they did so. Some authors have purported to engage in professional history distancing themselves from national ideologies and political mythologies (Hale 1968 &amp; 1989). Others have engaged in constitutional history for the sake of comparative analysis (Gargarella 2010 &amp; 2013). Intellectual historians have engaged in debates regarding what should be the subject matter in this reconstruction, whether the uses of the term “liberal”, the concept of “liberalism” regardless of the terminology that political actors and movements in fact employed (Fernández Sebastián 2009), or the political languages in which they articulated their own views (Palti 2007 &amp; 2007).