República, nación y democracia ante el desafío de la diversidad

republic is not only the name of a nation and its regime. it is also a national model of integration based on a universalist conception of citizenship that sustains the abstract figure of the legal person, endowed with equal rights and obligations, and values of civism and civility, the foundation stones of a society that arises from a contract. this paper analyses how the emergency of the cultural diversity in argentina calls into question modern political concepts like republic, nation and democracy. it is also evaluated how the republic's inheritance, which supposes an homogenized sight of diversity, gives rise to an ambivalence among the adherence to universalist principles of the progress of humanity and the reality of an excluding democracy that gave value to one culture above others. the narratives of national identity are studied describing how the opposition between civilization and barbariy affects the way latin americans see the great challenges presented by the future of democracy, and by the recognition of the plurality of cultural allegiances.