Caudillo (Spanish pronunciation: [kawˈdiʎo]; Old Spanish: cabdillo, from Latin capitellum, diminutive of caput "head") usually describes a political-military leader at the head of an authoritarian power. The term translates into English as leader or chief, or more pejoratively as warlord, dictator or strongman. Caudillo was the term used to refer to the charismatic populist leaders among the people. Caudillos have had an immense impact upon the history of Latin America.The term originally referred to military power: Indibilis and Mandonius, Viriathus, Almanzor (sometimes in the modern historiography), Don Pelayo and other fighters of the Reconquista, even Simón Bolivar, Francisco Franco and Juan Perón, but in hispanic America another sense has developed: the caudillo lawyer and politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán was honored with the title "Caudillo of The Colombian People" (and other nuances with a significance mostly demagogic) and even without state responsibilities like cacique in Spain and oligarchical–plutocratic power.