De 'Porfiriato' a 'zapaterato'

The suffix ato, meaning ‘rank, office, etc.’, was introduced into the Spanish language at the end of the Middle Ages. While our suffix led a rather inconspicuous life during centuries, it has recently become fashionable in Spanish newspapers to attach it to the name of a president in order to refer to his government in a derogatory or playful manner: felipato ‘government of Felipe González’, aznarato ‘government of José María Aznar’, etc. In the present short note it is shown that this pattern arose in Mexico in the first half of the 20th century, where the long and authoritarian rule of General Porfirio Díaz was referred to as Porfiariato. Later on, the pattern was picked up in other Latin-American countries, especially Cuba (cf. batistato ‘Batista’s rule’), before, enriched with a banana-republican tinge, it crossed the Atlantic in the eighties.