As it happened in other parts of the world, the ‘Garden City’ was used more as an image than as a model in early twentieth-century Latin America. While attempting to set the regional diffusion of the model in international perspective, the review intends to explore the analogous use of the concept by Latin American historiography, following the two senses according to which it has been simplified: namely for its bucolic resonance, and to denote the suburban layouts that were different from traditional models.