Populism has a troubled relationship with democracy. Populist leaders often claim more power for the people and see themselves as the true defenders of democracy; on the contrary, their detractors accuse them of eroding democratic institutions. This actually refers to two ways of understanding populism: as a threat to democracy or as an opportunity for political change that makes democracy more inclusive, participatory or egalitarian. This article aims to check the impact that populism has on the deterioration of democracy in Latin America, taking into account the interaction of structural conditions along with populist presidents. To do so we rely on data from Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), namely their main five indices (electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative and egalitarian democracies) and run a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). Results shows that the impact of populist presidencies on democracy, contrasted empirically, is not as evident as the academic literature suggests.