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Characteristics of Latin American Political Thought

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

John D. Martz
John D. Martz*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of North Carolina
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Extract

In few areas of the world are the role and contribution of the intellectual elite more significant than in Latin America. Its membership has historically been in the forefront of major political and social movements, and there has been somewhat less of the distaste for politics and public responsibility than is often found elsewhere. Leading intellectuals are widely respected and nationally prominent, enjoying a degree of prestige that is scarcely exceeded in any other region. The pensador—sometimes likened to the eighteenth-century philosophe— has been intimately involved in major political movements from colonial times to the present.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Inter-American Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , January 1966 , pp. 54 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1966

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References

1 Crawford, William Rex, A Century of Latin-American Thought, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961), P. 4.Google Scholar

2 Mannheim, Karl, Ideology and Utopia (New York: Harcourt, Brace Co., 1946), p. 139.Google Scholar

3 Davis, Harold Eugene, Latin American Social Thought; The History of Its Development since Independence with Selected Readings (Washington: The University Press of Washington, D.C., 1963), p. v.Google Scholar

4 It is not possible, for example, to find a discussion of political thought which parallels Arthur Berndtson's “Teaching Latin-American Philosophy,” The Americas, IX (January 1953). Furthermore, translations of Latin American writings have, to the present, been more concerned with largely philosophical matter. Cf. Sánchez Reulet, Aníbal, Contemporary Latin-American Philosophy: A Selection (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1954)Google Scholar; Siches, Luis Recasens, Latin American Legal Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ramos, Samuel, Profile of Man and Culture in Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1962)Google Scholar; Paz, Octavio, The Labyrinth of Solitude; Life and Thought in Mexico (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1961)Google Scholar.

5 A few of these, which sometimes are themselves philosophically oriented, include the following: John P. Gillin, “Modern Latin-American Culture,” in Leonard, Olen E. and Loomis, Charles P. (eds.), Readings in Latin Social Organization and Institutions (East Lansing: Michigan State College Press, 1953)Google Scholar; Gillin, “Changing Depths in Latin America,” Journal of Inter-American Studies, II, No. 1 (January 1960); William J. Kilgore, “One America—Two Cultures,” Journal of Inter-American Studies, VII, No. 2 (April 1965); and de Visme Williamson, Rene, Culture and Policy: The United States and the Hispanic World (Nashville: University of Tennessee Press, 1949)Google Scholar.

6 To name but a few, these include Arciniegas, Germán (ed.), The Green Continent: A Comprehensive View of Latin America by Its Leading Writers (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1944)Google Scholar; Isaac Goldberg, Brazilian Literature (New York: Dutton, 1922); Goldberg, Studies in Spanish American Literature (New York, 1920); Henríquez-Ureña, Pedro, Literary Currents in Hispanic America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1945)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Torres-Ríoseco, Arturo, The Epic of Latin American Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1942)Google Scholar; and Torres-Ríoseco, , New World Literature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949)Google Scholar.

7 Similar classifications can be found in various sources; that of Davis in his Latin American Social Thought is virtually identical.

8 John Tate Lanning, “Reception of the Enlightenment in Latin America,” from Arthur P. Whitaker (ed.), Latin America and the Enlightenment (New York: Appleton-Century Co., 1942).

9 One of the standard sources for this is Roland Hussey's “Traces of French Enlightenment in Colonial Hispanic America,” from ibid.

10 Much of the preceding has minimal applicability for the colonial Portuguese holdings in the New World. Brazil was far less receptive to developing intellectual and political currents at the time. An excellent picture is provided in the work of João Cruz Costa, happily made available in English through a recent translation by Suzette Macedo under the title A History of Ideas in Brazil; The Development of Philosophy in Brazil and the Evolution of National History (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964). Cf. pp. 13-43.

11 For an acute analysis, see Romero, José Luis, A History of Argentine Political thought, trans, by Thomas’ F. McGann (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1963), pp. 126-64Google Scholar.

12 See the discussions in Ricardo Donoso, Las Ideas Políticas en Chile (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1946); also Tomás Lago, Sobre el Romanticismo en 1842 (Santiago: Universidad de Chile, 1942).

13 An analysis which does justice to the subtleties of Mora's thought has recently appeared by Charles A. Hale, “José María Luis Mora and the Structure of Mexican Liberalism,” Hispanic American Historical Review, XLV, No. 2 (May 1965), 196-227.

14 Already the subject of Franklin D. Parker's José Cecilio del Valle and the Establishment of the Central American Confederation (Tegucigalpa: 1954), he has more recently been the subject of a full-length biography by Louis E. Bumgartner, José del Valle of Central America (Durham: Duke University Press, 1963).

15 In addition to Luz y Caballero's own voluminous writings, a useful if dated treatment is that of Manuel Sanguily, José de la Luz y Caballero (Habana: Editorial O'Reilly, 1890).

16 Leopoldo Zea, The Latin-American Mind, trans, by James H. Abbott and Lowell Dunham (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963), p. 26.

17 Ibid., p. 27.

18 Davis, Latin American Social Thought, pp. 187-88.

19 See José Guillermo Leguía, Estudios históricos (Santiago: Ercilla, 1939), and also his Hombres e ideas en el Perú (Santiago: Ercilla, 1941).

20 In addition to relevant chapters in Cruz Costa's A History of Ideas in Brazil, one should also consult Ivan Lins, Historia do positivismo no Brasil (São Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional, 1964).

21 Of particular interest is Frei's La política y el espíritu (Santiago: Editorial del Pacífico, 1946). More current political views appear in his Una tercera posición (Lima: Editorial Universitaria, 1960).

22 Harold E. Davis, “Trends in Social Thought in Twentieth Century Latin America,” Journal of Inter-American Studies, I, No. 1 (January 1959), 59.

23 The two standard works in English are Alexander, Robert J., Communism in latin America (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1960)Google Scholar; and Poppino, Rollie, International Communism in Latin America: A History of the Movement 1917-1963 (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964), esp. pp. 97–117 Google Scholar.

24 Intellectual origins of the movement are included in Harry Kantor's Ideology and Program of the Peruvian Aprista Party (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1953).

25 For a full discussion, see Haya de la Torre's ¿Y después de la guerra, qué? (Lima: Editorial P.T.C.M., 1946).

25 Blanksten, George I., Perón's Argentina (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), esp. pp. 276–306 Google Scholar.

27 See the discussion at several points in Lark Loewenstein, Brazil Under Vargas (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1942).

28 “Ideologies of Economic Development in Latin America,” in Albert O. Hirschí man (ed.), Latin American Issues; Essays and Comments (New York: The Twentieth Century Fund, 1961).

29 Davis, Latin American Social Thought, p. 1.

30 W. J. Kilgore, “Latin American Philosophy and the Place of Alejandro Korn,” Journal of Inter-American Studies, II, No. 1 (January I960), 77.

31 Bernard, L. L., “The Social Sciences as Disciplines: Latin America,” Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, I (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1950), 320Google Scholar.

32 Harvey L. Johnson, “Some Aspects of Spanish American Culture,” The Americas, XVII, No. 4 (April 1961), 355.