Best known for his commentaries on American, Canadian, and British politics, French political writer André Siegfried (1875–1959) here shifts his focus to the Latin American republics. He wrote this text as the introduction to his book Amérique latine [(Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1934)], which compares the cultural and societal differences of Latin Americans and North Americans. Accepting as a point of departure that the term “North America” evokes both a geographical personality and a kind of Anglo-Saxon society, Siegfried is the first to suggest the excessive simplification that the name “Latin America” conveys. Indeed, his insight—revisited and reworked by other French scholars decades later—stresses an essential question: Why use the term in the singular? The present translation is based on the book’s second edition [“Choses d’Amérique,” collection publiée sous la direction de l’Institut des études américaines (du Comité France-Amérique) (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1949), 7–11].
“The Americas” is the colloquial term that was used a long time ago to refer to the New World. There is, in fact, a North America: the term North America, which is rejected by English imperialists—for reasons that are not hard to understand— evokes a geographical personality and a kind of Anglo-Saxon society that encompasses both the United States and the Dominion of Canada. But does that mean that we can speak in the same manner of a South America or a Latin America? Is it not an excessive simplification to use the term in the singular? After several trips to Mexico and Cuba, I had the opportunity to visit the Antilles, Venezuela, the Isthmus of Panama, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil. My travels in the region led me to believe that these countries have enough in common to allow us to group them together within a shared Latin American milieu, which justifies the title of this essay.
Dare I continue? Despite all their differences, isn’t it true that these two parts of the continent share certain features that affirm their connection to one another? Is there not, also in the singular, a “New World” as distinct from the other continental masses of Europe and Asia? I have sensed and almost felt this when—after seven or eight trips to the United States—I first saw the mighty backbone of the Andes and then the vastness of the Pampas.
A comparison of the two Americas thus helps to explain both of them. From this perspective, we can see that Pan Americanism—when purged of the imperialist virus that transforms it into a euphemism for the political ambitions of a single nation—contains an essential truth, in that it expresses the fundamental unity of the American continent. The Latin and the Anglo-Saxon transplants of the New World all breathe the same air, stand on the same soil, and rely on a similar political instinct to react to international problems. Monsieur de la Palice1 would affirm that they are both unquestionably “American.” But the resemblance between the two Americas stops there, since history has dealt each of them a very different destiny. The Anglo-Saxon Protestants of the North and the Latino Catholics of the South have lived and evolved in very different social environments that were inherited from different civilizations; to one extent or another, they are all a product of their places of origin. Those strong, enduring cultural bonds therefore help us to understand their links to old Europe: the British influence can be seen in the United States; the Latin inspiration, whose roots run deep in Mediterranean nations, is alive and well in all the countries that were colonized by the Spanish and the Portuguese. Buenos Aires and New York share a geographical kinship as two American cities. But when we consider Buenos Aires, Montevideo, or Rio on the one hand, and Barcelona, Marseilles, or Paris on the other, it is clear that there is another form of kinship involved, one that is based on the Mediterranean and Latin bonds the cities share. It is true that the geographical axis of the American continent runs North-South, but we should not forget the cultural axis that spans the globe from East to West.
This, then, is the compass that should be used to study Latin America. To fully understand it, one must have an almost physical sense of this new continent; one must become familiar with the taste of the air, the color of the mountains and the plains; and, with regard to commerce, one must connect with its spirit of optimism, boldness, and agility. . . . But it is also important [albeit] difficult to reach back through time and space to understand its spiritual roots. Just as one must know Latin in order to speak French correctly and be familiar with Puritan England in order to understand the United States, one should be well-acquainted with Spain and Portugal if one wishes to have an intelligent understanding of the Latin societies living on those distant shores. The fact is that not many can see South America from its two different perspectives. The North Americans, who are at ease in economic circumstances similar to their own, cannot quite understand the Latin spirit and, more importantly, are unable to respect it. The Europeans, on the other hand, find it easier to relate to the similarity of the Mediterranean culture, but tend to delay any true assimilation until South Americans behave like true Americans in the economic arena. Though they express a genuine desire to understand and an instinctive affinity, I can’t help thinking that there is a long way to go; maybe the pages to come will not accomplish much.
1
Monsieur de la Palice, whose name was the basis for the French term lapalissade (truism), was a sixteenth-century French military officer whose life and death were fictionalized in a humorous song that gained wide popular appeal. His name has been traditionally invoked as a trope for that which is blatantly obvious.—Ed.