I.3.6 DIGITAL ARCHIVE 838973
One of the first and foremost historians of Brazilian literature, José Veríssimo (1857–1916) published this article the same year that he established the Academia Brasileira de Letras, and three years prior to the publication of História da literatura brasileira, his best-known work (1915). Here, Veríssimo recognizes books and magazines with a continental reach that convey the authenticity of Latin American thought. By the same token, Veríssimo realizes that the region’s intellectuals are in many respects the products of European thought. He also more specifically considers the work of two writers included in this volume, Bomfim and García Calderón, reviewing at great length one of the latter’s works [SEE DOCUMENT I.2.3] in which Latin American caudillismo is condemned. This translation is based on the original article from O Imparcial [(Rio de Janeiro), December 20, 1912]. It was later published in J. A. Barbosa, ed., Cultura, literatura e política na América Latina [(São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1986), 32–36).
PERHAPS IT IS AN AUSPICIOUS SYMPTOM of a Latin American renaissance and a noble ambition to emerge from the isolation in which the region has long dwelled that so many new publications have appeared in which Latin Americans study various aspects [of their region] as well as seek to inform the world all about life in their countries.
Beyond works of pure literature, I have around me several books, published in the last two years: La monarquía en América [Monarchy in America], two remarkable volumes about the controversial question of attempts to implant a monarchy in the Spanish colonies by the Venezuelan Carlos Villanueva; El porvenir de la América Latina [The Future of Latin America] by the Argentinean, Manuel Ugarte; La evolución política y social de Hispano-América [Social and Political Evolution of Spanish America] by the Uruguayan Abel J. Perez; and La evolución sociológica argentina [Argentina’s Sociological Evolution] by the Argentinean José Ingenieros.
I know of other works in the same vein, but have not read them.
Helping to spread knowledge of Latin America in Europe are periodicals that pay tribute to Latin American intellectuals. [One of them is] Mundial, whose director is Rubén Darío, “the acknowledged master of the new poetry and one of the major lyricists of all times in the Spanish language,” in the opinion of Francisco García Calderón. [Another publication] La Revista de América [American Review], directed by the same Mr. Calderón [and] on which several Brazilian writers collaborate, [was] recently inaugurated in Paris. Generally produced with an abundance of studies and reflections and revealing the existence in this America of distinguished thinkers, the works mentioned above are books, and not mere pamphlets. Even so, their authors are all, or almost all, exclusively intellectual products of Europe, and I say that not knowing whether this fact decreases their value as Latin American thinkers. They were mentally formed in Europe; they live in Europe; they write in Europe; they are published in Europe. They are Americans only by birth, perhaps by ancestry, and mainly by inclination. This, however, is not enough to make them American, with all the constraints, troubles, and disappointments that Americanism in situ must bear. And this is exactly the weakness of their Latin Americanism at a distance. Incidentally, I do not blame them. More than anything else, in my heart, I envy them. I am even certain that a good part of the intellectuals who are my countrymen envy them along with me. The fact, however, seems notable as an indication of the deep disharmony of Latin American liberal spirits with their native environment.
A book written by Mr. Manoel Bomfim [SEE DOCUMENT I.6.1], A América Latina [Latin America]; another one with the same title written by Mr. Silvio Romero in a purely polemical spirit against the former; Pan-Americanismo [Pan Americanism] and other essays by Mr. Oliveira Lima, notably his Formation historique de la nationalité brésilienne [Historical Formation of Brazilian Nationality]—this is all, aside from some pamphlets with little depth, that we Brazilians have contributed to the body of sociological information about our America.
The Peruvian writer Mr. F. Garcia Calderón [SEE DOCUMENT I.2.3], his country’s diplomat in Europe, director of Revista de América, publicist and critic, recently published Les democratiés latines de l´Amérique [The Latin Democracies of America], which he was kind enough to send me. Because of his knowledge of Latin America (including Brazil), his broad understanding of our past and present, but also because of its artistry (which is entirely French), its composition, and the charming qualities of the author’s imagination, Mr. Calderon’s book is one of the most interesting written on the topic.
The book, as detailed and complete as its size allowed, outlines the evolution of Latin America, its initial formation and development, including: independence, military anarchy, the advent of democracy, caudillismo, dictatorship, political anarchy, intellectual evolution, an analysis of the Latin American spirit and its possible conflict with the German, North American, and Japanese competition here, examining also problems of unity [and] race, as well as political and economic problems. The desired solutions to these problems bring Mr. Calderón to optimistic conclusions.
The author not only advocates with conviction, but also believes it possible to create large aggregations of the peoples of Central America, a Confederation of the Antilles, a Great Colombia (Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia), a Confederation of the Pacific (Peru, Bolivia, and Chile), and a Confederation of the Rio de la Plata (Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay). These [alliances] would provide a necessary defense against North American ambitions—a danger which, according to the Peruvian sociologist, is apparent to all but the blind—as well as against possible European enterprises and the already manifest appetites of the Japanese.
. . .
Unlike the author, I am not an optimist. I confess to not having such robust faith in the future of Latin America as he has. Perhaps because I am too aware of the present conditions—more so than a healthy philosophy would warrant—I still find in [the author’s writings] an excess of latitude or impartiality when he judges men and things American. I wonder if, in the eyes of the world, we are not insulting intelligence in the names of objectivity and relativity. Under the pretext of understanding everything, excusing everything, we come to renounce judgment, since the distinction between good and evil has been eliminated in our spirit. Having arrived at this point, historical determinism would lead us to philosophical nihilism.
Probably Latin American societies are as Mr. Calderón depicts them, and maybe the only regime in a given moment that was suitable for them was, as he asserts, dictatorship, a strong government of one to contain and shape the incoherent masses into more progressive forms.
I, however, find him too tolerant of people like [Venezuela’s Antonio] Guzmán Blanco and his ilk, strongmen who, in spite of the arrogant force of the power they exercised, did not succeed in improving the conditions of their countries, as Mr. Calderón himself acknowledges. After [these strongmen,] their countries continued to be more or less the same, only richer in tragic examples of administrative plundering, insolent illegality, abominable cruelty, and political shamelessness. The case of Porfirio Díaz in Mexico typifies dictatorship’s incapacity as a constructive force in America. After thirty years in power, when the critical moment arrived for this dictator, as it must for all, he did not even have the material force to defend himself and left his country, with the possible exception of its capital, morally and politically in the same situation in which he had seized it: in a word, barbarous.
No, it is not dictatorships that will rescue American democracies. Rather, as Mr. Calderón knows and confirmed earlier, only the general law of human progress, leading slowly from caudillismo to industrialization [will save our democracies]. Just as we were discovered and molded by Europe, we will be regenerated by her. In the future, it will be European immigrants, coming in masses who will transform the miserable conditions of our political life. And this because their labor requires legality, order, and peace, shunning the adventures that were in fact the most flourishing industry in Latin America: political and military caudillismo.
Moreover, unlike Mr. Calderón, I cannot discern any purposes, projects, or political ideals in the caudillos of Latin America. Even taking into account the circumstances that produced them, the more I learn about them, the more they look to me like predatory animals. To catch and hold their prey, they instinctively develop the same cunning, strength, and courage as their relatives, the great felines.
Rich in ideas and judgments, [presenting] very interesting suggestions for our consideration as Latin Americans, Mr. F. García Calderón’s book deserves more than this quick review to which I am forced to limit myself.