Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In the early twentieth century, Europe—which had, until that time, been Latin America’s cultural referent par excellence—was deeply immersed in a devastating socio-economic crisis brought about as a result of the First World War. Fascism and [...]

Uruguayan essayist, historian, and critic Alberto Zum Felde sums up his position on the possible origin of a culture unique to the South American continent. He looks to two major influences: Spanish culture since the time of colonization and French [...]

In this anonymous article, visual artists Jacobo Borges, Luis Guevara Moreno, and Julio Pacheco voice their opinions of the image of Simón Bolívar the Liberator created by José Campos Biscardi. Guevara Moreno remarks on the conditions that make [...]

The prologue to Forjando patria: pro nacionalismo, published in 1916 by leading Mexican anthropologist and archaeologist Manuel Gamio, compares the forging of metal out of an amalgam of bronze and steel to the ideal societal intermixing of Mexicans [...]

This document is Edgar Negret’s response to the press release from the Ministry of Public Works in which he set forth points related to the controversy generated about Abstract art in Colombia based on the monument to Bolívar, a sculpture the [...]

The sculptor, Edgar Negret, refuted the statements made by a group of historians from the Academia Colombiana de Historia [Colombian History Academy], led by Germán Arciniegas, on the Monument to Bolívar commissioned for the celebration of the [...]

Appearing in El Espectador, a Colombian daily newspaper with national circulation, this is an article on a press conference held by members of the Academia Colombiana de Historia [Colombian History Academy] through which they took their criticism of [...]

In this chapter, Laureano Vallenilla Lanz exemplifies how from a sociological point of view Simón Bolívar’s idea—first articulated in the Constitution he gave Bolivia in 1825—had been applied by the leaders of several Latin American countries [...]

This text by the anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro establishes the following theoretical categories: “testimony-peoples,” “new peoples,” “transplanted peoples,” and “emerging peoples” as the basis for the [...]