Mexico before 1898:
Latin Decline and American Unity in Justo
Sierra's and Francisco Bulnes's Thought*
by Maria Dolores González-Ripoll
Navarro
Abstract. - The loss of the last Spanish colonial territories in America in 1898 showed
the power of the United States and intensified moral discouragement in Latin nations after
the French defeat in Sedan (1870). Although Spain and France shared a similar moral
consequence, the solutions worked out were antagonistic and influenced the ideas about it
overseas. This paper analyses the different ways this conflict was seen in Latin America,
particularly through Justo Sierra and Francisco Bulnes, two of the principal figures of
the Porfiriato regime.
The Spanish defeat in 1898 demonstrated the power of the United
States, the verification of the senior nations' humiliation before a
"newcomer" and the corresponding transfer of the Spanish colonial
defeat to the universe of Latin decline.1 In Europe, this feeling of
inferiority of the countries influenced by Latin culture compared to
the strength of Anglo-Saxon countries was intensified after the German
victory over France in Sedan (1870). The Spanish defeat twenty eight
years later plunged the "Southern" countries into a kind of fatalistic
determinism opposed to the triumphant north "that invades it all",2
referring to the determined expansionist policy patronised by North
American rulers and thinkers of the late years of the nineteenth century.
Among them were Frederick Jackson Turner - father of the frontier
* Study completed within the PB96-0868 Research Project (DGES).
' Lily Litvak, Latinos y anglosajones. Orígenes de una polémica (Barcelona 1980),
p. 37.
2
Gabriel Alomar, "Els dos esperits": Vicente Cacho Viu (ed.), Repensar el 98
(Madrid 1997), p. 92 quoting Edmond Demolins, Λ quoi tient la supériorité des Anglosaxons (Paris 1897, 2nd ed. in 1899), one of the many works published in Europe at the
time on Latin decline, most of them translated into Spanish in several editions.
Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas 37
© Böhlau Verlag Köln/Weimar/Wien 2000
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María Dolores González-Ripoll Navarro
thesis - and Alfred Thayer Mahan, who also supported the search for
a new commercial, territorial and naval frontier for the United States,
particularly in the Pacific and West Indies.3
French and Spanish defeats (Sedan in 1870 and the loss of the
last Spanish colonial territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific in
1898-1899) contributed to the moral discouragement and ideological
collapse of their respective identities, setting up a phenomenon which
was immediately shown in American countries of Spanish colonisation
by means of "pan-Latin" movements of self-defence and the search
for an explanation either historical or structural, or even biological, for
their decline.
Both Spanish and French defeats share a similar moral consequence
- the decline as fruit or seed of a serious identity crisis - although the
assumptions and solutions worked out were antagonistic. Bearing in
mind that Sedan can be considered as an unexpected event whereas the
loss of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines was a disaster foreseen,
the different ways both governments dealt with the new situation
were far apart, as far as the social and political consequences were
concerned.4
In spite of the triumphant discourse maintained by the Spanish
government and the government-controlled press until the conflict was
over, the predictability of the defeat alleviated the pain resulting from
the loss of the overseas territories. This attitude led many intellectuals
to think that the situation would remain as it was since "despite hopes
having been laid on a dramatic change, neither did the monarchy
collapse nor were there immediate changes of the members of the
government". 5 This response contrasted with what had happened in
France where a republican system was established upon the ashes of
the II Empire.
The weak repercussion the loss of overseas territories to the United
States caused in Spanish society was more frustrating than the defeat
itself. This situation implied that 1898 could not be taken as the
3
See the article by María del Rosario Rodríguez Díaz, "El proyecto geopolítico
norteamericano de fin de siglo": María Teresa Cortés/Consuelo Naranjo/José Alfredo
Uribe (eds.), El Caribe y América Latina. El 98 en la coyuntura imperial (Morella 1998),
pp. 167-179.
4
Vicente Cacho Viu, "Francia 1870 - España 1898": idem (ed.), Repensar (note 2),
pp. 77-115.
5
Ibidem, p. 91.
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Mexico before 1898: Latín Decline and American Unity
359
departure point of a renovated Spain and it also confirmed the emptiness
in the collective morale of the people who had healed their wounds far
too quickly and that of the intellectuals who had meant to "save the
country from the abyss they themselves are lying ahead". 6
From Mexico, Francisco Bulnes exonerated Spanish people from the
disaster, blaming instead the myopic view of their writers who spread
false ideas about the real power of United States:
"Si éstos no hubieran afirmado que los norteamericanos formaban una nación de
mercachifles ebrios, sólo capaces de disparar jamones y fragmentos de tabaco
masticado [...] España habría conservado Puerto Rico y Filipinas (y) hubiera recibido
dos ó tres centenares de pesos por abandonar Cuba".7
The distortion of the image of the United States (only Francisco
Pi y Margall' s federalists warned of the impending threat)8 helped
Spaniards to forget what had happened quickly so that Spain did not
even hold a grudge against "the enemy for a day", as José Ortega
y Gasset described the United States.9 This differs from the way the
end-of-the-century conflict was seen in Latin America and particularly
in Mexico.
INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT AND NATIONAL SOLUTIONS
The measures and solutions given to the international dimension
of the conflict were clearly national ones, decided in the countries
directly or indirectly affected by the increasing North American power.
Among other consequences of 1898, it should be pointed out that in
Spain the writers assembled around the "mythical" date (as mythical
6
José María Ridao "Convocar a los fantasmas", El País (Madrid, 7 Dec. 1997),
p. 11.
7
Francisco Bulnes, El porvenir de las naciones latinoamericanas ante las recientes
conquistas de Europa y Norteamérica (estructura y evolución de un continente) (Mexico
1899), p. 130 (emphasis in the original). See the article by David D. Brading "Francisco
Bulnes y la verdad acerca de México en el siglo XIX", Historia Mexicana XLV, 3
(Mexico 1996), pp. 621-651, to highlight the moment the work was written (after the
Spanish defeat by the United States) which led to the emergence of nationalism, whose
rethorical presentation first appeared in Ariel (1900) by José Enrique Rodó.
8
Sylvia L. Hilton, "Los Estados Unidos como modelo. Los federalistas españoles y
el mito americano durante la crisis colonial de 1895-1898": Ibero-americana Pragensia
XXXII (Prague 1998), pp. 11-29.
9
José Ortega y Gasset, "La epopeya castellana, por Ramón Menéndez Pidal": Europa
(22 May 1910), mentioned by Cacho Viu, "Francia 1870" (note 4), p.93.
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and questionable as the generation itself) viewed a problem which
was solved by means of nationalistic and antiscientific expositions.
This attitude favoured the Spanish awakening to the twentieth century.
However, physical proximity to the United States offered a sharper
profile of the interests that were defined in 1898. This led the
governments and intellectuals to focus on history and reality itself
and to assume the civilising project, as Leopoldo Zea defined it
"brainwashing and skin change", 10 to take one's own and, also quoting
Zea, avoid "stop being what one has been and still is, to be something
else".11
Therefore, by the end of the century Mexican intellectuals gave up
the anti Spanish idea suggested, among others, by Ignacio Ramírez and
they claimed their own identity recalling the Spanish past as safeguard
of spiritual values opposed to the United States model of desire for
material progress. Justo Sierra wrote in 1900:
"Nuestros lectores comprenden el interés que las cosas de España nos inspiran; todo
cuanto se refiere a los países latinos nos atañe; todo cuanto con su crecimiento y
poder se relaciona, nos apasiona y tratándose de España, que es nuestra gran cruza
sanguínea, hoy que ya ni de cerca ni de lejos puede ser un factor en la vida política
de los hispanoamericanos, nuestro anhelo sube de punto".12
Since positivism predominated in public opinion from 1867 until
1910, the 1898 event was analysed in Mexico concluding that weaker
people or those badly adapted to the new era were bound to yield to
the stronger. In 1895, the war in Cuba forced the Mexican government,
afraid of an expansion of the United States in the area, to adopt a low
intensity diplomacy 13 based on Ignacio Mariscal's idea. The Mexican
Secretary of Foreign Affairs stated that the most favourable situation
regarding the future of Cuba would be either with Spain or Mexico. At
10
Leopoldo Zea, "Latinoamérica y el problema de la Modernidad": Cuadernos
Americanos 46 (Mexico 1994), pp. 1 1 - 2 8 , here: p. 18.
" Leopoldo Zea, Filosofía de la historia americana (Mexico 1978), p. 274.
12
Justo Sierra, "Cosas de España": idem, Obras Completas, vol. VII (Mexico 1977),
p. 302 (first published in El Mundo Ilustrado I, 21 [Mexico, 27 May 1900]).
13
In an interview given by Vicente Riva Palacio to a Spanish journalist it was pointed
out that "en cuanto a su personalísimo sentir [...], las palabras del general [...] parecen
las del español rancio que siente y piensa como nosotros, que se agita en la atmósfera
presente de odio hacia la insurrección de Cuba" but as a Mexican minister he is obliged to
respect the propaganda both "españoles y filibusteros" as well as "la paz y la armonía"
which presided the relationship with the United States: El Diario Español. Político y
Literario XLVII, 16.123 (30 June 1896).
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Mexico before 1898: Latin Decline and American Unity
361
the same time Spanish and North American interests14 in the country
were trying to be safeguarded and the relations with the "two friends of
the Republic"15 were encouraged not to be upset, since each symbolised
models of tradition and modernity. The Mexican fear of United States
expansion in the area caused a continuous, though timid, approach to
Spain. President Porfirio Diaz, in 1896, in a speech to the Congress
warned about the excesses to which an expansionist application of
the Monroe doctrine would lead and therefore encouraged to support
Spain.16 Therefore, the more hostile North American policy became
towards Spain, the more friendly Mexico became with its former
metropolis,17 whose policy was backed up by Mexican intellectuals
connected with the power circles (an example of this is the admiration
felt by Justo Sierra for Antonio Cánovas, father of the monarchical
Restoration regime in Spain).18
However, it should not be forgotten that an anti-Spanish tradition
was always present among the old guard liberals, a section of the press
related to President Diaz, who thought of a Mexican Cuba,19 and in the
propaganda of the people exiled from the Caribbean islands.20
14
The North American investments were very important as well as the presence
of Spaniards related with trade, see Clara E. Lida (ed.), Tres aspectos de la presencia
española en México durante el Porfiriato (Mexico 1981) and by the same author, "Los
españoles en México. Población, cultura y sociedad": Guillermo Bonfil Batalla (ed.),
Simbiosis de culturas. Los inmigrantes y su cultura en México (Mexico 1993), pp. 4 2 5 452.
15
El Imparcial (13 April 1898), quoted in Claude Dumas, "El discurso de
oposición en la prensa clerical conservadora de México en la época de Porfirio Díaz
(1876-1910)": Historia Mexicana XXXIX, 1 (Mexico 1989), pp. 243 - 256, here: p. 255.
16
In August 1894, Porfirio Díaz had met the leader of the Cuban independence José
Martí.
17
See Rafael Rojas, "La política mexicana ante la guerra de independencia de Cuba,
1895-1898": Historia Mexicana XLV, 4 (Mexico 1996), pp. 783-805.
18
At the same time, Sierra sympathizes with Cuban revolutionaries and defends
an agreement between Spain and Cuba; this was a common position among American
liberals divided between the support of the struggle for Independence and the links with
Spain, a country they felt sorry for. See Claude Dumas, Justo Sierra y el México de su
tiempo, 1848-1912, (Mexico 1986).
19
See Margarita Espinoza Bias, "Cuba Mexicana. El proyecto anexionista de El
Nacionar: Tzintzun 22 (Morella 1995), pp. 158-182; María Dolores González-Ripoll,
"Cuba, México y España (1895-1898): Un triángulo de cuatro lados": Ibero-americana
Pragensia XXXII (Prague 1998), pp. 143-151.
20
The supporters of the Cuban independence critized the Mexican neutrality: "risible
e hipócrita neutralidad que consiste en ayudar a España volviéndole la espalda a toda la
razón que Cuba posee". "Españoles y gachupines": El Imparcial (7 Jan. 1899), quoted in
María Elena Rodríguez de Magis, "La revolución filipina en la prensa mexicana (1898-
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It should be stressed, apart from the official policy, that a section of
Mexican intellectuals took advantage of the clash of interests caused
by the Cuban war to find answers to their own problems through the
analysis of the Spanish defeat. The resulting thesis was that of the
inferiority of Latin people. In order to fight this idea the mestizo was
valued as the group best adapted to American reality.21 Its features
were also used as a way of protecting the mestizo identity against the
strength of United States.22
Following William D. Raat who stated that the different trends found
in Mexico by the end of the century (racism, scientific movement)23
should not be confined to positivism, we will study the attitude of
two relevant characters (Sierra and Bulnes) towards the main topic:
tradition versus modernity, or, as it was put then, the decline of the
Latin countries opposed to the increasing rise of the Anglo-Saxons.24
1 8 9 8 FROM MEXICO: JUSTO SIERRA AND FRANCISCO BULNES
"And here we come up against Mr. Limantour's serious fault: having had on his side
a group of friends linked to his thought and works by means of a communion of
criterion moulded on the anvil of the same method and mental discipline: some of
1899)": Historia Mexicana XIV, 2 (Mexico 1964), pp. 311-320, here: p. 314. See Isabel
G. de Robert, Los clubs cubanos de México en 1894 (Mexico 1895), 20 p.
21
Thesis by Andrés Molina Enriquez, Los grandes problemas nacionales (1909).
About mestizaje see the study by Agustín Basave Benítez, México mestizo. Análisis del
nacionalismo mexicano en tomo a la mestizofilia de Andrés Molina Enriquez (Mexico
1992) which underlines some contradictions in Justo Sierra when he suggests European
inmigration as catalyst of mestizaje and the article by Henri Favre, "Raza y nación en
México, de la independencia a la revolución": Cuadernos Americanos 45, 3 (Mexico
1994), pp. 32-72.
22
See Charles A. Hale, "Los mitos políticos de la nación mexicana. El liberalismo y la
revolución": Historia Mexicana XLVI, 4 (Mexico 1997), pp. 821-837, where he wonders
how national identity and sovereignty can be preserved in the current globalization era.
He cites the ideas developed by Justo Sierra in two articles on "americanismo" written
for La Libertad in 1883 (22 and 27 Dec.) against the imitation of whatever arrived from
the United States set forward by José Maria Vigil.
23
William D. Raat, "Los intelectuales, el positivismo y la cuestión indígena": Historia
Mexicana XX, 3 (Mexico 1971), pp. 412-427.
24
See the article by Mónica Quijada, "Latinos y anglosajones. El 98 en el fin de siglo
sudamericano": Hispania LVII, 2 (Madrid 1997), pp. 589-609.
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Mexico before 1898: Latin Decline and American Unity
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them had been study mates, some others disciples of the former, men of analysis and
observation, who having followed their own path, had ended up together".25
Daniel Cosío Villegas labelled this group of scientific intellectuals
a "scientific mystery" 26 According to different authors, the list starts
with figures close to José Yves Limantour (Rosendo Pinedo, Pablo
Macedo, Miguel Macedo, Joaquín Casasús) who were joined by Justo
Sierra, Enrique Creel, Francisco Bulnes, Rafael Reyes Spinola (chief
editor of El Universal and El Impartial),21 Porfirio Parra, Manuel
Flores, Carlos Diaz Dufoo 28 and up to forty other names of "wise
men on a salary" and "pens for hire". 29 The political beginning of
this "movement" traces back to 1880, when a group of young and
future supporters of Díaz (Justo Sierra, Pablo Macedo, Rosendo Pineda,
Francisco Bulnes and Jorge Hammeken Mexia) first set foot in the
Chamber of Deputies. Their political programme had been published
in the newspaper La Libertad and in 1892 a new political party emerged,
La Unión Liberal, assembling the above mentioned members already
turned into theoreticians of the Porfiriato. 30
We are particularly interested in two of them because of their
widely spread, original and too often polemical ideas: the schoolteacher
Justo Sierra and the versatile engineer Francisco Bulnes. Despite being
members of the "scientific movement", they shared the same age Sierra had been born in Campeche in 1848 in a well-to-do family
whereas Bulnes, whose grandparents were Spanish, had been born a
year earlier in the capital - and above all independence of criterion
to analyse the reality of their time. They both understood better than
25
In Carlos Diaz Dufoo, Limantour (Mexico 1910), p. 83. Likewise François-Xavier
Guerra points out as a common social feature to the central and original nucleus of
scientists the meeting in the capital to study a career, instead of social origin or race,
México. Del Antiguo Régimen a la Revolución, (Mexico 1988).
26
In Moisés González Navarro, "Las ideas raciales de los científicos, 1890-1910":
Historia Mexicana XXXVII, 4 (Mexico 1988), pp. 5 6 5 - 5 8 3 , here: 580.
27
See Ariel Rodríguez Kuri, "El discurso del miedo. El Imparcial y Francisco
I. Madero": Historia Mexicana XL, 4 (Mexico 1991), pp. 6 9 7 - 7 4 0 .
28
See Alfonso de María y Campos, "Porfirianos prominentes. Orígenes y años de
juventud de ocho integrantes del grupo de los científicos, 1846-1876": Historia Mexicana
XXXIV, 4 (Mexico 1985), pp. 6 1 0 - 6 6 1 .
29
Others were Alberto Escobar, Gabino Barreda, Vicente Riva Palacio, Telesforo
García, Ricardo García Granados, O. Peust, Andrés Molina Enriquez, Roberto Esteva
Ruíz, Alfonso Ruíz Velazco, Matías Romer, etc. In Moisés González Navarro, "Las
ideas raciales" (note 26).
30
Leopoldo Zea, Apogeo y decadencia del positivismo en México (Mexico 1944).
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María Dolores González-Ripoll Navarro
any of their contemporaries the scope of the North American-Spanish
conflict in 1898 and wrote about the way the power of the United States
would affect Mexico and the rest of the continent.
Francisco Bulnes, renowned for his great learning in the different
fields of knowledge and celebrated for his witty and categorical statements, was chief editor of La Libertad and editor in El siglo XX, Mexico
Financiero and La Prensa. He published in 1899 his well-known work
with the explicit title El porvenir de las naciones latinoamericanas
ante las recientes conquistas de Europa y Norteamérica (estructura
y evolución de un continente). Not only did he describe an amazing
theory of humankind being divided into three different races defined
by their traditional diet of wheat, rice or corn but he also analysed the
reasons for Spanish defeat and supported the Monroe doctrine as the
only way to prevent European expansion in America. Bulnes was blunt
with the ex-metropolis, where "sound and intelligent patriotism advised
avoidance of the war and the acknowledgement of what had already
been lost, Cuba". 31 Just like any conquering nation, Spain was bound
"to suffer more humiliations than she has caused" since there had been
established a system of "parasitism of the metropolis, maintained by
means of injustices and scaffolds". 32
Bulnes devoted a chapter to the two dangers that lay in wait for
American territory. One of them "authentic", real, coming from Europe
which was being solved with the application of the Monroe doctrine.
"Si la América Latina es aún independiente y puede serlo indefinidamente ante la
exasperante expansión de Europa, lo debe a la doctrina Monroe [...] La alianza
anglosajona es actualmente un hecho científico, preciso, inexpugnable, inviolable,
que se impone a los mismos aliados y que impone al mundo entero".33
The "potential" danger to be aware of were the United States though
Bulnes seemed rather sceptical of a military invasion of a country
with no need for more land and no need to spread any religious
belief. On the other side, Justo Sierra considered the granting to
North American Baptist missionaries of the teacher training colleges in
Coahuila a dangerous form of "cultural Americanism" and advocated
the "preservation of the Latin spirit of our nationality". 34
31
Bulnes, El porvenir de las naciones (note 7), p. 188.
Ibidem, p. 138.
33
Ibidem, pp. 151-152.
34
Justo Sierra en La Libertad (6 March 1883) quoted in: Hale, "Los mitos políticos"
(note 22), p. 835.
32
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Mexico before 1898: Latin Decline and American Unity
365
Bulnes, on the other hand, also found a real danger in elements
related to Latin people or "weak nations":
"[...] no son Europa y los Estados Unidos, con sus ambiciones los enemigos [...], no
hay más enemigos terribles que nosotros mismos. Nuestros adversarios [...] se llaman:
nuestra tradición, nuestra historia, nuestra herencia morbosa, nuestro alcoholismo,
nuestra educación contraria al desarrollo del carácter".35
Bulnes neutralised any threat from United States since he could not
help admiring the model of justice and progress they represented, which
was shared by many American thinkers at that moment. The treaty
signed in Paris which ended the Spanish-North American war, led
him to exclaim that "among all nations, the United States, not having
reached perfection in the sense of justice, are placed in the highest
moral level of our present civilisation". 36 In the final conclusion in his
analysis he foresaw a "sad" future for most Latin American nations,
with no other choice but "barbarism fostered by misery and civil war". 37
Mexico, however, could find a way out if, among other things, it
promoted immigration to give rise to "a democratic agriculture".38
In a more thorough analysis than Bulnes's, Justo Sierra often wrote
about Spain, the legacy to America and the relevance of the United
States for the future of the continent. All his works were carried
out from the understanding of historical processes though not without
censure and calls to preserve one's own but not ignoring other people's
progress. In 1892, during the commemoration of the Discovery of
America, Sierra stated his affection for Spain as the mother of the
other America and standard bearer of the Latin "race" 39 and expressed
a certain mistrust of the United States:
"Lo que deseamos de veras los mexicanos en todo esto, es que nuestros primos
no tengan ni la oportunidad ni la necesidad de convertirse en potencia guerrera:
agricultores, comerciantes, industriales, estos son los vecinos que nos convienen". 40
Sierra, who was a man of conciliatory nature, lamented José Martí's
death, a friend of his since the Cuban leader visited Mexico for the first
35
36
37
38
39
Francisco Bulnes, El porvenir de las naciones, (note 7), p. 9.
Ibidem, p. 161.
Ibidem, p. 353.
Ibidem, p. 374.
See the interesting work by Dumas, Justo Sierra y el México de su tiempo (note
18).
40
Justo Sierra, "Inglaterra y los Estados Unidos": idem, Obras Completas, voi. VII
(note 12), p. 20 (first published in El Mundo [Mexico, 23 April 1899]).
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time in 1875.41 He strongly believed Spain would feel free the very day
freedom for Cuba was agreed. At the same time he glimpsed a difficult
future on both sides of the Atlantic because, as he wrote in 1897, if
"para ella (España) la insurrección de Cuba es el problema de hoy: ¿no es para
nosotros el problema de mañana? [...] Cuba, separada por la fuerza de su propia
conexión con España e incapaz de mantenerse por si sola, no puede dejar de gravitar
hacia la Unión Americana y ésta, según la misma ley natural, no puede expelerla de su
seno. Desde entonces los que observamos, perfectamente escépticos frente a las frases
y terriblemente inquietos frente a los síntomas, la actitud en apariencia divergente
del pueblo y el gobierno angloamericano, no podemos dejar de comprender hacia
cuál constelación se dirige la estrella solitaria, ni nos es permitido no prever que
clausurado así el golfo mexicano, son muy probables nuestro vasallaje mercantil y
nuestra dependencia económica". 42
Once the conflict was over and the treaty of Paris signed, Sierra
started to worry about matters related to the internal organisation of
Cuba and above all the achievement of the independence promised by
the United States. He had already stated his ideas about the precarious
situation of independence connected with the Philippines conflict where
"the freedom of the fearless ones" had to face the independence of
the powerful, who unfortunately destroyed that "freedom of the small
ones". Sierra hoped that during the organisational period of the new
society life could be lived with absolute freedom since, as he wrote
in June 1899, "so far the Americans are becoming so similar to the
Spaniards as far as repression is concerned [that] we would like to feel
the differences during the organisational period".43 In the same way, he
linked the future of Cuba to that of Mexico, very much interested as
he was in the pacification of the island, because "Latin people pushed
towards peace find the track to prosperity and long term freedom arrives
in the guard's van".44
41
See José de J. Núñez y Domínguez, Martien México (Mexico 1934). After several
decades of the new century La Habana and Mexico honoured Sierra and Marti exchanging
sculptures of the two men. See Homenaje de la Universidad de La Habana a Don Justo
Sierra (La Habana 1945).
42
Justo Sierra, "D. Antonio Cánovas del Castillo. Discurso leído en la sesión dedicada
por el Concurso Científico Nacional a la memoria del señor don Antonio Cánovas del
Castillo, el 17 de agosto de 1897": idem, Obras Completas, vol. V, (Mexico 1977),
pp. 227-236, here: p. 234 (first published in: El Imparcial [Mexico, 18 Aug. 1897]).
43
Justo Sierra: "La resistencia filipina": idem, Obras Completas, vol. VII (Mexico
1977), p. 39 [first published in: El Mundo (Mexico, 4 June 1899)].
44
Justo Sierra, "Problemas de la independencia": idem, Obras Completas, vol. VII
(Mexico 1977), p. 136 (first published in: El Mundo [Mexico, 22 Oct. 1899]).
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Mexico before 1898: Latin Decline and American Unity
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Sierra mistrusted the United States and the model they symbolised
for the real progress of the American countries of Spanish tradition,
which made him convert to Latin spiritualism as a barrier against
some invading influences. He was not far away from his Spanish
contemporaries praising the mystical richness of the Latin world as
opposed to the material progress of the Anglo-Saxons: in Spain, El
Quijote became a myth and Sierra pointed out the privileged position
of poetry, art and philosophy in the crusade towards a Latin renaissance
since "poets must use their lyre to civilise, to control and take monsters
after them to the peak of the sacred mountain where the ideal is
worshipped". 45
Sierra did not confine the essence of the Latin world to the Spanish
influence, since he also considered France and Italy as part of it.
An example of this is his desire to include these two countries in
a Latin American summit. In Madrid, Sierra made an opening speech
including a surprising panegyric on France and insisted in what became
the motto of the congress: the similarities of Latin people's character
and the urgent and indispensable solidarity among all of them to fight
the temptations for independence whether they came from "our own
continent or outside" 46 . This was the particular way Sierra understood
the essence of the formula created in Washington "America for the
Americans". 47
45
In Dumas, Justo Sierra, (note 18), vol. I, p. 559.
Ibidem, vol. II, p. 21.
47
Justo Sierra, "España y América. Discurso del representante de México en nombre
de todos los pueblos que asisten al Congreso Hispanoamericano de Madrid, el 10 de
noviembre de 1900": idem, Obras Completas, vol. V, (Mexico 1977), pp. 2 7 7 - 2 8 3 ,
here: p. 280.
44
Unauthenticated
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Unauthenticated
Download Date | 6/17/17 9:55 AM