5. Ibero-Americanism and Pan-Americanism

Mundial, Lima, 8 May 1925

I.

Ibero-Americanism sporadically reappears in debates over Spain and Spanish America. It is an ideal or a theme that from time to time engages dialogue among intellectuals of the language (I do not think we can call them, in fact, intellectuals of the race).

But now the discussion is broader and with more intensity. Ibero-American topics have gained a conspicuous interest in the Madrid press. The approach or coordination of the Ibero-American intellectual forces, managed and advocated by some groups of writers in our America, today gives those topics a new and concrete value.

This time the discussion repudiates Ibero-American protocol in some cases and ignores it in others (Don Alfonso‘s official Ibero-Americanism is embodied in the Bourbon and decorative stupidity of an infant, in the courtesan mediocrity of Francos Rodríguez¹). In the dialogue of free intellectuals, Ibero-Americanism is being stripped of all diplomatic ornament. It thus reveals its reality as an ideal of the majority of representatives of intelligence and culture of Spain and Indo-Iberian America.

Pan-Americanism, as such, does not enjoy the support of intellectuals. This abstract and unnatural category does not have any valued and sensitive supporters. It has only a few latent sympathizers. Its existence is purely diplomatic. The most obtuse minds can easily see in Pan-Americanism a robe covering U.S. imperialism. Pan-Americanism does not manifest itself as an ideal of the continent; rather, it is expressed clearly as a natural ideal of the Yankee empire (rather than a great democracy, as the apologists in these latitudes would like to classify it, the United States is a great empire). But despite all this, or rather precisely because of all this, Pan-Americanism exercises a strong influence on Indo-Iberian America. U.S. policy is not too concerned with having the ideals of the continent pass as the ideals of the empire. Nor is it bothered by the lack of an intellectual consensus. PanAmericanism embroiders its propaganda on a solid mesh of interests. U.S. capital invades Indo-Iberian America. Pan-American trade routes are the avenues of this expansion. The currency, technology, machines, and U.S. goods are more prevalent each day in the economy of central and southern nations. It may well be, therefore, that the northern empire looks happily on a theoretical independence of the intellect and spirit of the Indo-Spanish American. Economic and political interests will gradually ensure the adhesion, or at least the submission, of most intellectuals. Meanwhile, the professors and staff of Mr. Rowe‘s PanAmerican Union are sufficient to mobilize Pan-Americanism.

II.

Nothing is more useless than to entertain oneself with platonic confrontations between the Ibero-American and Pan-American ideal. The number and quality of intellectual adherents little serve Ibero-Americanism. Even less does it serve the eloquence of their writers. While Ibero-Americanism rests on sentiments and traditions, Pan-Americanism is based on commercial interests. The Ibero-American bourgeoisie has much more to learn in the school of the new Yankee empire than in the school of the old Spanish nation. The Yankee model, the Yankee style, spreads through Indo-Iberia America, while the Spanish heritage is consumed and lost. The landowner, the banker, the rentier of Spanish America look much more attentively to New York than to Madrid. The exchange rate of the dollar interests them a thousand times more than the thought of Unamuno or Ortega y Gasset‘s Review of the West. For these people who govern the economy and hence the politics of Central and South America, the Ibero-American ideal has little importance. In the best of cases they are ready to join it with Pan-Americanist ideals. Travel agents for Pan-Americanism seem, on the other hand, more efficient, though less picturesque, than the travel agents—those academic choristers—of official Ibero-Americanism, which is the only thing that a prudent bourgeois can take seriously.

III.

The new generation of Hispanic-Americans should clearly and precisely define the meaning of its opposition to the United States. They should declare themselves the enemy of the empire of Dawes and Morgan, not the people or individuals of the United States. The history of North American culture offers us many noble examples of intellectual and spiritual independence. Roosevelt is the trustee of the spirit of the empire, but Thoreau is the trustee of the spirit of humanity. Henry Thoreau, who now receives the homage of European revolutionaries, is also worthy of the devotion of the revolutionaries of our America. Is it the fault of the United States if Ibero-Americans know the thought of Theodore Roosevelt better than that of Henry Thoreau? The United States is indeed the home of Pierpont Morgan and Henry Ford, but it is also the home of Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James, and Walt Whitman. The nation that has produced the greatest masters of industrialism has also produced the best masters of continental idealism. And today the same concerns that move the Spanish American vanguard also move the North American vanguard. The problems of the new Hispanic-American generation are, with variations of place and nuance, the same problems of the new North American generation. Waldo Frank, one of the new men of the north, in his studies of our America, says things that are valid for the people of his America as well as our own.

The new men of the Indo-Iberian America can and should come to an understanding of the new men of Waldo Frank‘s America. The work of the new Ibero-American generation can and should be articulated in solidarity with the work of the new Yankee generation. Both generations overlap. They have different languages and races, but they communicate and bring together the same historic emotions. Waldo Frank‘s America is also, as in our America, an adversary of the empire of Pierpont Morgan and of petroleum.

In contrast, the same historic emotion that brings us closer to this revolutionary America separates us from the reactionary Spain of the Bourbons and Primo de Rivera. What can the Spain of Vásquez de Mella and Maura, the Spanish of Pradera and Francos Rodríguez, teach us? They teach us nothing, not even the method of a great industrialist and capitalist state. The civilization of power does not have its base in Madrid or Barcelona; it has its base in New York, in London, in Berlin. The Spain of the Catholic monarchs absolutely does not interest us. Let Mr. Pradera, Mr. Francos Rodríguez, have her.

IV.

Ibero-Americanism needs a bit more of idealism and a bit more of realism. It has yet to be joined with the new ideals of Indo-Iberian America. It has yet to insert itself in the new historical reality of these peoples. Pan-Americanism is based on the interests of the bourgeois order; Ibero-Americanism should rely on the crowds who work to create a new order. Official Ibero-Americanism will always be an academic, bureaucratic, impotent ideal, with no roots in reality. As an ideal of the nuclei of renovators, it will instead become a militant, active, mass ideal.

Notes

1. Alfonso XIII (1886–1941), from the house of Bourbon, was the king of Spain from 1886 to 1931. José Francos Rodríguez (1862–1931) was a Spanish journalist and politician known for his books on the royal court and monarchy. ↩