Introduction

Abstract

Whereas field of cultural studies, in narrative memorialized by Stuart Hall, has always been considered as having originated in Birmingham, England, Latin American cultural studies have an origin independent of legacy of Birmingham School. They emerged primarily from within social sciences in 1960s, when important thinkers such as Darcy Ribeiro, Paulo Freir?, Roberto Fern?ndez Retamar, and Carlos Monsiv?is fused what had been traditional cultural essay form with sociological research to account for events then taking place in continent. These systems of thought included dependency theory, liberation theology, pedagogy of oppressed, and critique of internal colonialism, among various critical tendencies. These lines of thought were combined with innovative pro duction of literary and popular culture in 1960s, including boom street theater, cinema novo, and nueva canci?n movement in popular music, to produce a new understanding of both symbolic production and social imaginarles on continent, thus systematizing an original way of under standing cultural reality to explain period as one of a struggle between imperialism and (Latin American) nation(s) and, within nation itself, between capitalism and socialism. Latin American cultural studies question and critique symbolic production and living experiences of social reality in continent. This is not new; it is rooted in foundation of Latin American nations themselves. Heavily influenced by French Enlightenment thinking, Latin American independence ideologues seldom distinguished between philosophy, literature, politi cal tracts, and other forms of written knowledge. Given heritage of the lettered city (see Rama, 1984; Franco, 2002), they enjoyed enormous political respect. They benefited from what Avelar (1999:12) calls the traditional aura of letrado, since intellectuals were not competing with ideologues but ideologues themselves, producers of symbolic capital.1 This independence enabled them to feel equally at home in all kinds of genres and to cover terrains currently circumscribed by traditional disciplines to social scientists or philosophers. Letrados, for most part criollos, were early protagonists of