Juan Bautista Alberdi, Americanist

Abstract

August 29, 1960, marked exactly a century and a half since the birth of Juan Bautista Alberdi, and more than a century since his pen produced a book of unique importance in the history of Argentina and of America in general — Bases y puntos de partida para la organización política de la República Argentina. This work, published in 1852, is one of those rare books in the history of the human spirit which capture the sense and meaning of the experience of an age. The age, in this case, is that of the literary generation of 1837 in Argentina, an era which suggests some analogies to the almost equally famous generation of 1842 in Chile, as well as to that of the New-England Transcendentalists. The common element in all three is the birth of an American spirit in letters and thought.