Latin America

Abstract

Abstract The well-known merengue just quoted eloquently expresses the sentiments of today’s Latin Americans toward their cultural and linguistic identity. Although he is speaking of Dominicans, the popular poet Juan Luis Guerra and his famous music group transcend national identity, as Latin Americans everywhere vote with their dancing feet their approval of Guerra’s critical vision of Latin American identity. The popular poetry of this merengue confirms concepts that were clearly de fined by Latin American thinkers and essayists of the early twentieth century. Instructive in this regard is Guerra’s allusion to the 1492 encounter between Europeans and Native Americans and his definition of today’s Latin Americans as “a gleaming race/black, white and tafna but, who discovered whom?” Guerra’s verse is reminiscent of Mexican essayist Jose Vasconcelos’s 1925 essay entitled “La Raza C6smica.” The recognition of mestizaje, of the mixture of races, is essential in defining Latin America in the twentieth century, as is the transculturaci6n that has molded its identity and is exemplified in the question, “but, who discovered whom?” The concept of transculturation was first defined by Cuban ethnologist Fernando Ortiz in his 1940 book, El contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azucar. By opposing his transculturation to the Anglo-American concept of acculturation, Ortiz identifies a symbiotic Latin American identity, the product and recreation of the many cultures of those who have been in and come to Latin America.