* It was Octavio Paz's thesis that Latin America had lost its compass in the 18th century when we went from baroque to neoclassical without any cultural process of our own. In a recent book - El Viejo Malestar del Nuevo Mundo (Ariel, 2023), Mauricio García Villegas makes it very clear: "For the Baroque Spaniard, reality is in the images that pass through his mind. Instead of seeing in order to believe, Don Quixote believes in order to see; he does not seek the truth, he corroborates it". This was an attitude towards the world that had deeply per- meated the region, allowing the creative fusion between the pre-Columbian and the Iberian -the American Baroque-, in a position antagonistic to the Enlightenment, for being contrary to "what was imagined by the scientific spirit that flourished in northern Europe", adds the same author. Of course, there was a "Catholic Enlightenment", seeking to reconcile faith and reason, tradition and modernity, but the tensions between those two worldviews did not disappear. Spain and Latin America were crossed, out of step. We did not have, as architect Cristián Fernández Cox would say, "an appropriate modernity".
Latin America seemed to have lost its way, after the 60's splendor in the arts and culture, and when it finally seemed that destiny was in its favor with great names in literature, music, visual arts, and architecture; and with greater connection with geography, native peoples and mestizo culture, just then -ironies of destiny-, dictatorships proliferated.
W Chile, Santiago, Plaza General Bulnes. 1936-1952. W Chile, Santiago, General Bulnes Square, 1936-1952.
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Patrimonio / Heritage
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