Una vision de America: La obra de German Arciniegas desde la perspectiva de sus contemporaneos.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara

Born in 1990 in Bogota, Colombia, German Arciniegas continues to be one of Latin America's most widely read, controversial, and thought-provoking intellectuals. Oublished in honor of Arciniegas's ninetieth birthday, this volume contains articles about and letters to Arciniegas by a variety of critics, philosophers, politicians, historians, and other leaders. The first part is devoted to Colombian writers such as Luis Eduardo Nieto Caballero, Jaime Posada, Carlos Lleras Restrepo, Javier Ocampo Lopez, Belisario Betancur, and Jorge Orlando Melo. The second is devoted to non-Colombians--Jose Vasconcelos, Alfonso Reyes, Victor Raul Llaya de la Torre, Roberto Esquenazi-Mayo, Enrique Anderson Imbert, Harry Levin, and Mario Vargas Llosa, among many others--and attests to the impact that Arciniegas has had not only in Colombia, but throughout Latin Amercia, as well as in Europe and the United States. The large number of Argentinians reflects the influence that Arciniegas has had on Argentine thought.

Like many of Latin America's great essayists of the first part of the century, Arciniegas was an educator and served as his country's Minister of Education. His duties brought him into contact with many great thinkers (Thomas Mann, Jules Romain, Alfonso Reyes) and contributed to his belief in the fundamental unity of Latin America and in the universality of the Latin American experience. For Arciniegas, Latin America, with its immigrants from all over the world was the "new Europe." At the same time, Arciniegas was--and is--a vigorous defender of America's native cultures.

As J David Suarez Torres has pointed out in an article appearing in Latin American Writers, Arciniegas' most controversial stance is his criticism of Spain with respect to the Conquest. In Arciniegas' view...