Nineteenth-Century Nation Building and the Latin American Intellectual Tradition: A Reader

This will be a splendid and useful book for teachers of courses focusing on the nineteenth century who have been frustrated at the lack of accessible sources in English. The selections are good: there are extracts from Simón Bolívar, José María Luis Mora, Andrés Bello, José Victorino Lastarria, Francisco Bilbao, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Esteban Echeverría, Lucas Alamán, Juan Alberdi, Eugenio María de Hostos, Juan Montalvo, José Martí, Soledad Acosta de Samper, Justo Sierra, Euclydes da Cunha, Clorinda Matto de Turner, Francisco Bulnes, and Alcides Arguedas. In the words of the editor-translators, they have tried to let these “writers and thinkers speak for themselves in their own voices, without proscribing their expression beyond choosing the writers, selecting the work to represent them, and executing the translations” (p. vii). The criteria for selection appear to have been that the author should have some fame, a concern with the civilization-barbarism debate, and an...