The interplay of ethnicity, race, and nationality has long preoccupied historians of Latin America. Much of the resulting literature has examined how Latin Americans have embraced, resisted, or refashioned racialist ideologies to suit different agendas. In doing so, these studies have highlighted both the constructed nature of racial categories and the ways in which elites have alternately seen the region’s complex racial makeup as an obstacle to, or the foundation for, the forging of national identities.
This volume, edited by Jorge J. E. Gracia, ushers another set of voices into the conversation. Most of the contributors are specialists in philosophy and have published extensively in the area of Hispanic American thought. Nine of the volume’s chapters examine individual thinkers from Hispanic America who, in Gracia’s view, were influential in shaping contemporary understandings of race and its relationship to nationality. Selected for treatment are Bartolomé de Las Casas, Simón Bolívar, Andrés...
