Increasingly evident in the past quarter century is the philosophical as well as the political maturity of Mexico, and to the problem of what is Mexican reality thoughtful and articulate pensadores, native and naturalized, such as Antonio Caso, Alfonso Reyes, Samuel Ramos, Octavio Paz, Edmundo O’Gorman, Leopoldo Zea, and José Gaos, have addressed themselves with remarkable acumen, and even with ruthless objectivity. Possibly none of their writings offers so unsparing an evaluation of Mexican character as El perfil del hombre y la cultura en Mexico, by the late professor of social philosophy in the National University of Mexico, Samuel Ramos (1897-1959). First published in 1934, with subsequent editions in 1938 and 1951, it is here ably presented in English.
Its thirteen chapters are essentially as many essays which apply a merciless scalpel to the collective psyche of the Mexican people. A detailed commentary on this exploration of a complex national personality would extend unduly the length of this review. It is a task which Professor T. B. Irving’s illuminating introduction undertakes with some success. In essence Ramos seems to assert that the psychic peculiarities of the Mexican soul result from reactions which strive to conceal a deep-seated inferiority complex. The Mexican character, fissured by the borrowed civilization of the upper and middle classes and by the diluted indigenous culture of the masses, conspicuously displays traits of self-denigration, imitation, individualism, dualism, and an immutability, the latter especially among the numerous Indian elements. Mexicans continue to live “outside their own reality” and their Europeanism is a “greenhouse culture.”
To combat this disordered state the Mexican must fathom his true essence and then selectively adapt the European and nativistic values which best befit his nature and which best promote the growth of his personality. This process has really begun, for Mexico’s slow emancipation from European influence dates from the violent phase of its Revolution, the decade 1910-1920, when World War I and Spengler’s Decline of the West cracked the image of European cultural superiority. But above all the Mexican must eschew the “abusive mechanization of life” and its strict regulation by technology which so clearly threaten the peoples of North America and is a noxious element in American acculturation.
Such forthright self-revelations of Hispanic American psyches as this one of Mexicans by Ramos are highly useful for the understanding of the English speaking world in general and of Americans in particular. In some cases the effectiveness of the diagnosis for the comprehension of the uninstructed alien is enhanced by minor revisions of the original form. Here, for example, the final short essay discussing “Pedantry” which, in application, is universal rather than strictly Mexican, fails to provide the cumulative impact of the author’s thought on his foreign audience that a skillful summing up or conclusion might supply. Even the second of the appendices (the first is an extended book review of a work by Justo Sierra), a disquisition of Ramos entitled “Concerning Mexican Character,” might have served this purpose if used as an integral part of the Mexican professor’s stimulating analysis of his countrymen now available to the English reading public in a pleasing format.
