Remarkable for the wealth of detail and for the variety and intensity of fact about Latin America, this volume focuses upon the ambiguities in Latin American history. In attempting to separate ambiguities from error and misunderstanding, Mauro encourages alternative explanations and stresses the variety of interpretations which can be built on the same facts.
Beginning with a treatment of geography, demography and psychological ambiguities, the author continues with a masterly discourse on all of the elements which make up the record of societies. People are shown in search of identities of the “je,” origin and environment; the “moi,” social and intellectual affinities; and the “nous,” family, kin and sexual roles. Mauro also discusses natural resources, the remnants of both feudal and capitalist traditions, early and recent industrial development, and their predicted as well as unforeseen effects.
In elaborating on the grand corps—the Church, the army and the university—Mauro finds ambiguity everywhere. Local conditions and traditions are subject to new influences from abroad or from altered conditions in one or another sector. Foreign relations are subject to contradictory demands by ideological programs, ethnic restrictions, and geographic and economic demands. Liberalism or neoliberalism, or Marxism of the European brands, do not answer the problems of a “culture in search of itself.”
In a section on “misconceptions (les équivoques) of culture,” which thus progresses from ambiguity to error and which concerns value judgments of the life-style, Mauro suggests meanings for expressions of Latin American culture which are based on his prolonged and wide-ranging acquaintance with the area, its people, and their history.
The contribution of this work is that it identifies points of ambiguity from which all lines disperse instead of identifying points of perspective from which they predictably coincide. Mauro’s device makes possible the presentation of a wide spectrum of interpretations. This essay is a masterly performance.
