THE UTOPIA AND LATIN-AMERICA

This text is an essay on the key continuities between Utopia and Latin America. With reference to Alfonse Reyes, common points are found even before Latin America existed for western consciousness. While America was the topos for European utopian visions, it may now claim the right to its own utopia. To make this desire real calls for a modification of the ways in which reason is applied, to adapt them to its own needs, interests and traditions. Metaphors and historical reality, transformed into memory and a collective set of images, rationally controlled, provide the stimuli for open reflexion, responsibly involved in its own culture for the sake of humanity. The text closes with a slogan from Pedro Henriquez Urena, for whom this region could occupy a dignified place in the international context, only as a home of justice.