Description
The first modern international studies of Latin America arose with the debate by Latin American diplomats in Paris in the mid-nineteenth century. They discussed the history and future destiny of the nations of Spanish and Portuguese America. Among them, there was José María Torres-Caicedo, a Colombian diplomat who played a notable role by compiling treaties and historical documents from the wars of independence in Latin American countries. For decades, historians have discussed the origin of the term “Latin America”. In a 1968 essay, John Phelan stated that it was in Napoleon III’s Paris that the Latin American race began to be discussed and that it was then that the expression took effect. He attributed the paternity indirectly to Michel Chevalier, a former Saint-Simonian, economist, publicist and adviser to the emperor on foreign policy, which helped to spur a historiographical debate by linking the concept of Latin America with the French imperialist policies of the time. Although Chevalier had been the ideologist of a pan-Latin foreign policy on the part of France, the fact is that he never used the expression “Latin America” as such. It was the forgotten Colombian writer José María Torres Caicedo the father of the expression for several reasons, the most important being his proselytizing work in favor of the unity of Latin American countries and his constant use of the term in magazines, books and debates in Paris between the late 1850s and early 1880s. It all started with his poem “Las dos Américas” [The two Americas] in 1857. Torres Caicedo has a large collection of articles and essays in the European press, considered important political and literary vehicles, also with publication in the Spanish-speaking world. Furthermore, the life of José María Torres Caicedo and his role in the International Literary and Artistic Association (ALAI) shows that the discourse regarding intellectual property reinforced the idea of the existence of a national literature and nationhood with two boundaries, that of Latin America and national identity in Colombia. This paper discusses Torres Caicedo’s role in advancing Latin American thought in different regions of the world.
