Lamentably I could not attend HaD2. Nevertheless, the discussion seems to me interesting that has been opened on the historiography in Latin America and wanted to externar some opinions.

Although the process of decolonization in Latin America was 130 or 140 years before the one of Africa and Asia, the conflicts of this subcontinent keep more simitudes with the rest from the Third World that with the conflicts that were developed in Europe, Japan or the USA in centuries XIX and XX.

I believe that the Latin American historians we have not put sufficient attention in comparing with other areas of the call Third World to us. Why? Because we always felt " developing "; because, by ignorance, we see them culturally very remote or slow; because our desires to reach to the First World blind to us; because to imitate or to take the European or nortemaricanos models they sanction to us; because it is possible to be deceived some or to many ingenuous Latin Americans selling the European historiográfica fashion and the North American to them like panacea; because we are loose to reflect; or because we create, authentically, that those models are " superior ", or they are most reasonable, or they are the table of salvacion... etcetera, et cetera.

It is evident that in Latin America oligarquias Creole (by Creole I talk about a type of behavior and, of no way, to the relative or birthplace ascending) that formed in colonial times were those that occupied and continue occupying, in greater or smaller degree, in agreement with the population increase and economic, dominant the political and economic positions in most of the Latin American countries. They are same the family-Mafia those that have been perpetuated and recycled during these 130 or 140 years, to which the caciques have added themselves " naturally ", compadres, friends and mainly the " good servers ". This has meant the exclusion of 90% of the Latin American population in the decision making, that is, the absence, almost total, of democracy. They have been having been, for centuries or decades, in the best position to take control of good earth and other natural resources, to control the mercantile and financial networks, to acquire companies, bureaucratic industries and positions, to inside give to their children one better education or outside - in Europe or the USA -. This has meant the development of a gangster mentality with its corresponding corrupt conducts, of sobreoperation and quiet violence or discharge or " low intesidad ", and has meant the maintenance of authoritarian relations where from the high the most subjugated hierarchies to they have cried out, recurrently, to be guided by the guerrilla leader, the union leader, the strong man or the dictator.

The main constructors and promoters of the fanatical catholicism or other religiosidades are the Creole oligarchies, of the nationalism, the indigenismo, the etnicism and of the same call " latinidad ". This has been its better weapon to close itself to the rest of the world. Of Latin America the famous Peruvian or Argentinean, the isolation " exceptional nature " Mexican, have served to defend the boundaries to be able of elites when it has agreed to them or their interests have been threatened by foreign Capitalism. While the Latin American intellectuals developed their theories of the dependency and attributed all their evils to imperialism, the foreign capitalists signed contracts with the Latin American national oligarchies and the USA sealed pacts of intervention with their military or presidencialistas dictatorships.

By all previous I believe that if the historians we do not see that the nationalism, the etnicismo, the " peculiarity of Latin " and the other forms of isolation, xenophobia and racism has be foundations in that ideology has rested of elites Creole, if we are not able to denounce that imperialism has had to its greater accomplice in house, hardly will be possible to be tried to reflect and less to explain history.

Marialba Pastor
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UNAM-México
llaneza@servidor.unam.mx

Translation made in " Altavista Connections " through Systram Traslation Software (http://babelfish.altavista.com/content/browser.htm)