In this essay from 2004, the Mexico-based Argentinean art theoretician and anthropologist Néstor García Canclini traces the decline of Latin America through [recent times] and examines three styles of Latin Americanism beginning in the mid-twentieth century. The first moment he writes of, implying the 1960s, was due to the increased means of communication between the periphery and the central part of the region. In a climate where many Latin American artists connected with the global market and patronage circuits, as well as with each other, a yearning developed for a transcendental future. Coup d’états and military conflicts, however, stifled during this second phase the utopian dream and its resulting artistic innovations and interconnections. Art production following the Dirty War of the 1970s (in Argentina, from 1976–83) was remembered for oscillating between the two opposing genres of testimony and farce as its main tenet. The third and recent phase began as the region returned to democracy in the 1980s. In the decades when disenchantment with the past and lack of faith in the future has been pervasive, Latin American artists have channeled a societal concern for both the instant and velocity, fostering a culture and an aesthetic of “here-today-gone tomorrow.”

Nestor García Canclini (b. 1939) published this essay in the Spring 2004 issue of the Radical History Review, a journal which addresses issues of gender, race, sexuality, imperialism, and class that stretches the boundaries of Western and non-Western histories. In this essay, García Canclini aims to examine three “aesthetic moments” in Latin American history. The first moment he discusses was the 1960s as a volatile time in Latin American history as well as in the rest of the world. This was especially true in France during May 1968, (in Czechoslovakia and Japan as well) when there was an uprising of students and unions against cultural institutions that was echoed in major cities throughout Latin America (namely Mexico and Brazil). It is during this period that alternative exhibition spaces begin to emerge and alliances formed between artists of all genres. Institutions such as the Torcuato di Tella Institute in Argentina fostered a relationship between art and politics, but in 1966, a turn of events in Argentina’s political history—such as El Cordobazo and the coup d’état led by General Juan Carlos Onganía (1966-70)—limited the freedom of expression of artists and prompted the first wave of artists to leave the country, many never to return. This censorship happens in a number of other Latin American countries including Chile, Brazil, and Uruguay by means of inflexible military dictatorships throughout Latin America, as harsh rule was inflicted on the citizens and “missing people” became quite frequent, The latter was a taboo subject-matter generally not discussed in public, which prompted another mass exodus of members of the art milieu and academic and writers’ circles; the author himself, among them.