In this text, José Vasconcelos describes how since the mid-nineteenth-century forces of “panamericanismo” have generally caused Mexico and Hispanic America to incrementally suffer the loss of cultural and economic independence. His argument consists of two main components: first, he defends the reputation of the Mexican politician Lucas Alamán as a defender of “hispanoamericanismo,” and secondly, he dispels the “myth” of Benito Juárez by arguing that he has been Mexico’s main proponent of “panamericanismo.” In his defense of Alamán he recounts how he defied John Quincy Adams—the writer of the so-called Monroe Doctrine (1823)—by convincing Hispanic delegates at the 1833 Congress of Tacubaya to ratify the creation of a League of Ibero-American Customs. In his revisionist account of Juárez, he argues that his idea as the liberator of the Mexican people is a “Pan American” version of history, and that in reality Juárez cleared the way for North American imperialism by destroying the systems by which the Catholic Church cultivated the land without providing a viable alternative. Throughout this revisionist historical account of how Mexico fell prey to North American imperialism (and lost about half its territories to the United States in the process), Vasconcelos emphasizes the importance of fostering the Spanish language and Catholicism in the face of “Anglo-Saxon” and Protestant influences.

The Mexican educator and philosopher José Vasconcelos (1882-1959) was a key figure in the cultural renaissance that occurred in Mexico after the revolution. As Minister of Public Education (1921–23), Vasconcelos commissioned murals in Mexico City by Diego Rivera (1886-1957), José Clemente Orozco (1883-1949), and David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974), among other artists. He also helped establish Mexico’s postrevolutionary education system. The essay “Hispanoamericanismo y panamericanismo,” appeared in his book Bolivarismo y Monroísmo, which was published in Chile in 1934 (second and third editions were published by the same publisher in 1935 and 1937). By this point, Vasconcelos was well known throughout Latin America for his ideas about Hispano-American culture. In this text, he mounts a detailed and spirited argument against Benito Juárez’s legacy as the liberator of the Mexican people. It is clear that Vasconcelos is partly motivated by how Juárez’s legacy has been embraced by the United States, and partly by how extensively United States interests control the land that was, before the Mexican Revolution, held by the Catholic Church. Vasconcelos expresses his interest in the preservation of Spanish culture throughout this text, and argues that the figure, Lucas Alamán, Minister of the Foreign Office in Mexico, who had been vilified for his cultural conservatism, stood against “Pan American” imperialism from early on by defying the Monroe Doctrine (1823). Lastly, this text displays signs of Vasconcelos’ own cultural conservatism and racial prejudice: according to him, Catholicism and Spanish culture are the cornerstones of an American culture independent from that of the United States. Nevertheless, he also professes that in contrast, indigenous people and culture have proven incapable of forming the basis for an independent Mexico.