In this text, Martí Casanovas responds to a letter by Franz Tamayo considering the question of what direction the development of Indio-American culture should take. Distinguishing his philosophy from Tamayo’s, Casanovas explains that he believes that indigenous sources of expression should constitute the vitality of this new culture, while Tamayo believes that it should be constituted by indigenous forms. Casanovas writes that their differences really come down to different approaches to the basic question of what constitutes culture, which he argues must be the expression of living people, not form. In Mexico, he explains, culture is most alive in the hands of the Indians making works of art in the Open Air Schools, not in past civilizations. He questions the contemporary relevance of Tamayo’s valorization of classicist form, of the values of equilibrium and balance. Contemporary culture, he explains, cannot immediately be expressed in the formal terms of either high art or aesthetics. Instead, he argues, we must look to humble, popular culture and in this process, new aesthetic forms that truly reflect the spirit of people of the Americas will be invented. Artists and poets who have successfully created genuinely Indo-American culture have done so by expressing essentially American emotional qualities in their work, not by portraying picturesque or anecdotal aspects of America. Casanovas concludes by affirming his “mexicanismo,” and by suggesting that Mexican culture can serve as a model for all of America because it has so successfully incorporated the “masas de población indigena” [throngs of indigenous population] into its new post-Revolutionary culture.