Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In "La habilidad manual indígena," Mexican painter Dr. Atl describes what he considers the astounding manual dexterity of indigenous Mexicans. He explains that this dexterity makes Mexicans uniquely suited to working as mechanics, surgeons, and [...]

The Desana ethnic group is represented in this book by their myths, which are set in the Rio Negro region (in the Brazilian state of Amazonas), as narrated by one of their descendant groups, the Khẽíripõrã. The myths describe [...]

In this essay, the Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre criticizes the exaggerated and mystic academicism of intellectual works produced by Brazilian universities that distance them from the concerns of society as a whole. Describing himself as a [...]

In this text, José Enrique Rodó outlines his vision for a future Latin American civilization based on the pursuit of idealism. He stages this description as a lecture being delivered by an elderly teacher named Prospero to his young students. Rod [...]

From a social scientific perspective, Julio César Salas rejects deterministic explanations regarding the alleged failure of Latin American countries, either due to their Torrid Zone locations or for their mixture of races. The author opposes such [...]

The author wonders how indigenous American people compare to other civilizations. Darcy Ribeiro seeks to articulate a general theory to explain the formative and transformative processes that could provide an alternative to European ethnocentric [...]

Gregori Warchavchik, the Ukrainian architect based in Brazil, defends functionalism within the context of modern architecture and, in his judgment, that definitions should be restricted to the potential and means of the materials used. He states that [...]

Aldo Paparella writes to Libero Badii about formal aspects like color use, as well as comments about Western civilization. He mentions his trips both to Rome and to Formio and offers opinions about the valuation of the drawing [...]

“Las razas indígenas mexicanas y sus estadistas ante el problema de la existencia de la Patria,” was written in 1921 by Francisco Bulnes, a Mexican intellectual and the Secretary of Foreign Affairs under President Porfirio Díaz. In the article [...]