Abstract
Latin American intellectual production at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century was characterized by the essay, a flexible literary genre that works with a variety of themes approached through the author’s personal point of view. This work analyzes the intellectual trajectory, the context of production, and the work Las democracias de América (1912) of the Peruvian essayist Francisco García Calderón, who, at the beginning of the twentieth century, was considered one of the most important thinkers by the intellectuals of the period. This article highlights the Peruvian writer’s defense of “latinidade” as a way to save Latin America from imperialist foreign powers, in addition of García Calderón’s view of the racial problem as one of the responsible factors for the continent’s difficult situation.
Keywords:
Latin American essay; Francisco García Calderón; discourse