Speaker: Ricardo Salvatore, Universidad Torcuato di Tella
Moderator: Corinna Zeltsman, Georgia Southern University
During the age of Pan-Americanism (1890-1940), US universities started to build impressive collections of “Latino-Americana.” They collected books, periodicals, government papers, and manuscripts relating to Latin America. “South America” attracted special attention for, around the time of the First World War, the sub-continent became, in the eyes of North-American businessmen, the new land of opportunity for commerce and investment. Central to this new enterprise of accumulation of knowledge was the understanding of the past. Collectors showed enormous interest in artifacts of ancient Andean cultures, manuscripts of the early Spanish colonial period, and Spanish chronicles of the Conquest. Apparently, there was little connection between the interests of North-American investors (in petroleum, railroads, tramways, meat-packing, land, and financial and commercial services) and those of university archives and libraries. But, as the earlier “Latin-Americanists” acknowledged, the commercial penetration of “South America” required an understanding of the region’s culture, society and politics. And the keys to this understanding were to be found in the colonial period. In addition, collectors of “Latino-Americana” build a strong a recurrent parallel between the commercial conquest of South America and the military and spiritual conquest carried out by the Spaniards in the early sixteenth century.
