En octobre 1954, je fus invité à prendre part, en compagnie d'éminentes personnalités, venues de tous les points de 1'horizon intellectuel, aux manifestations organisées dans la Ville de New-York pour célébrer le bicentenaire de la fondation de Columbia University. Je considérai cette invitation comme un honneur qui s'adressait non à ma personne mais à mon pays tout entier. Et c'est, par conséquent, au nom de la République d'Haiti que j'apportai l'hommage de notre commune admiration à l'illustre Institution qui, au cours de ses deux siècles d'existence, a si puissamment contribué au progrès matériel et spirituel de l'homme moderne par son incessante activité dans tous les domaines de la Connaissance.

As spring came to Boston and success to William Hickling Prescott in 1838, the jubilant author of The History of Ferdinand and Isabella settled on another Spanish theme, the conquests of Mexico and Peru, and quickly launched his second historical excursion. Never one to frequent archives in person, Prescott reactivated established scholarly channels when he informed London bookdealer Rich and Madrid-based diplomat Middleton of his new needs. In addition, one Spanish friend won by his first work, Angel Calderón de la Barca, helped to introduce Prescott to Spain's most eminent historian, Fernández de Navarrete. In short order the corps of cooperative men that included historians, book-dealers, diplomats, and copyists began to shuttle toward Boston thousands of pages of material relevant to the historian's new. project.

La Isla de Cuba, abandonada después de la fundación de sus primeras poblaciones, inicia débilmente su cultura media con el establecimiento en 1698, del Colegio Seminario de San Carlos y San Ambrosio, cuyas proyecciones no se hacen notar hasta mediados del siglo XVIII. Es en este siglo, año de 1721, cuando una bula de Inocencio XIII autoriza la creación de la Universidad de la Habana, normada por la de Santo Domingo, y cuyos primeros Estatutos fueron aprobados por Real Cédula de 27 de julio de 1734, encomendándose su dirección a los padres de la Orden de Predicadores.

In the twentieth century, increased contact with world affairs and intellectual life has brought Latin America more fully into the general stream of western thought. Rapid population growth and economic development have also brought many changes in society, increasing the tempo of social change and producing such political movements as the Mexican Revolution, Uruguayan Ratllismo, Peruvian Aprismo, and similar revolutionary developments in other countries. A population increase averaging around two per cent annually, and a rise in per capita income more rapid than the average increase in the United States during the years 1869-1952, go far to explain the striking increase in intellectual activity which has occurred. An additional factor of no mean significance, however, has been the immigration of refugee scholars resulting from the Spanish Civil War and World War II.

Hispanoamérica es, ante todo, una variada geografía en la cual vive y se afana una comunidad de pueblos de una insoslayable unidad cultural. El convencimiento de que formamos una sola comunidad cultural no es nuevo. Lo tenían los colonizadores, que pasaban de una región a otra de las tierras recién descubiertas sin sentir que trasponían los límites de lo que se llamó, con toda razón, el Nuevo Mundo. Lo tenían los libertadores que iban, como San Martín, de la Argentina a Chile, y de Chile al Perú, llamando en sus proclamas a todos los habitantes “mis paisanos;” o como Bolívar, cruzando ríos y escalando sierras para libertar desde Venezuela hasta Bolivia, porque sentía, como lo declara en su Carta de Jamaica, que “somos un pequeño género humano … No somos indios ni europeos, sino … americanos.”

Communists try to stir up hatred in Latin America as well as in other parts of the world. Demagogs in Latin America as elsewhere put fuel on the fires of nationalism whenever they think it will promote their purposes. Governments are still expected to look after national interests rather than the interests of alien peoples. Governments cannot stay in power very long without serving those whom they govern, or at least the potent groups among them. Official benevolence is compulsory benevolence; and compulsory benevolence curtails individual liberty and thus tends to violate a fundamental political principle of Western civilization. The government of the United States has no right or obligation to grant technical and economic aid to foreign countries unless such action is clearly in the national interest.

In April 1958, a very significant Inter-American Music Festival took place in Washington, D. C. Perfectly planned and effectively carried out, the Festival included the best and most representative contemporary serious music from Latin-America. The several concerts that took place, presenting a wide range and varied quality of music, exposed the North American public and critics, for the first time, to a massive dose of the type of music that actually forms the core of the serious musical speech of the countries of the Southern part of our Hemisphere. If it is true that in the last twenty years names such as Chávez or Villa-Lobos — and more recently that of Alberto Ginastera — have become known to the public of the United States and Europe, and that various music Festivals such as those of Caracas and Montevideo have permitted a cross-section of North American music critics to face a larger volume of Latin-American music, it is also true that in the case of the three above mentioned composers — all of them individual advocates of strong personality, though sometimes their best known and heard music belonged to the minor species — a limited and isolated impression of what was happening musically in the rest of Latin America was created.