Alberdi fue el más grande y sutil ironista de la literatura argentina. Sus críticos lo han estudiado como político, internacionalista y sociólogo. Ninguno advirtió la inmensa ironía que lo distingue entre sus compatriotas. La ironía, esa burla fina, disimulada, tan difícil de alcanzar cuando no se posee un talento especial, sólo se encuentra, en la literatura argentina, en escritores muy posteriores y, salvo raras excepiones, no logra la espontaneidad, la gracia y la hondura que fluyen del espíritu de Alberdi. Esta ironía es propia de los hombres solitarios, a menudo tristes, que contemplan el mundo con desdén porque descubren sus debilidades, sus ridiculeces, y, por tanto, terminan por despreciarlo.

Sociolinguistic studies in Latin America generally deal with situations in which one of the official languages is in contact with an American Indian language, one of the major languages of immigration (German, Italian, Japanese), or one of the creole languages or dialects spoken in the Caribbean area. Except for the latter case, such studies have usually emphasized such processes as acculturation or assimilation, internal migrations, or social mobility.

A somewhat neglected research area is that of the coexistence of Spanish and Portuguese along the borders which Brazil shares with a number of Spanish-speaking nations. Just as it is an oversimplification to lump Brazil and its neighbors into a vaguely homogeneous “Latin” America, so also it would appear very risky to rely on the obvious linguistic similarities to generalize about communication between the two major speech communities.

El campo ha sido y es el centro de interés de la narrativa uruguaya y seguirá siéndolo mientras la capital no complete su absorción y la narrativa se circunscriba al tema urbano, fenómeno difícil de predecir, dada la importancia geopolítica del campo en la vida uruguaya. En esta área importante de genuina creación cabe colocar desde las novelas de Acevedo Díaz, con excepción de Brenda de tema urbano, algunas novelas de Carlos Reyles: Beba, El terruño, y El gaucho florido, porque Reyles fue escritor urbano en La raza de Caín, hasta las novelas y cuentos de nuestros últimos narradores.

Prominent among nineteenth century Argentine politicians, Carlos Pellegrini is best remembered today as the harassed chief executive who inherited the mantle of Miguel Juárez Celman and the challenges of the terrible depression following the “Revolution of ’90.” He is likewise recalled as the ardent defender of Argentina's obligations to its foreign creditors at a time when European investors were being blamed for most of the ills besetting his country. Less well known, however, are his views on the subject of national unity and his untiring efforts, primarily in the Argentine Congress, to sell his countrymen on the dream of a unified Argentina devoid of exaggerated local and provincial loyalties.

This study is a modest attempt to examine some general aspects of nationalism in the Argentine context. It should be mentioned at the start that there is no comprehensive definition for nationalism and in this connection it may be useful to explore some of the various ways in which the term is employed.

Professor Toynbee defines nationalism as “a state of mind in which we give our paramount political loyalty to one fraction of the human race—to the particular tribe of which we happen to be tribesmen.” Professor Ebenstein describes nationalism since the French Revolution as “one of the driving forces of domestic, imperial, and international politics.” From his observation of Western countries, Myrdal prefers to view nationalism in terms of “an irrational force, driving … [western countries] to more disruptive policies internationally than are in their own long-term interests.”

Hispanoamérica se ha presentado constantemente a los ojos de muchos de sus escritores en forma problemática: como una entidad social o humana que, a pesar de sus muchos y continuados esfuerzos, no ha logrado satisfacer a plenitud los intereses o las esperanzas de felicidad y desarrollo humano que en ella han cifrado los propios hispanoamericanos. Esto no impide que, en la mayoría de los casos, esta visión inquietante y a veces desalentadora haya sido considerada con un grado de esperanza; con la convicción de que, si bien Hispanoamérica no ha logrado su plenitud, puede y debe lograrla.

Strange as it may seem, the theater is probably the least known of the cultural manifestations of Latin America, despite the fact that its history can be traced back to the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Maya, Aztecs, and Incas. The first references to an indigenous theater are found in the second and third Cartas de relación of Hernán Cortés and in the Royal Commentaries of the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. Only fragmentary evidence is preserved, unfortunately, of the considerable dramatic activity that took place during the colonial period. A few of the plays are known by tide, and still fewer have survived in manuscript form, until we come to those of Fernán González de Eslava, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and the Mexican playwright, Juan Ruiz de Alarcón (1580-1639), whose comedias were produced in Spain during the height of that country's Golden Age.

Carlos Vaz Ferreira, born at Montevideo, Uruguay in 1872, a graduate of the School of Law, and at twenty-five appointed to the Chair of Philosophy there, was a prolific writer who for more than thirty years presented special lectures open to the general public. As a result he was one of the most influential men of this century in his homeland. Frank and honest and intensely stimulating, Aníbal Sánchez Reulet has termed Vaz Ferreira an “intellectual pontiff.”

From 1929 to 1941 he was, off and on, the Rector of the University and in 1945 he became Director of the School of Humanities in Montevideo, which position he held until his death in 1959.

La última conferencia económica de Ginebra, de tan magros resultados, y los “planes” de distintos países han puesto al orden del día el tema del desarrollo económico. Se habla y se escribe, mucho más que antes, en todos los tonos, de importantes objetivos a alcanzar: de creación de riquezas, de reactivación de las economías nacionales, de tecnificación de la agricultura, de modernización de las comunicaciones, de reabsorción de la mano de obra ociosa, en fin, de revitalizar la producción general, elevar el consumo y asegurar en los países, ahora llamados “subdesarrollados”, un más alto nivel de vida.

Tales objetivos pueden ser fácilmente enunciados pero no concretamente alcanzados. Si “la naturaleza no camina a saltos”, tampoco pueden alterarse por decreto las etapas del lógico desarrollo económico sin tener en cuenta las reales posibilidades materiales, técnicas, financieras y culturales de cada país.

Bajo un mismo título hemos reunido a Alberdi y a Sarmiento, acercando nosotros, en un pretencioso papel de dueños de su posteridad, a dos hombres que ofrecieron el espectáculo de su distanciamiento y de su antipatía. Ese espectáculo ofrece la grandeza de dos que peleaban entre sí a favor de la Argentina.

De diferente biología y de diferente estilo, los unía el fervor de un amor desesperado a la patria. Fueron hijos de una época, y, por lo tanto, con hondos nexos comunes, y ambos estuvieron animados de la fiebre de levantar en la tierra argentina una verdadera Nación.

No me propongo especialmente escribir su larga batalla, sino exponer sus pensamientos sobre algunos problemas de la Argentina, a veces diversos, pero con notables coincidencias en lo general.

The National University of Buenos Aires, the largest and for many years the most prestigious in Latin America, is today more commonly taken as the archetype of the political Latin American university—and the connotations of “political” are wholly pejorative. This notoriety may be due in part, as Kalman Silvert suggests, to the high visibility of the University, especially to touring North American newsmen. Nevertheless, as its numerous critics allege, there seems to be abundant evidence to link politics to the manifest disarray of the educational process: in the well-publicized brawls among contending student factions and confrontations between demonstrators and the police, student strikes in opposition to procedural reforms desirable on grounds of efficiency, the reputed “terrorization” of heterodox professors, several student homicides in recent years, the distressingly high incidence of abandonos (for it is assumed, erroneously, that many withdrawals from the University are motivated by disgust with its politics); student political behavior as in the abusive reception tendered W. W. Rostow by a student group in Economic Sciences in February 1965, may have international repercussions. Such depressing phenomena have led even temperate and knowledgeable observers to speak of the “failure” of the University, and to call for a thoroughgoing structural overhaul, conducive, among other things, to depoliticization.