This study has attempted to outline the history of Sur, a history which has spanned (if we include the irregular production over the past fifteen years) half a century and some three hundred and fifty issues. In order to make sense of this complex, heterogeneous material, it has isolated several factors which, taken together, can be said to define the magazine.

The first of these is suggested by Borges, who does not differentiate between politics and intellectual enquiry. Sur's universalist standpoint implied that ‘ethically’ it would have to be against any form of dictatorship: this was conceived as a natural view of the world, which had nothing to do with political commitment. Another member of the Sur group, Ernesto Sábato, repeated Borges’ argument: ‘Jamás hubo alií ningún filtro ideológico o social, sólo había un filtro literario, que en ocasiones pudo ser equivocado, lo que es humano.’ Yet the magazine's claim to be apolitical cannot be seen as an objective reality.