In 1898, Spain lost Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippine islands, her last remaining colonies in the New World, a loss that was aggravated by her defeat at the hands of the United States. There was a dramatic change in the balance of power in the New World. The distant threat of Spain had been replaced by the more ominous threat of the vigorous young Anglo-Saxon power now incomparably wealthier and more industrially advanced than any other nation of the continent. The gloom of many intellectuals at the defeat of Spain was understandable. They had wanted Cuba liberated, but not by the United States, whose victory seemed to them to bear out contemporary racial theories which attributed superiority to the Anglo-Saxons and inferiority to racially-mixed societies. As Latin Americans looked towards their own societies, many of them torn by civil war, others suffering under dictatorships, all of them economically backward, they inevitably compared their position with that of the United States. They could take little pride in national tradition; Hispanic influence in the world had rapidly declined; and for a Bolivian, a Nicaraguan, a Uruguayan or any other Spanish-American nationality, there was little hope of rising to the forefront of world affairs.

THE ESSAY

However, in 1900, when the gloom was deepest, there appeared an essay whose forward-looking optimism was eagerly welcomed.