The Search for Identity in Latin American culture

Abstract

This article offers a historical analysis of the development of the search for identity in Latin American countries, with the help of concepts such as “derived culture”, “altered culture” and “self-absorbed culture”, corresponding respectively to long historical periods: colonization, independence and state nationalism. The study ends with a reflection on “the current moment”, analyzing the double limit faced by Latin American “national states”: the politics of globalization, on the one hand, and the demands of the indigenous peoples, on the other. This signals the need to build a new type of society and a new concept of identity —as authenticity, as multiplicity— beyond the worn model of “Nation-State” and beyond the false concept of “national identity”.