Nation and Liberty in Latin America

Extract

Inspired by Columbus, Spaniards set out on an adventurous voyage of the circumnavigation of the globe and, to their surprise, encountered a new continent.

This is the essential fact. There were no preliminaries, no previous knowledge, but an abrupt and unexpected meeting between a handful of men who represented the mentality of Spain at the end of the 15th century and an immense geographical panorama that slowly and continuously unfolded, populated by beings for whom there was not even a name and who represented native cultures in different stages of devopment with no previous contact with Europeans, almost diametrically opposed in values, concepts and mentalities to what the transatlantic navigators represented and brought with them.