Las redes intelectuales centroamericanos: un siglo de imaginarios nacionales (1820-1920) (review)

In the two last decades of the twentieth century, the historical research on Central America experienced an expansion without precedent, which emphasized the study of agrarian structures, social and ethnic conflicts, and resistance of working-class organizations in the urban world. However, such basic subjects as cultural change, intellectuals, and the public sphere were set aside by scholars. Thus, the systematic study of these subjects is very recent. Without a doubt, Las redes intelectuales centroamericanas constitutes a valuable contribution to this knowledge.

The book is divided into five chapters, in which the authors analyze and debate the notion of nation, as sustained by José Cecilio del Valle, Pedro Molina and Antonio Batres Jáuregui; the influence of theosophical networks in the public opinion of Central America, in particular by the theosophists Alberto Masferrer, Fernando Juárez Muñoz and Carlos Wyld Ospina; the Unionist project proposed by Salvador Mendieta Cascante, Joaquín Rodas Mejicanos and Clemente Marroquín Rojas; the debates of 1929 about the Guatemalan Indian; and finally the nationalist imaginary of the Guatemalan generation of 1920s, particularly the Spencerian racialists that developed an eugenic proposal to improve the race.

The main argument by Casaús Arzú and García Giráldez is that in Central America, especially in Guatemala and El Salvador, between 1921 and 1931 a rupture of paradigms transpired that was expressed in an ideological and political fight to impose a new social state. The short term rise of military dictatorships interrupted this process but did not diminish the importance of intellectual networks, which contributed to opening new regional spaces of Unionist and Central Americanist debates and to the promotion of democratic practices. Indeed, the magnitude of these contributions was so important that the authors consider that they constituted the first model of a social and popular movement that defied the Liberal project and the positivist currents of the isthmus.

In spite of the valuable contribution of Las redes intelectuales centroamericanas, it has certain weaknesses that are necessary to indicate. Although it aspires to provide a regional perspective and to cover the period from 1820 to 1920, the book is much more concentrated on Guatemala during the period from 1920 to 1940. Information from other countries of the isthmus is limited and, sometimes, imprecise. For example, when the authors refer to the Costa Rican intellectual Joaquin García Monge, he is erroneously identified as the forger of the Costa Rican nation, and Costa Rican president Ricardo Jiménez is considered in similar conditions to the dictators Manuel Estrada Cabrera and José Santos Zelaya. In addition, the study of the networks themselves is surpassed by the emphasis given to an examination of the discourses elaborated by intellectuals, whose entanglement with other social sectors, especially with workers' organizations, is not considered fully.

Such an emphasis on an analysis of discourses with scant attention paid to popular demands, explains why Casaús Arzú and García Giráldez tend to discard the important challenge posed by urban and rural workers (influenced in particular by anarchist and socialist ideologies) to the political regimes of the isthmus. However, such limitations do not undermine the important contribution made by the authors to the study of the thought currents that constitute the subject of their book. Central American intellectual culture of the beginning of the twentieth century is better well-known today thanks to this interesting work.