Discussion Questions

• How did many writers and artists express their ambivalent attitudes toward Spain and Portugal in the years after independence?
• In what ways were romanticism and naturalism similar to nationalism?
• Racial hierarchies remained strong in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. How did intellectuals, writers, and artists reshape national identities using symbols of the indigenous, Africans, and people of mixed racial background?
• How did the United States as the “Colossus of the North” affect cultural production in Latin America throughout the twentieth century?
• Brazilian modernism looked to Europe for inspiration but then argued that artists should create their own unique Brazilian works. Explain this apparent paradox.
• How has globalization transformed Latin American culture? How have other cultures been transformed by Latin America?