Greece and Rome in the Latin American Belle Époque

Abstract

This text aims to vindicate the Spanish-American Belle Époque (1870-1920) as an appropriate chronological framework for the study of the political appropriation of the Greco-Roman past in Latin America. Based on the research conducted so far and from the historiographical sensibility of studies on the political reception of classical antiquity, it will be shown how, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the confluence of positivism, urban modernization, and the consolidation of the national bourgeoisie facilitated the presence of a particular memory of Greece and Rome in Latin America for specific political, economic, social, and cultural purposes. Thus, paraphrasing Luciano Canfora, the present text hopes to contribute to the "History of the interrelation between dominant ideology and classical culture" from a Latin American perspective.