Session 14

Minglo’s book on the Idea of Latin America presents a familiar argument: it demonstrates the power that a construct can have in shaping the way that people think. The invention of America, rather than its discovery, served to construct two distinct geographical and political regions in the dominant imaginary; “Latin” America and “Anglo Saxon” America. The former became increasingly dark as time passed and was gradually distinguished from both “White” North America and the European Latin nation-states. 

The construction of this idea of racial of difference was crucial to the logic of colonialism and remains an integral part of contemporary imperialism. Minglo’s main argument is that the politics that emerges out of this idea, even in the present day, is one which is contingent on the geographical location of a nation-state, the race of its people and the stereotypes that are assigned to them. These politics he contends, serve to solidify unequal distributions of wealth and power amongst industrialized nation-states and post-colonial ones. 

Minglo’s idea of the imagined Latin America can be considered parallel to Dipesh Chakrabarty’s “Hyper-Real Europe”. Similar to the construct of Latin America, Chakrabarty’s Europe is associated with a specific geographical region and is made distinct from all other entities. Both constructs serve to create categories of people and associated hierarchies, and the existence of both is closely tied to colonialism/modernity.