Presencia de la Cultura Precolombina

Abstract

The self-made image of the American Man, double and contradictory, derives from a European perspective which, for reas ons of cultural dependency, we have inherited. This idea of the American Man was first formed during the period of Conquest, out of the contradiction between the spirit of the Renaissance and the Medieval by those who carne. It became more strongly established during the Enlightenment in the concept of the "good savage", and that of the land that produces only "cold animals" and "weak beings". This vision of America as, on onehad, the continent of the future, of liberty, and on the other, of a "never, never land" is still present in our literature, our political life, and in the relations between our social classes. Finally, it is proposed that only a new look of a predominantly aesthetic type - one which should retrieve without prejudices our Pre-Columbian roots - can lead us to a nonschizophrenic view of ourselves.