THE IDEA OF AMERICA AMONG WESTERN THINKERS What constitutes the past of a country (or a continent) depends on its present, for the way and attitude with which its present is assessed casts a shadow back over its entire history and permeates the overall picture. Much as Spain was a painful and excruciating thing to Unamuno and Ortega, so America was to Gabriela Mistral or Fernando González. It was not until the second half of the 20th century that the somewhat querulous narcissism so common among Spanish-speaking intellectuals in relation to the continent was finally overcome. This paved the way for less biased views, such as those of León de Greiff or Zea, not to mention the balance, serenity and self-assuredness of the views put forward by Pedro Henríquez Ureña and Octavio Paz. This book emerges from the activities of the Seminars on Latin American Identity. The initiative to create a gathering dedicated to Latin American cultural identity sprang from a group of lecturers from Latin American universities, coordinated by the universities of Seville, Caldas en Manizales and Universidad Bolivariana de Medellín, staging its inaugural session in Medellín in September 2008.