Pan-Latinism and Anti-Americanism in Rubén Darío’s Political Writings. Case-Study: “A Roosevelt” (1904)

Abstract

The present study aims to examine Rubén Darío’s Ode “A Roosevelt” (1904) by means of the application of a revisionist methodology of analysis based upon a close-reading of the text that may elucidate the presence and transcendence of the distinct racial and sociocultural discourses that stand as its main ideological basis. After a brief introduction to the historical, political and cultural context in which the poem was produced, the paper examines in detail the defining identity markers the poet ascribes to the North American and Hispano-American communities in his attempt to establish both peoples in a relationship of binary opposition or, rather, complementation. Ultimately, the analysis evinces how the image of the U.S.A. and of Hispanic America Darío outlines throughout the text is articulated upon the pan-Latinist and anti-Americanist discourses that proliferated between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a response to the expansionist tentatives of the North American government, advocating for the union of the Central and South American peoples against their common enemy.