In a famous account of his travels, titled El destino de un continente, the Argentine writer Manuel Ugarte describes his somewhat disconcerting encounter with the Cuban ex-president José Miguel Gómez while traveling through Latin America during the 1920s. Ugarte, a committed advocate of panhispanismo—the idea that Spanish America was and should be unified by its shared Spanish heritage, especially in light of the “threat” from Anglo- Saxon culture—had come to Cuba to give a series of lectures. Shortly after one of his presentations, the Argentine was introduced to Gómez, who took Ugarte to task for his criticism of Cuba's close relationship to the United States. “You reproach us,” Gómez said, “for not defending our legacy of Spanish civilization, but what have all of you [Latin Americans] done to encourage us, to support us, to make us feel that we are not alone?” Taken aback and made suddenly self-conscious by the accusation, Ugarte concluded that the Cuban was admonishing him for failing to uphold the very principles he was espousing in his lectures. “It seemed as if, through the voice of her representative, all Cuba was saying, ‘It is not we who broke the link; it was you who broke it in allowing it to be cut.’” After some time and much thought, Ugarte came to the realization that “Cuba was not alone responsible for the Cuban situation. Some responsibility was also borne by Latin America.” Through his encounter with Gómez, Ugarte was forced to recognize the limitations of framing what he referred to as the “Cuban situation” exclusively in the context of a cultural war between the United States and Spain. Indeed, the expresident's challenge inspired him to reconsider Cuba's nineteenth-century struggles with both Spanish colonialism and U.S. imperialism in a distinctly inter-Latin American context.
Latin America and the Question of Cuban Independence
