Simón Rodríguez: Spanish American Thought

Abstract

The author believes that Simón Rodríguez intended to create a body of Spanish American thought which could be aware of the region’s problems and able to solve them. Conflicts were related to social life, institutions, behavior, ideas and views on the past and the future. Creating awareness of a Spanish American “social being” through Reason, without turning to civilizing projects based on foreign ideas and extermination policies (like the case of Andrés Bello and Faustino Sarmiento), was essential. Guzmán points out that Rodríguez, inspired by the French Revolution and European social utopias, was an advocate of the Republic. His pedagogical beliefs included a general social instruction based on Reason  stemming from the study of things, and appreciation of useful work. The author highlights a couple of concepts from Rodríguez: first, without insight there wouldn’t be any projects to call our own and politicians would be condemned to imitation; second, reality could be changed
through union, industrial development, property rights and instruction in useful trades.