Fragmentos de un discurso no amoroso: Thomas Jefferson y la América Hispana. Una aproximación a las relaciones sur-norte

Abstract

Thomas Jefferson’s thought was a cornerstone of multiple approaches between the United States and Hispanic American nations during the nineteenth century. Those approaches were intersected at the same time by admiration and fear on both sides of the continent. This essay assembles and analyzes some of the most important fragments where Jefferson’s image, thought and works appear as the revelation of that contradictory feeling in the writings of Andrés Bello, Domingo Sarmiento and Esteban Echeverría. On the other side, Jefferson’s writings related to the Hispanic territories in the Americas, principally the letters to Alexander Humboldt, show what little interest Jefferson had in Hispano-American independences, and his complete detachment and ignorance regarding the enlightening processes starting in the Hispanic world.