THE BACKGROUND

In the 1920s, a number of regionalist novels written in Latin America attracted international attention. Doña Bárbara (1929) by Rómulo Gallegos, Don Segundo Sombra (1926) by Ricardo Güiraldes and La vorágine (1924) by Eustasio Rivera were amongst the first Latin–American novels to be translated into the European languages and to be read by a public which had no first-hand knowledge of the areas which the authors described. The translation and publication of these novels in Europe and North America not only marks the coming-of-age of the Spanish–American novel but marked the beginning of a change of attitude on the part of Europeans towards non-European cultures.

Vast and momentous changes took place in the decade between 1910 and 1920 in both hemispheres. The Mexican Revolution (1910–17), the Russian Revolution of 1917, the First World War (1914–18), marked the end of a European hegemony, the upsurge of quite new forces both of class and race. To many, the First World War signalled the decline of Europe which would now be obliged to make way for new civilisations, perhaps in the Americas. And in Mexico and Russia, the underdogs had demonstrated that they were capable of overthrowing governments and taking power. The intellectual read the writing on the wall. If Europe was to fail, he must put his faith in America, and not in the America of landowners and financiers but in that of the peasant and the worker.