¹ Wright, Marie Robertson, Salvador (New York: L’Artiste Publishing Company, 1893), p. 34.Google Scholar

² Martin, Percy F., Salvador in the Twentieth Century (London: Edward Arnold, 1911), pp. 317–318.Google Scholar

³ For the politicial and economic history of this period, consult White, J. Alastair, El Salvador (Boulder: Westview Press, 1982), pp. 57–90 Google Scholar; Menjívar, Rafael, Acumulación Originaria y Desarrollo del Capitalismo en El Salvador (San José: Editorial Universitaria Centroamérica, 1980)Google Scholar; Andrews, Patricia A., “El Liberalismo en El Salvador a Finales del Siglo XIX,” Revista del Pensamiento Centroamericano (Managua), Vol. 36, Nos. 172–173 (July-December, 1981), pp. 89–93 Google Scholar; Kerr, Derek N., “La Edad de Oro del Café en El Salvador, 1863–1885,” Mesoamérica, Año 3, Cuaderno 3 (June, 1982), pp. 1–25.Google Scholar Victor Alba posits a caustic judgment on “The Myth of the Desire for Progress,” “The oligarchy always takes care that the people remain as they are, that no modern influences touch them. This is the basis of its power.” Alliance Without Allies. The Mythology of Progress in Latin America (New York: Praeger, 1965), p. 81.

⁴ González, Darío, Principios de Filosofía Positivista. Lecciones Arreglados por Alumnos del Instituto Nacional Central de Guatemala (Guatemala City: Tipografía Nacional, 1895), p. 316.Google Scholar Where the biographical information was available, I have included dates of birth and death upon first mentioning each Salvadoran intellectual.

⁵ François Bourricaud ably discusses the Latin American intellectuals’ adoption of the ideas of modernization: “The transition to modernity, for clergy as well as laymen, seems to have been accomplished less through the development of critical thought than through an intense feeling of the urgency of an inevitable compromiso (commitment).” “The Adventures of Ariel,” Daedalus (Summer, 1972), p. 113.

⁶ Data on the Colegio de la Asunción and the National University can be found in Macal, Mario Flores, “Historia de la Universidad de El Salvador,” Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos (San José), No. 2 (1976), pp. 107–135 Google Scholar; Cañas, Juan J., “Origen de la Universidad de El Salvador,” Estudios Históricos (San Salvador: Imprenta Nacional, 1941), pp. 7–12 Google Scholar; Ramírez, Manuel Castro, “De la Vida Universitaria,” Ibid., pp. 13–17 Google Scholar; Aparicio, Joaquín Parada, Discursos Médico-Históricos Salvadoreños (San Salvador: Editorial Ungo, 1942).Google Scholar

⁷ The early history of the university seems to fit the general commentary of Talcott Parsons: “The university may be said to have had two sociological ‘parents,’ on the one hand the Church and on the other aristocratic, including royal, patronage.” “ ‘The Intellectual’: A Social Role Category” in Rieff, Philip, On Intellectuals. Theoretical Studies. Case Studies (Garden City: Anchor, 1970), p. 15.Google Scholar

⁸ Flores Macal links the era of Liberal presidents after 1871 with coffee production, modernization, and the university. “Historia de la Universidad de El Salvador,” p. 117.

⁹ Two general studies contributed to the conceptualization in this essay of the role of the Salvadoran intellectuals: Shils, Edward, “The Intellectuals and the Powers: Some Perspectives for Comparative Analysis,” Rieff, On Intellectuals, pp. 27–51 Google Scholar; and Uricoechea, Fernando, Intelectuales y Desarrollo en América Latina (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1969).Google Scholar Within a European context, Louis Bodia discusses the relationship of intellectuals with public life. Part of his comments seem applicable to El Salvador in the nineteenth century. Los Intelectuales (Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires, 1965), pp. 51–73.

¹⁰ On the significance of Positivism in Central America, consult, González, Principios de Filosofía Positivista; Amurrio González, Jesús Julián, El Positivismo en Guatemala (Guatemala City: Editorial Universtaria, 1970)Google Scholar; Kuhn, Gary G., “El Positivismo de Gerardo Barrios,” Revista del Pensamiento Centroamericano (Managua), Vol. 36, Nos. 172–173 (July-December, 1981), pp. 87–88.Google Scholar

¹¹ There is no study of Salvadoran intellectual history. Weak though they may be, the literary histories provide the only written guide to the nation’s intellectual history: Valdes, Luis Gallegos, Panorama de la Literatura Salvadoreña (San Salvador: Ministerio de Educación, 1962)Google Scholar; González, Gilberto y Contreras, , Hombres entre Lava y Pinos (Mexico: B. Costa Amic, 1946)Google Scholar; Landarech, Alfonso María, Estudios Literarios. Capítulos de Literatura Centroamericana (San Salvador: Ministerio de Cultura, 1959)Google Scholar; Toruño, Juan Felipe, Desarrollo Literario de El Salvador (San Salvador: Ministerio de Cultura, 1958)Google Scholar; Uriarte, Juan Ramón, “Síntesis Histórica de la Literatura Salvadoreña,” Páginas Escogidas (San Salvador: Ministerio de Educación, 1967), pp. 87–102.Google Scholar Another useful source is Vallecilllos, Italo López, El Periodismo en El Salvador (San Salvador: Editorial Universitaria, 1964), pp. 184–226.Google Scholar

¹² Biographical data extracted from Rivas, Ramón Mayorga, Guirnalda Salvadoreña, 2nd ed. (San Salvador: Ministerio de Educación, 1977), 2, 287–290.Google Scholar

¹³ The conclusion of Frank Tannenbaum that Latin American university education serves an “aristocratic, authoritarian” elite seems appropriate also for El Salvador in the nineteenth century. Ten Keys to Latin America (New York: Knopf, 1962), p. 95.

¹⁴ Macal, Flores, “Historia de la Universidad de El Salvador,” p. 118.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Vallecillos, López, El Periodismo en El Salvador, p. 188.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Rivas, Mayorga, Guirnalda Salvadoreña, 1, 311–318.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Macal, Flores, “Historia de la Universidad de El Salvador,” p. 122.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Ibid.

¹⁹ Ramírez, , “De la Vida Universitaria,” p. 13.Google Scholar

²⁰ Information on music comes from Sol, Rafael González, Historia del Arte de la Música en El Salvador (San Salvador: Imprenta Mercurio, 1940), pp. 14, 20–22.Google Scholar

²¹ Information on schools and education in nineteenth-century El Salvador can be found in Flores, Saul, Nuestros Maestros. Notas para una Historia de la Pedogagía Nacional (San Salvador: Editorial Ahora, 1963).Google Scholar

²² González, , Principios de Filosofia Positivista, p. 14.Google Scholar

²³ “Copia del Primer Reglamento Completo de Instrucción Pública Decretado en El Salvador en el Año de 1873, Revista del Departamento de Historia y Hemeroteca Nacional, Año II, No. 3 (August, 1939), pp. 78–107.

²⁴ Ibid., p. 80.

²⁵ Flores, , Nuestros Maestros, p. 20.Google Scholar

²⁶ Reyes, Rafael, Nociones de Historia del Salvador (San Salvador: Impr. Del Doctor F. Sagrini, 1885), p. 637.Google Scholar

²⁷ Also, in 1888, 732 primary schools enrolled 27,000 students. These statistics come from a printed addendum in William L. Merry, U.S. Minister, San José, Costa Rica, to Secretary of State, Washington, D.C., No. 146, October 16, 1898, Dispatches from U.S. Ministers to Central America, National Archives, Washington, DC.

²⁸ Wright, , Salvador, p. 36.Google Scholar

²⁹ Toruño, , Desarrollo Literario de El Salvador, p. 151.Google Scholar El Salvador (1870), Honduras (1877), and Nicaragua (1880) all created national libraries within the same decade.

³⁰ Ojeda, Alicia Perales, Asociaciones Literarias Mexicanas Siglo XIX (Mexico: Imprenta Universitaria, 1957).Google Scholar She emphasizes the major role these academies played in nurturing Mexican nationalism (pp. 18 ff.). While patriotism was evident in the Salvadoran academies of the nineteenth century in the form of commemorations of national heroes and independence, the rhetoric of nationalism seems rather subdued.

³¹ Information on the nineteenth-century academies is extremely rare. Most of the information I have read comes from Vallecillos, López, El Periodismo en El Salvador, pp. 178–225.Google Scholar The literary histories contain some references to the academies, particularly in Toruño, , Desarrollo Literario de El Salvador, pp. 152–154.Google Scholar

³² Biographical information comes from Rivas, Mayorga, Guirnalda Salvadoreña, 2, 447–449.Google Scholar

³³ Uriarte, , “Síntesis Histórica de la Literatura Salvadoreña,” p. 98 Google Scholar; Valdes, Gallegos, Panorama de la Literatura, pp. 23,Google Scholar 33.

³⁴ The entire speech of Gavidia before La Juventud is printed in Armijo, Roberto and Rodríguez Ruiz, José Napoleón, Francisco Gavidia. La Odisea de un Genio (San Salvador: Ministerio de Educacion, 1965), pp. 101–106.Google Scholar

³⁵ Valdes, Gallegos, Panorama de la Literatura Salvadoreña, p. 44.Google Scholar

³⁶ Such a theme pervades the provocative study of Berman, Marshall, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982).Google Scholar

³⁷ Jitrik, Noe, Las Contradicciones del Modernismo (Mexico: El Colegio de México, 1978), p. 107.Google Scholar

³⁸ Armijo, and Ruiz, Rodríguez, Francisco Gavidia, pp. 64–65.Google Scholar

³⁹ “… But in relatively backward countries, where the process of modernization has not yet come into its own, modernism, where it develops, takes on a fantastic character, because it is forced to nourish itself not on social reality but on fantasies, mirages, dreams.” Berman, , All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, p. 236.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ “In referring the already idyllic subjects of their poems to a realm of mystical splendour the modernists may of course have been implicitly protesting against the grim realities of their respective countries, protest taking the form of escape into idyll. Yet, in a way they were also echoing current aspirations. Several countries were beginning to enjoy a considerable export boom in raw materials in the 1880s, and the new elites that were benefiting from it were beginning to spend their newly acquired sterling on imported luxuries. The velvet furniture, the silky and embroidered clothes, and the snow-white princesses of modernista poetry thus maybe echo the dreams of the new elite that longed to be the equal of the European aristocracy.” Gallagher, D.P., Modern Latin American Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 8.Google Scholar Françoise Penis cogently states the position that modernism was an aristocratic vision of society dependent on elitist values. Literatura y Sociedad en América Latina: El Modernismo (Havana: Casa de las Américas, 1976), p. 89.

⁴¹ The poem appears in Erazo, Salvador L. (ed.) Parnaso Salvadoreño (Barcelona: Maucci, 1911?), pp. 115–116.Google Scholar

⁴² An impressive number of editions of Sarmiento’s Civilización y Barbarie: Vida de Juan Facundo Quiroga has appeared and still continues to appear. The standard English-language edition is Life in the Argentine Republic in the Days of the Tyrants; or Civilization and Barbarism, first published in 1868 and currently republished by Hafner Publishing Company, New York City.

⁴³ Recuerdos Salvadoreños comprises three volumes, the first published in 1891; the second, 1919; and the third, 1920. The Ministerio de Educación published a second edition: Volume I, 1961; Volume II, 1964; and Volume III, 1965. The unique first volume is discussed in this essay. The last two volumes vary greatly in style from the first. They are very conventional, narrative, political histories. Volume II begins with the origins of the Central American independence movements and moves chronologically through several decades to the end of the 1820s. Volume III carries the political narrative to the mid-18408. Between the writing of the first and last two volumes, Cevallos evidently became aware of or addicted to the more conventional European approaches to history. His efforts to conform deprived the last two volumes of the unconventional, if somewhat chaotic, social flavor of the first volume, which, curiously, treats the 1870s with appropriate flashbacks to earlier periods. Volumes two and three fail to carry out the geographic approach to historical presentation that the author announced as his goal in volume one and pursued in that volume.

⁴⁴ Cevellos, José Antonio, Recuerdos Salvadoreños (San Salvador: Ministerio de Educación, 1961), 1, 10.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Ibid., p. 44.

⁴⁶ An early example of this device occurs in the short stories of the Venezuelan Daniel Mendoza, “Un Llanero en la Capital” and “Palmarote en Apure,” both written at mid-century. Both stories appear in the 1922 edition of Mendoza’s, El Llanero (Caracas: Tip. Cultura Venezolana, 1922).Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Cevallos, , Recuerdos Salvadoreños, 1, 196,Google Scholar 282.

⁴⁸ Ibid., pp. 193–194.

⁴⁹ Ibid., p. 63.

⁵⁰ Ibid., p. 284.

⁵¹ Ibid., p. 190.

⁵² Ibid., p. 194.

⁵³ Ibid.

⁵⁴ Ibid., p. 56.

⁵⁵ Ibid., p. 24.

⁵⁶ Ibid., pp. 16, 17, 62, 63.

⁵⁷ Ibid., pp. 194, 284.

⁵⁸ Ibid., p. 195.

⁵⁹ Vallecillos, López, El Periodismo en El Salvador, pp. 197–202.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Minerva y Apolo, Año 1, No. 1 (April 1, 1902), p. 1.

⁶¹ Ciencias y Letras, Series 1, No. 1 (January, 1898), p. 1.

⁶² Coronel, Juan, “Las Letras Centroamericanas,” El Porvenir de Centro América (San Salvador), September 1, 1896.Google Scholar

⁶³ Vallecillos, López, El Periodismo en El Salvador, pp. 197,Google Scholar 202.

⁶⁴ Data for these conclusions comes from Ibid., pp. 184–226.

⁶⁵ For information on Pinto and Mayorga Rivas see Ibid., pp. 352–357, 379–383; and Toruño, , Desarrollo Literario de El Salvador, pp. 188–191.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Examples of the didactic books published are: Barbacena, Santiago Ignacio, Descripción Geográfica y Estadística de la República de El Salvador (San Salvador: Imprenta Nacional, 1892)Google Scholar; Barbacena, Santiago Ignacio, Qui cheísmos. Contribución al Estudio Del Folklore Americano (San Salvador: Tip. La Luz, 1894)Google Scholar; Fernández, Manuel, Bosquejo Físico, Político e Histórico de la República del Salvador (San Salvador: Imprenta Nacional, 1869)Google Scholar; González, Dario, Comprendió de Geografía de Centro America, 2nd ed. (Guatemala:E. Goubaud, 1881)Google Scholar; González, Dario, Estudio Histórico y Geográfico de la República del Salvador (New York: Appleton, 1894)Google Scholar; Reyes, Rafael, Apuntamientos Estadísticos sobre la República de El Salvador (San Salvador: Imprenta Nacional, 1888).Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Chronologically Nociones (1885) preceded Recuerdos Salvadoreños (1891).

⁶⁸ Reyes, , Nociones de Historia del Salvador, p. 1.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ For an indication of the preferences for the independence movements as well as the men most closely associated with them, see the essays by Juan J. Cañas, José Antonio Cevallos, Alberto Lima, Victor Jérez, and Francisco Martínez Suárez reprinted in Estudios Históricos.

⁷⁰ Guzmán, David J., Apuntamientos sobre la Typografía Física de la República del Salvador (San Salvador: El Cometa, 1883), p. 284.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Ibid., p. 518.

⁷² Flores, , Nuestros Maestros, p. 78.Google Scholar

⁷³ Diario Oficial (San Salvador), No. 286 (December 5, 1879), p. 1588.

⁷⁴ Ibid., pp. 1588–1589.

⁷⁵ Rivas, Mayorga, Guirnalda Salvadoreña, 2, 271.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Loucel, Maria, Reseña General de Representativos Femeninos el el Reino de Cuzcatlán (San Salvador: publisher unknown, 1954?), p. 22.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Martin, , Salvador in the Twentieth Century, p. 28.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Coronel, “Las Letras Centroamericanas.”

⁷⁹ Biographical information on Aragón as well as a reprinting of the two poems can be found in Rivas, Mayorga, Guirnalda Salvadoreña, 3, 291–353.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Biographical information on Lara as well as a reprinting of his poem can be found in Ibid., 131–133; 149–152.

⁸¹ Burns, E. Bradford, “A Walk Through the Past with Arturo Ambrogi,” Americas, Vol. 35, No. 5 (September/October, 1983), pp. 12–15 Google Scholar; Landarech, Alfonso Maria, “Arturo Ambrogi. Su Vida y Su Obra” in Estudios Literarios, pp. 85–98.Google Scholar

⁸² The increasing poverty of the majority as a consequence of the type of modernization the elites imposed on Latin America in the nineteenth century is the thesis of Burns, E. Bradford, The Poverty of Progress. Latin America in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980).Google Scholar Indications that the quality of life of the majority of the Salvadorans declined as a result of the modernization begun in the late nineteenth century will be found in Domvillefife, Charles W., Guatemala and the States of Central America (London: Francis Griffiths, 1913), pp. 285–286 Google Scholar; Wilson, Everett A., “The Crisis of National Integration in El Salvador, 1919–1935” (Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1969), pp. 29, 115, 126, 127, 128Google Scholar; Durham, William H., Scarcity and Survival in Central America. Ecological Origins of the Soccer War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1979), p. 36 Google Scholar; Marroquín, Alejandro R., “Estudio sobre la Crisis de los Años Trenta en El Salvador,” Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos (San José), 3 (1977), p. 188 Google Scholar; Major A. R. Harris, U.S. Military Attaché to Central America, December 22, 1931. National Archives of the United States, R.G. 59, File 816.00/ 828, quoted in Anderson, Thomas P., Matanza. El Salvador’s Communist Revolt of 1932 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1971), pp. 83–84.Google Scholar Alberto Masferrer raised the sharpest criticism in the late 1920s of the iniquitous institutions and the poverty they generated, Patria (San Salvador: Editorial Universitaria, 1960), pp. 179–182.

⁸³ Peter Berger, Brigitte Berger, and Hansfried Kellner conclude that to the degree individuals “modernize” they cut themselves off from past patterns of behavior in order to accept new ones. The new— and untried—can bring disappointments and frustrations as well as satisfactions. For many, the transitfrom old to new patterns creates the “homeless mind.” The Homeless Mind. Modernization and Consciousness (New York: Vintage, 1974). In All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, Marshall Berman elaborates on the dilemmas of modernization to those who decide to modernize. “The paradoxes go even deeper; he—Faust—won’t be able to create anything unless he’s prepared to let everything go, to accept the fact that all that has been created up to now—and, indeed, all that he may create in the future—must be destroyed to pave the way for more creation. This is the dialectic that modem man must embrace in order to move and live; and it is the dialectic that will soon envelop and move the modern economy, state, and society, as a whole.” p. 48. Particularly significant for this essay is the fourth segment of Berman’s book, “Petersburg: The Modernism of Underdevelopment.” Cathy Login Jrade emphasized the intellectual quandary created by modernization in late nineteenth-century Latin America: anxiety, fragmentation, and isolation. “Thus a profound crisis of beliefs—virtually unprecedented in the modern Hispanic tradition—arose at the end of the nineteenth century.” Rubén Darío and the Romantic Search for Unity (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983), p. 5.