The theme of ‘persistence’ unites this collection of seven miscellaneous articles, some of which were presented as conference papers at the 2010 Jornadas Filológicas at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Though not initially designed in order to establish the value of Classics in modern times, the volume as a whole constitutes an assessment of the relevance of Classics after the advent of postmodernism. Mexico is never far from the minds of the authors. In fact, it is in discussion of the classical tradition in Mexico, rather than theorised discussions, that the authors shine brightest and offer the most contributions to future research on the classical tradition in Latin America.

The tone is set by M. Beuchot's opening article. A renowned philosopher in Mexico, Beuchot has for years advocated a middle path in the study of philosophy, which in this article he extends to the humanities. Addressing the critique of the humanities by Michel Foucalt, Beuchot argues that a new theory of hermeneutics is needed where analogy is the key. Here Beuchot aims to avoid the extremes of what he describes as a unilateral rational interpretation (‘univocidad’) and a postmodern resignation to endless possible interpretations (‘equivocidad’). A ‘hermeneutics by analogy’, Beuchot proposes, would help reinstate the study and value of literature and especially poetry.

The distinctive heritage of classical studies in Mexico is present in the article by M. Galaz Juárez. Her brief history of the discipline of philology tells how by the nineteenth century the ‘classical’ aspect of philology had gradually come to encompass other languages and cultures, particularly in Spain and Mexico. The twentieth-century Spaniards Antonio Tovar Llorente and Luis Gil Fernández are cited as examples of philologists who had interests ranging from Proto-European to Amerindian languages. This is reflected in the composition of the Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas today, which contains five centres of research which include not only Classics but also (Mexican) Literature and Mayan Studies. Galaz Juárez proposes an expanded definition of philology to include the study of texts of any culture, both written and oral traditions. Her article, and indeed the presence of her article in a publication of the Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, makes an important case for the distinctive position of Mexico in the history of philological studies.

V.H. Méndez Aguirre follows the approach outlined by Beuchot in order to demonstrate the role of hermeneutics in the intellectual movements of the independence of Mexico. In his piece on the origins of American hermeneutics in Mexico's colonial period, Méndez Aguirre argues that analogy is at the heart of American philosophy. There is something particularly analogical about American philosophy, he suggests, because analogy closes the gap between distant cultures. In this sense the Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún had already implemented a method of analogical hermeneutics in his study of Mexican codices as early as the sixteenth century. Figures such as Fray Servando Teresa de Mier sought to comprehend the diversity of New Spain, auguring a new nation. In Méndez Aguirre's eye, the ‘indigenism’ of Fray Servando effectively constituted a modern hermeneutics that was nevertheless ‘doubly classical’ because it integrated Graeco-Roman sources found in Christian texts with others of pre-Hispanic origin. If there is a Mexican way of studying philology with a tradition going back to the colonial period, as implied but not articulated in Galaz Juárez’ article, Méndez Aguirre explicitly argues that there was a local and specific Mexican way of explaining colonial reality in the period leading up to and following independence.

Of special interest is J. Quiñones Melgoza's bio-bibliography of Mexican translators in the nineteenth century. The practice of translation originated with the Jesuits in the eighteenth century, including figures such as Diego José Abad, Francisco Xavier Alegre and Rafael Campoy. But Quiñones Melgoza's survey shows translation to be a particularly nineteenth-century phenomenon which was undertaken by journalists and politicians as well as clergy. His system of classification assigns 24 translators to three generations: 1770–1850 (5), 1801–1900 (7), 1824–1921 (12). Names not generally associated with Latin letters appear in the survey, such as Carlos Maria de Bustamante. Melgoza does not enquire about the relationship between translations and Mexican nation-building and makes no conclusions, but his article is sure to be of use to anyone interested in nineteenth-century Mexican history.

Finally, in a pair of articles, A.E. Ramírez Trejo and M. Galaz Juárez discuss the concept of democracy. Galaz Juárez argues that the modern understanding of democracy constitutes a ‘betrayal’ of the legacy of Athenian democracy, which was based on the principles of political equality, the tendency towards economic equality, transparency in holding office and administering funds, and the practice of scrutiny. Galaz Juárez argues that these principles were appropriated and distorted by capitalist discourse. Ramírez Trejo presents a less primordialist view of democracy in the case of Mexico, locating the origin of national identity in the participation of people in democracy and the life of the ‘patria’. He offers a survey of discourses of democracy and ‘patria’ in ancient Greece, Rome and New Spain. His discussion of the discourse of New Spain, however, leaves the reader waiting for more, after a passing reference to the seventeenth-century friar Juan Zapata y Sandoval as the first to speak of a Mexican ‘Patria’.

Spanish translations of Latin and Greek texts are included throughout, but a few quotations in English and French are left untranslated. Overall the volume may hold some interest to researchers of the classical tradition, especially in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Mexico, and asks some important reflective questions about the nature of classical studies in modern times.