Aimed largely at the US undergraduate market, this collection reviews the attitudes towards race (and, in the case of post-independence writers, national identity) articulated by some important Latin American pensadores. Individual essays consider Bartolomé de las Casas, Simón Bolívar, Andrés Bello, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, José Martí, Justo Sierra, José Enrique Rodó, José Vasconcelos, José Carlos Mariátegui and Leopoldo Zea. A final chapter summarises scholarship on Latino/a identity produced by three philosophers born in Latin America and now based in the United States (Linda Alcoff, J. Angelo Corlett and the book's editor, Jorge J. E. Gracia). An opening chapter taxonomises the intellectual challenges posed by the categories of race and ethnicity and reviews the development of a philosophical tradition in Latin America, starting with the famous sixteenth-century controversy between Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, which is characterised as the beginning of philosophy in the region (p. 10). In many cases, the individual chapters focus on particular texts such at the Jamaica Letter or Rodó's Ariel, and each chapter concludes with a brief biography of the chapter's protagonist as well as suggestions for further reading.
Taken together, these essays demonstrate clearly that the question of whether people of non-European heritage could form part of the body politic has vexed officials and other historical actors since the earliest days of the colony. They also remind us that despite its epistemological slipperiness, the category of race is central to the continent's history – but of course, we knew that already. This volume aspires not to review the historical processes that have linked race and nation, but rather to consider the development of a Latin American philosophical tradition concerning the place of race within the formation of identity categories. The volume thus conceives of itself fundamentally as a contribution to the history of Latin American philosophy, and indirectly, to a more ample theorising of race in general. As one of the contributors, Diego von Vacano, argues, ‘Race is a major issue in contemporary societies, yet philosophy, especially in the canonical European tradition, has yet to provide a cogent account of what it is and why it persists as a problem. Latin American philosophy, however, has grappled with the issue since its inception’ (p. 204). The volume is strongest precisely when it focuses on the philosophical contexts within which its protagonists operated. Indeed, the chapter by Vacano on the Nietzschean roots of Vasconcelos' ideas is a good example of how our understanding of familiar texts can be enriched by such attention. Whether the volume as a whole succeeds in articulating a significant Latin American perspective on the philosophy of race and nation is less clear; the omission of a synthetic final chapter or conclusion leaves to the reader the task of weaving the individual chapters into an overall analysis.
Certainly most of the individual chapters offer intelligent commentaries on how each of their protagonists wrote about Indians, the nation-state, mestizaje and other central concepts, but I am not convinced that the volume as a whole offers a significant contribution either to the philosophy of race and identity or to our understanding of race and nation in the Spanish American imaginario. Rather, it provides a useful teaching resource for lecturers who want to familiarise their students with the writings on race and national identity of some major Spanish American thinkers.
