What constitutes the past of a country (or a continent) depends on its present, for the way and attitude with which its present is assessed casts a shadow back over its entire history and permeates the overall picture. As much as Spain was a painful and excruciating thing to Unamuno and Ortega, so America was to Gabriela Mistral or Fernando Gonz lez. It was not until the second half of the 20th century that the somewhat querulous narcissism so common...