Conclusion

Abstract

Tulio Halperín Donghi enjoys telling the following anecdote concerning Pedro Henríquez Ureña and the foundation of the Biblioteca Ayacucho in Venezuela in 1974: members of the founding committee—Latin American intellectuals from both the political left and the right—had reached an impasse with respect to their first series of Latin American classic works to be published that year. Amidst the building frustration, Enrique Anderson Imbert broke the stalemate by simply asking: “How about Don Pedro’s list? Does anyone have Don Pedro’s list?” He was referring to the famous list of classic texts that Henríquez Ureña compiled and carried around in his pocket for years, hoping to produce a tableau of Latin American literature. For Halperín Donghi, the most fascinating aspect of the episode, in which he himself participated, is how Henríquez Ureña had become a unifying figure for these ideologically diverse Latin American intellectuals. For me, it is the allure of the archive and the philological image of the past, which were embodied by Henríquez Ureña.