Juan Gabriel Caro Rivera (Colombia) speech at the Global Conference on Multipolarity (ES)

Juan Gabriel Caro Rivera (Colombia) speech at the Global Conference on Multipolarity (ES)

Juan Gabriel Caro Rivera (Colombia) –  metapolitical and geopolitical analyst, founder of Vanguardia Colombia

I would first like to thank the organizers of this event for allowing me to participate in it. Specially the professor Alexander Dugin and Raphael Machado for invite it me to this important event.

I would like begin this intervention say the rise of multipolarity implies the awakening of the great civilizations, both past and future, which today is taking place everywhere. Some of the poles of the multipolar world are already de facto tangible realities, as is the case of the United States, Russia or China. However, there are other poles that have not even been established yet, as is the case of our continent. If we want to become an independent pole, we must first carry out a process of conceptual decolonization of our vocabulary, which implies the deconstruction of the predominant discourses. Broadly speaking, there are three discourses about our continent:

1. The first discourse is that which has been traced from the West and which is expressed in liberal, communist and nationalist ideologies alike. For this Westernized discourse, Latin America as a whole is a territory without history that has not managed to modernize successfully and, therefore, to integrate itself to the benefits of globalization. Due to its historical defects, superstitions, myths and lack of rationalism, its peoples and cultures have been incapable of assuming modernization and progress. This discourse is common to both conservative and progressive currents that wish to impose the standards of European and American Modernity on our lands. Speeches such as that there is more territory than State or lack of rationalization of the economy belong to this modern and enlightened scheme. The main representative of this trend was Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, who established a disjunction between civilization and barbarism. By civilization Sarmiento understood the Yankee culture and its modern man, while he condemned as barbarism the Catholic Baroque culture of the Indians, blacks and gauchos of the continental peoples as residues of a bygone era, a culture belonging to the twelfth century.
2. The second discourse on our continent is the one expressed by Hispanists, reactionaries, Catholics, Carlists and all the pro-monarchist and traditionalist Hispanic-American currents. For these currents everything that is perceived as noise or lack of history and modernity by the dominant ideological currents of the Enlightenment is rather considered by them as an expression of the traditions of the Hispanic-Lusitanian peoples. This current of thought considers that the Hispanic monarchy, its institutions and its geopolitical unity was destroyed by modern ideologies such as nationalism, liberalism and communism, all of them being equally guilty of eliminating the universal Catholic monarchy that had dominated this continent. This discourse, of course, is typical of the intellectual, juridical, traditionalist and monarchist elites who long to return to a past destroyed by the subsequent enlightened revolutions. This discourse is not the discourse of the people either, and the Logos of our nations does not shine in it.
3. The third discourse on our continent does not belong either to the modern majority enlightened elites or to the minority and marginal traditionalist elites. This third discourse was created by a series of heterodox, baroque and popular movements that expressed the originality of the mixtures and manifestations of our peoples from their particular ethnogenesis to the present day. We could say that it is the language of the poets and writers who, through literary modernism, made the Logos of our continent speak. This third discourse is based on the thesis that the first discourse is false, but the second discourse is incomplete and it is necessary to search deeper and deeper in our imaginary or ethnic sense, understanding that the Logos of our people cannot be expressed by an elitist or nostalgic language. That is why literary modernism, represented by Rubén Darío, José Asunción Silva, José Enrique Rodó or José Martí, focused their attention on myths, stories, legends and pre-modern structures that sought to abolish progress, seeking to return to the archaic and mythical elements that had given birth to our ethnic groups. Thus it was necessary for modernist poets and writers to re-sacralize reality and overcome Western nihilism by going much further than the ancients: inspired by Nietzsche, they all proposed the superman as the conqueror of God and Nothingness. This last discourse is neither about the future (progressive) nor about the past (reactionary), but about the abolition of time and the opening to Eternity (the present). It is worth noting that Latin American modernism was contemporary to the Russian Silver Age and has many parallels with it, how, for example, the exploration of pagan themes and spirituality against the positivist and scientific world.

If our continent wants to become a multipolar pole of the world, then it is necessary for us to take on the task of creating a new culture that can confront Modernity. Such a task has already been taken on by many of our thinkers and must be taken on by us today.

 Los tres discursos sobre el mundo indiano

Juan Gabriel Caro Rivera (Colombia) speech at the Global Conference on Multipolarity (ES)

Juan Gabriel Caro Rivera (Colombia) –  metapolitical and geopolitical analyst, founder of Vanguardia Colombia

I would first like to thank the organizers of this event for allowing me to participate in it. Specially the professor Alexander Dugin and Raphael Machado for invite it me to this important event.

I would like begin this intervention say the rise of multipolarity implies the awakening of the great civilizations, both past and future, which today is taking place everywhere. Some of the poles of the multipolar world are already de facto tangible realities, as is the case of the United States, Russia or China. However, there are other poles that have not even been established yet, as is the case of our continent. If we want to become an independent pole, we must first carry out a process of conceptual decolonization of our vocabulary, which implies the deconstruction of the predominant discourses. Broadly speaking, there are three discourses about our continent:

1. The first discourse is that which has been traced from the West and which is expressed in liberal, communist and nationalist ideologies alike. For this Westernized discourse, Latin America as a whole is a territory without history that has not managed to modernize successfully and, therefore, to integrate itself to the benefits of globalization. Due to its historical defects, superstitions, myths and lack of rationalism, its peoples and cultures have been incapable of assuming modernization and progress. This discourse is common to both conservative and progressive currents that wish to impose the standards of European and American Modernity on our lands. Speeches such as that there is more territory than State or lack of rationalization of the economy belong to this modern and enlightened scheme. The main representative of this trend was Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, who established a disjunction between civilization and barbarism. By civilization Sarmiento understood the Yankee culture and its modern man, while he condemned as barbarism the Catholic Baroque culture of the Indians, blacks and gauchos of the continental peoples as residues of a bygone era, a culture belonging to the twelfth century.
2. The second discourse on our continent is the one expressed by Hispanists, reactionaries, Catholics, Carlists and all the pro-monarchist and traditionalist Hispanic-American currents. For these currents everything that is perceived as noise or lack of history and modernity by the dominant ideological currents of the Enlightenment is rather considered by them as an expression of the traditions of the Hispanic-Lusitanian peoples. This current of thought considers that the Hispanic monarchy, its institutions and its geopolitical unity was destroyed by modern ideologies such as nationalism, liberalism and communism, all of them being equally guilty of eliminating the universal Catholic monarchy that had dominated this continent. This discourse, of course, is typical of the intellectual, juridical, traditionalist and monarchist elites who long to return to a past destroyed by the subsequent enlightened revolutions. This discourse is not the discourse of the people either, and the Logos of our nations does not shine in it.
3. The third discourse on our continent does not belong either to the modern majority enlightened elites or to the minority and marginal traditionalist elites. This third discourse was created by a series of heterodox, baroque and popular movements that expressed the originality of the mixtures and manifestations of our peoples from their particular ethnogenesis to the present day. We could say that it is the language of the poets and writers who, through literary modernism, made the Logos of our continent speak. This third discourse is based on the thesis that the first discourse is false, but the second discourse is incomplete and it is necessary to search deeper and deeper in our imaginary or ethnic sense, understanding that the Logos of our people cannot be expressed by an elitist or nostalgic language. That is why literary modernism, represented by Rubén Darío, José Asunción Silva, José Enrique Rodó or José Martí, focused their attention on myths, stories, legends and pre-modern structures that sought to abolish progress, seeking to return to the archaic and mythical elements that had given birth to our ethnic groups. Thus it was necessary for modernist poets and writers to re-sacralize reality and overcome Western nihilism by going much further than the ancients: inspired by Nietzsche, they all proposed the superman as the conqueror of God and Nothingness. This last discourse is neither about the future (progressive) nor about the past (reactionary), but about the abolition of time and the opening to Eternity (the present). It is worth noting that Latin American modernism was contemporary to the Russian Silver Age and has many parallels with it, how, for example, the exploration of pagan themes and spirituality against the positivist and scientific world.

If our continent wants to become a multipolar pole of the world, then it is necessary for us to take on the task of creating a new culture that can confront Modernity. Such a task has already been taken on by many of our thinkers and must be taken on by us today.

 Los tres discursos sobre el mundo indiano