CarolinaULTURE, both as a concept and as reality, touches so many facets of C meaning in the minds of its students (cf. Kroeber and Kluckhohn 1952;Bidney 1953) that one sometimes despairs of being able to reach common understanding, even with other professional cultural anthropologists, to say nothing of more casual observers. The hazards of agreement are considerably greater when one ventures statements about an important area of the modern world whose spokesmen are not only genial and simpdticos but also highly literate and intelligent. The hurdles of linguistic and national boundaries in such a case are of a sort that appeals more to sporting blood than to scientific caution.In this piece I shall make no attempt to present a comprehensive picture of the total Modern Latin American Culture, but shall focus primarily on a limited number of components of the ethos, which is taken to mean the constellation of acquired drives or motivations that are characteristic of the culture, plus the goals, both explicit and implicit, toward which cultural activities are directed or upon which high value is placed. Included in this concept, then, for present purposes are also concepts that various writers have called "themes," "implicit premises," "values," "controlling patterns," "mental patterns," and so on.First, it is legitimate to ask if there is a common pattern of customs, institutions, and ethos that characterizes modern Latin American society as a whole and that may be properly considered a culture. Are there certain cultural uniformities that regularly recur throughout the area and that distinguish the behavior and attitudes of the people from those of other areas? I myself have not hesitated to answer this question in the affirmative in the sense that the existence of Modern Latin American Culture is a t least a tenable and researchable hypothesis (Gillin 1947a: 151-54; 1947b;1948a; 1949;1953). The Committee on Latin America of the National Research Council in 1948 published in the AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST and in Acla Americana a plan for coordinated research into this problem. The Foreign Service Institute of the State Department gives courses on "Latin American Culture and Personality" for U. S. representatives going to that region. An increasing number of North American anthropological field workers are producing evidence which supports the hypothesis. For example, Foster (1951: 316-17) writes, In spite of large Indian population segments in the New World, and of large areas of Indian influence in non-Indian culture, contemporary Hispanic American culture cannot be described as Indian any more than it can be described as Spanish. It is a new, distinctive culture, with roots deep in two separate historical traditions, but with a unique and valid ethos of its own.
[ GIL LIN]Elhos Compolzenls in Latin American Cullure * This article is bawd in part upon researches made possible by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, to which grateful acknowledgment is made.