Creolization in the Making of the Americas

Abstract

Inscribed in the American landscape, opening up through it, living in and manifsting it, there is a civilizational region, real but long unnoticed, perhaps because it was balkanized by occidental colonizers. This is the region of the plantation system;' composed of the West Indies and the Caribbean, the Caribbean coast of Latin America (that is to say, the coastal part of Venezuela and Colombia, which is different in many respects from the South American Andes), the Guyanas, the northeastern part of Brazil, and part of the southern United States. It is connected to Mexico and Central America, whose West Indian character is obvious both in Panama and in Belize. The boundaries of Panama and Belize define a more extended area, between South America, of which these countries form a part, and North America. Some call this region the of the Americas;' but this parallel seems vague. Historically, the spinning, revolving movement of the cultures that have lived on its edges have made the Mediterranean a concentrating sea. All around it, the contacts and conflicts between cities and ethnic groups have gradually led to the reality of the Imperium (that is, the inland sea of the Romans) and to the concept of the One. The Mediterranean certainly cannot be considered a monolithic entity; it has generated, given birth to, the nations and the nationalism of a large part of Europe. Nevertheless, its cultural diversities, through osmosis and successive conflicts, have given rise to a universa…