ABSTRACT
If modernity refers to the technological progress of cities, to their organization and management, it is also a discourse, a "language" through which Latin Americans become aware of these changes. It is a narrative, telling us how urbanization, technology, science, and industrialization are understood by these societies. If in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s modernity was still a project to be constructed, during the 1970s and 1980s many complained that it had already been achieved. The impact of the First and Second Industrial Revolutions was detected in a number of Latin American countries, including Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, where the creation of national markets of considerable dimension was given great prominence. Tradition, normally seen in Latin America as an extolling of the past, and, therefore, by definition an exclusion of the new—identified as modern—is being replaced in this century by a new concept of tradition, accepting of modernity.
