ABSTRACT
The mass metropolises fostered the reinterpretation of nineteenth-century movements that had underpinned Latin America's national literature, such as costumbrismo and regionalism. Juan Bimba was not an isolated character in Venezuelan literature. The emergence of the welfare state and a new citizenship in larger Latin American countries went hand in hand with urban growth and masificacion that had begun in the early twentieth century. Ranging from the artistic vanguards that sought the recovery of vernacular motifs from the New World, to the historical, sociological and geographical works that analysed urban and national realities with fresh categories drawn from social sciences, the interwar climate thus enriched the imaginary and discourses about Latin America's mass metropolises and masificacion. And it can also be said that the feedback between vanguards and social sciences paved the way for the emergence of urbanism as a discipline. Veterans of the German-speaking world also fostered the nascent urbanismo of Latin America.
