ABSTRACT
Latin America has produced some of the most prominent painters, writers, philosophers, intellectuals, and theologians in the world. Seventeen Nobel Prize laureates have called Latin America home; that prize has been awarded to Latin Americans for the promotion of peace, literary accomplishments, medicine, and chemistry. Significant figures during the nineteenth century in Latin America include the Argentine Domingo F. Sarmiento, who wrote the influential political piece Civilization, and Barbarism and José Marmól, who authored Amalia, the great romantic novel of the nineteenth century in Argentina. Music and dance comprise a vital part of Latin American culture. World War I changed Latin Americans’ uncritical reliance on Europe for cultural and educational standards. The twentieth century saw a remarkable flourishing of Latin American art, literature, and music. The Latin American continent, throughout its history, but especially during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, has been devastated by civil conflicts, revolutions, outside intervention, and repressive military rule.
