The Two Americas. Romanesque America and Phoenician America
Leading South American meta-politicians’ (Carlos A. Disandro, Alberto Buela and Primo Siena), who re-orientated the geopolitical reflection to the humanistic and transcendental tracks, have for a long time drawn attention to the fundamental opposition of the Two Americas’, which have been created and developed in a very different context of the religious, cultural and political life. In this short note we will summarise the essential ideas of one of these authors – an Argentine classical philologist, philosopher, theologian and poet Carlos Alberto Disandro (1919-1984).
The starting point of this reflection is the thesis that America as a continent is a geographical, geological and cosmographic equivalent of the Eastern Hemisphere, that it is a geo-political space that is open to sacralisation that occurred in our part of the world, but until its discovery by Columbus and other Conquistadores remained “virgin” and somewhat dormant.
The discovery of America has changed this situation, from that point on geography and history meets and combines within it. America becomes a geopolitical space incorporating the heritage of the Roman Empire and its medieval aftermath with the religious (Christianity) at the forefront. At the same time however, the division of the world in Western Hemisphere takes place, harking back to the ancient (post) roman times dividing it into two parts; the centre (“inner space”) and the periphery of the empire. This reconstruction takes on the polarisation character of “Romanised Spanish America” (América hispánica romanizada) and the peripheral British America (América Británica), which is “separated from most of the world”- as the ancient poet Virgil once wrote of Britain.
Here is an important distinction in terminology. The part of America in which the “inner space” of the roman-medieval empire has been restored was called and it should remain so today — Spanish America (the roman Hispania is both modern España, as well as Portugal and the Lusitanidad which in this case is primarily Brazil), Ibero-America (Iberoamérica) and Romanesque America (América Románica), but not Latin America (América Latina). The concept of the latter, so widespread today was unknown until the mid-nineteenth century. It was invented by a Chilean freemason, progressivist and a liberal Francisco Bilbao in 1856, and immediately picked up by the “French Emperor” Napoleon III’s propaganda; especially propagated by the leading ideologist of “Pan-Latinism” Michel Chevalier, and the authors of the “Revue de races latines” periodical. Changing the name was not merely an “innocent” correction, since specific interest coincided with it; on the one hand that of the French (striving to build their own national empire through denial and obliteration of the continents’ Spanish stigma — the French are after all culturally a “Latin race” ) on the other that of the American (Creole) liberals – rebels against the legitimate authority of the king of Spain over the American Viceroyalties, who also wanted to break away from not only the the political and religious but also cultural inheritance of their Spanish-Roman Motherland.
The Vocation (vocación) of the Spanish/Romanesque/Ibero-America is contained in the concept of Hispanidad, which is identical to that of the Universal Ecumenical Empire (Imperio Ecuménico Universal), and it is the fulfilment of the task given by Rome (which, in turn is the heir to the Greek culture and the entire Indo-European tradition) to all catholic Romanesque nations. The conquest of America by the Spanish and Portuguese signified the inclusion of it to this ecumenical, Catholic, roman empire. This is even confirmed by the north-American (only “by birth”) words of poet Thomas Stearns Eliot “as heirs of the European civilisation, we are still citizens of the Roman Empire”. In reality, this means a permanent and unreconciled antagonism between the Roman “inner space” of America and what was (or rather it has been reconstructed) on its northern periphery.
Disandro calls this sphere the Phoenician America (América Fenicia), because of its historical and anthropological roots. North America was colonised mainly by English Puritans, judaised and fanatically interpreting the law of Moses. Considering themselves to be the “chosen people” and instilling the spirit of that belief in the same way as the ancient Israelites, the Puritans practised the politics of radical annihilation of the new people(native American) ”Philistines” they encountered.
Upon this religious (and consequently ethical) difference another one imposes itself — the geopolitical one. The Anglophone and Puritan America is that of a Phoenician Tallasocratic type, driven by the sense of maritime trade (comercial marítimo), which corresponds well with the religious doctrine of Calvinism, proclaiming that economic success is a sign of Divine favour. For Americans of the North, as well as for the ancient Phoenicians sailing (navegar) equates trading, and at the same time establishment of dominance and strongholds along the trading routes. On the contrary, the nature of the conquest undertaken by the Iberian (Spanish and Portuguese) peoples highlights their Roman nature: that, like to the Romans, conquistar to them is taking permanent possession of the newly discovered and acquired lands, and sailing through the sea is only a means, never the goal. It is a Geocratic civilisation. The more North America (U.S.A) grew in strength, the more it started to compare itself to Rome, but that is only self-deception on its part, in fact it is not the New Rome but a contemporary copy of Phoenician Carthage.
The ultimate consequence is the different nature of the empires built by the heirs of Rome — the Spanish and the heirs of Phoenicia/Carthage – (northern) Americans. The Iberian Conquistadors not only joined the land, but also its inhabitants to the Ecumenical Empire, above all by baptising them, this making them Christians — Catholics of the same moral rank living under the same ethical and legal code based on the principles laid out in Dante’s Monarchy: “freedom, love, justice” (it was the unfortunate independence, steeped in European liberalism and jacobism, that distorted these Three-Laws into the revolutionary triad in which “brotherhood” caricaturises love, and “equality” — justice, plunging the Romanesque American countries into chaos oscillating between anarchy and military despotism). The Talassocratic north American Empire fastens the world network of commercial relationships that enslave economically, and establishes military bases in strategically important points from which it may intervene at any time, forcing others to obey as soon as the Hegemony finds its commercial and political (which in this case is one and the same) interests at risk.
The Hegemony of this Empire is not interested in the “Order of the Soul” and Salvation of its subjects.
prof. Jacek Bartyzel
translated by Arek Jakubczyk
Kategoria: Publications
