MAGNA PATRIA

When the notion and the feeling of the homeland are universally magnified and refined, abandoning in the dregs of time all that is negative and narrow, here, in the Hispanic-American peoples, it can well be affirmed that the identification of the concept of the country with that of the nation or the state, so that the land to be considered strange begins where national dominions end, it would matter something even smaller than a patriotic fetishism: it would import a regional fetishism or a provincial fetishism. Because if the community of origin, language, tradition, customs, institutions, interests, historical destinations, and geographic contiguity and how much can give real foundation to the idea of ​​a fatherland, they are not enough For the language of the heart to erase the conventional borders between our peoples and give the name of "fatherland" to what is not in the language of politics, where can we find the force of nature or the voice of reason that is capable? to prevail over artificial human divisions? The fatherland is for Hispanic-Americans Spanish America. Within the feeling for one's nation resides the not less natural and indestructible sense of allegiance to one's province, region, district; and provinces, regions or districts of that great Patria of ours are the nations into which it is divided politically. For my part, I have always so understood it, or rather, I have always so felt it. The political unity which this moral unity consecrates and incarnates Bolivar's dream is still a dream the realization of which, perhaps, today's generations will not witness. What does that matter ! Italy was not merely Metternich's "geographical expression" before Garibaldi's sword and Mazzini's apostolate constituted it into a political expression. It was the idea, the numen of the fatherland, the fatherland itself consecrated by all the holy oil of tradition, justice and glory. United, personal Italy already existed; less corporeal, but not less real; less tangible, but not less vibrant and intense than when it assumed color and outline upon the map of the nations.