Suchergebnisse

Of all the generalizations about Chile, those dealing with geography are the most accurate. Geographical facts have given shape and character to Chilean life and Chilean problems. Nature gave the heart of Chile patches of excellent soil and a climate kind to man. But this central valley is isolated, bounded on the north by desert, the east by towering mountains, the west by a cold and tempestuous ocean, and the south by the end of the world. Ownership of the land has been the keystone of Chilean history, and the fertile land is in the core region of the nation. There, in Mediterranean Chile, live three-quarters of the nation's population, there resides the political power in a unitary republic in which the president appoints provincial governors and there are no provincial assemblies, there are owned and managed the enterprises of north and south.

Any history of education in republican Chile, however brief, must of necessity touch first upon the colonial period. Although education, and indeed government, were completely dominated by the Church during the colonial period, in the late eighteenth century Chile grew restless under religious domination and began to free both its educational system and its governmental process from absolute church control.Prior to the eighteenth century education had been the exclusive prerogative of the church. In the period immediately preceding the Independence the Church and the clergy began to lose some of their unchallenged importance and authority. This loss was reflected in administration and schools. The expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 and the not-too-respectful criticism of things religious by Charles III indicated that the Church was no longer directing the government and hence was no longer the dominant element in the educational process.

Una rama de la literatura de la cual por muchos años nada se dijo, ha venido a hacerse presente en nuestra época, el ensayo, hasta el punto de que la literatura hispanoamericana parece ser, por el momento, entre las que forman el ámbito cultural de Occidente, una de las más fecundas en este tipo de producciones. No nos detendremos a precisar qué debe entenderse por ensayo, ya que ello ocuparía la mayor parte del espacio concedido a nuestra colaboración; pero en forma negativa podría decirse que es todo aquel escrito en prosa al cual no pudiéramos cómodamente llamar novela, ni cuento ni artículo de costumbres ni drama, y en forma positiva podríamos añadir que en el ensayo han de barajarse ideas. Es deseable que el ensayo, además, esté bien escrito, más o menos conforme al patrón que dejó para todos los ensayistas hispanoamericanos José Enrique Rodó, el famoso pensador uruguayo. Esta exigencia formal no es, sin embargo, un requisito indispensable, y es notorio que el ensayo hispanoamericano de nuestros días es harto menos elaborado que en los días de Rodó.

Es opinión corriente que el cuento es un género literario en plena decadencia, incapaz ya de interesar al público y en vías de extinción. Cuando un autor de cuentos llega hasta la mesa del editor, sus esperanzas son rápidamente disipadas: "pero hombre, escriba usted novelas. Eso sí que tiene público". Se argumenta largamente sobre el asunto y se exhiben penosas estadísticas. A más de un joven autor hemos visto echar las tristes cuentas de sus aventuras editoriales. Parece indudable que eso que llamamos "el gran público" prefiere novelas o novelones … tal vez por un cálculo económico: al comprar un libro, prefiere invertir su dinero en el mayor número de páginas!

There is a newly-respectable school of economics which claims that a little inflation is a good thing and necessary to sustain a high rate of economic growth. It has not even been deterred by the experience of the recession of 1958, by which time normal market forces had been tampered with to such an extent that the United States was treated to the novel and startling spectacle of continued inflation in the midst of a downturn in the productive sectors of the economy. These same economists view inflation not only as a good thing in the developed, industrialized nations, but as practically a necessity in the underdeveloped countries. They thus give aid and comfort to those elements in the underdeveloped areas which are attempting to find an easy solution to the problem of industrial growth, a problem which took the advanced countries many decades and much work and social upheaval to solve.