The influences of the theosophical intellectual nets in the public opinion of Central America (1920-1930)

Abstract

This work deals with the role of the cultural, spiritualistic, and theosophical societies in the end of the XIX century and beginning of the XX in Central Arnerica as new forrns of legitirnacy of the civil society, and how they represented the starting of a new forrn of thinking and a proposal of national construction. Theosophy, nourished by Hinduisrn, Neoplatonisrn, Krausism, Arielism, and Fabian socialism, searched for the restatement of an idea of nation based on the equality of races and genders, the moral regeneration of society by means of education and the construction of an identity recovering the ancestral cultures. The article shows the way of thinking and acting of two great Central American thinkers that belong to this movement Alberto Masferrer, who searches for the construction of a real, positive, and authentic nation from a vitalist position; and Carlos Wyld Ospina, who strongly criticises the tyranny ("caudillismo") and imperialism as factors that prevent the shaping of an authentic nationality.