The Latin American Memorial, a cultural foundation in São Paulo dedicated to promoting diversity and integration among Latin American peoples, invited me to answer the question “What does it mean to be Latin American?” in a short video. Few things are more stimulating than questions, and few questions are more difficult to answer than the simplest ones.

I will start with the conclusion: we must replace the concept of “identity” with that of “consciousness.” Neither word has or will have a definitive epistemological resolution, but they do have a fairly clear social, historical (and, above all, political) meaning.

This consciousness is not a metaphysical, abstract, and universal reality, but rather a specific, concrete, and multiple one. I am referring to the consciousness of situation, of belonging, and of being, such as class consciousness, gender consciousness, the consciousness of being a colony, the consciousness of being a wage earner, the consciousness of being Latin American, the consciousness of identifying with a label imposed by those in power…

For decades, the search for and confirmation of identity was the Aladdin’s lamp that would unlock the liberation of each social group and each individual in particular. But identity, like patriotism, is a collective emotion and therefore ideal for manipulation by any power. Even more so when it comes to the dynamics of fragmentation. For its enemies and promoters, it is a project of distraction.

The dominant powers manipulate emotions better than ideas. When these ideas are freed from the noise of passions and reflected in their own mirrors, not in the mirrors of power that they do not have, they begin to approach a concrete consciousness.

The most recent obsession with ethnic identity (and, by extension, with different groups marginalized or subordinate to power) was preceded more than a century ago by the obsession with national identity. In Latin America, it was the product of European romanticism. Its intellectuals created Latin American nations on paper (from constitutions to journalism and literature). As the diversity of republics appeared chaotic and arbitrary, with countries created out of nothing through divisions, not unions, a unifying idea was needed. Religions and racial concepts were not strong enough to explain why one region became independent from another, so culture had to create these artificially uniform beings. Even later, when in 1898 the Spanish Empire ended its long decline with the loss of its last tropical colonies to the United States, the country (or, rather, its intellectuals) sank into introspection. Discourses and publications on the identity of the nation, on what it meant to be Spanish, distracted from the pain of the open wound. This is similar to what is happening in Europe today, but without intellectuals capable of processing and creating something new.

Beyond the desperate search for or confirmation of an identity (like a believer who attends his temple every week to confirm something that is not in danger of being lost), identities are often imposed by an external power and, on occasion, claimed by those who resist it. Africa did not call itself Africa until the Romans christened it with that name and put a universe of different nations, cultures, languages, and philosophies into that little box. The same is true of Asia: today, the Chinese, Indians, and Arabs, separated by oceans, deserts, and the highest mountains in the world, are defined as Asians, while the white Russians of the East are Europeans and the less Caucasian Russians of the center are Asians, without being separated by a great geographical feature, much less a radically different culture. For the Hittites, Assuwa was the west of present-day Turkey, but for the Greeks it was the diverse and unknown human universe to the east of Europe. The same is true of America, as everyone knows.

In general, identity is a reflection of the gaze of others, and when this gaze is decisive, it comes from the gaze of power. More recently, the meanings of “Hispanic” and “Latino” in the United States (and, by extension, in the rest of the world) are inventions of Washington, not only as a way of bureaucratically classifying that diverse otherness, but also as a knee-jerk reaction of its own founding culture: classifying human colors; dividing in the name of unity; making fictions visible to hide reality. A tradition with a clear political functionality, dating back centuries.

The politics of identity was relatively successful for two opposing reasons: it expressed the frustrations of those who felt marginalized and attacked—and who, in fact, were—and, on the other hand, it was an old strategy that white governors and slave owners in the Thirteen Colonies consciously practiced: promoting divisions and friction among powerless social groups through mutual hatred.

Although a cultural creation, a creation of collective fiction, identity is a reality, as can be patriotism or fanatical devotion to a religion or a soccer team. A strategically overestimated reality.

For the reasons noted above, it would be preferable to return to talking about consciences, as we used to do a few decades ago, before superficiality colonized us. Immigrant consciousness, persecuted consciousness, stereotyped consciousness, racialized consciousness, sexualized consciousness, colonized consciousness, class consciousness, slave consciousness, ignorant consciousness —although the latter seems like an oxymoron, as a young man I met humble and wise people who had attained this consciousness and acted and spoke with a prudence that is not seen today among those who live it up at the peak of the Dunning-Kruger curve.

Awareness of a particular situation is neither divisive nor sectarian, just as diversity is not opposed to equality, but rather the opposite. It is the gold and gunpowder of a society on its way to any form of liberation. Identity, on the other hand, is much easier to manipulate. It is better to work to clarify and raise collective and individual consciousness than to simply adopt an identity, such as a tribal, sectarian sentiment, above any collective, human consciousness. Of course, achieving consciousness requires moral and intellectual work, sometimes complex and contrary to what in psychology is called “intolerance to ambiguity”—in 1957, Leon Festinger called it “cognitive dissonance.”

On the other hand, to adopt an identity, it is enough to rely on colors, flags, tattoos, symbols, oaths, and traditions adapted for the consumer, superfluous or invented by someone else who will end up benefiting from all that division and frustration of others.

Identity is a symbolic reality, strategically overestimated. Like patriotism, like a religious or ideological dogma, once fossilized, it is much more susceptible to manipulation by others. It then becomes a straitjacket—conservative, since it prevents or limits the creativity derived from a critical and free conscience.

Working and achieving an awareness of this manipulation requires greater effort. It requires control of the most primitive and destructive instincts, such as unbridled ego or a slave’s hatred of his brothers and admiration for his masters—the feverish morality of the colonized.

Jorge Majfud, octubre 15, 2025.

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