Displacement and new roots: Pedro Henríquez Ureña and the magazine "Valoraciones"

Abstract

The aim of this article is to reflect on the place that Pedro Henríquez Ureña occupied as a contributor of Valoraciones magazine, edited in La Plata city (Buenos Aires, Argentina) between September 1923 and May 1928. This publication, carried out by young reformist university students, is a platform from which Henríquez Ureña, recently settled in Argentina, starts anew and maintains the practice of writing essays. Some of his interventions show the main lines of his critical thinking, which are later consolidated in his most recognized contributions to the history of Latin American Literature: Seis ensayos en busca de nuestra expresión, la Historia de la cultura en la América hispánica y Las corrientes literarias en la América hispánica.The presence of this Dominican intellectual in the various sections of the magazine has allowed us to analyze the impact of his interventions and critical operations on the magazine. Besides, the study of Valoraciones is a highly valuable tool to understand the functioning and projection of intellectual networks as a meeting place and also as a place of aesthetic and ideological clashes, often between pairs of young people and their elders.