Title: Waldo Frank, prophet of Hispanic regeneration
Description: Waldo Frank (1889-1967) was an American writer and intellectual who had a vision of cultural union between Anglo and Hispanic America. In an attempt to explain and evaluate this apocalyptic message, which Frank expounded for over forty years, Michael A. Ogorzaly first traces the making of Frank the prophet, then analyzes Frank's major writing on Hispanic themes.

Ogorzaly's analysis moves from Virgin Spain (1926), the book that posed Spain as an example for the New World (thus guaranteeing Frank a hearing in Latin America), to Cuba: Prophetic Island (1961), which saw Castro's revolution as the beginning of the realization of Frank's prophecy of hemispheric unity. The present work exposes the teleological nature of Frank's message. Emphasizing the preeminence of Latin American spirituality vis-a-vis the materialism of the U.S., Frank's conclusions were based on Latin American self-evaluations.

Ogorzaly's study shows that - at a time when mutual understanding was weak - Waldo Frank served as a cultural bridge between North and South.

The 1920s witnessed an upsurge in the belief that the utopia was at hand. Waldo Frank provided one example of secular millennialist thinking. Combining a Spinozistic faith with a notion of the desirability of cultural union between the United States and Latin America, he arrived at his vision that the world's hope lay in the organic synthesis of the two Americas: North and South, Anglo and Hispanic.

Persuaded that spiritual values still flourished in the Spanish-speaking realms, he set out in 1921 for Spain to confirm his intuition. The result was Virgin Spain, which imaged the land as a spiritual synthesis of its warring religions - a land whose people had achieved a kind of wholeness that would serve as an example for the New World in its striving for organic fusion

. Frank triumphantly toured South America in 1929 and returned there in 1942. Asked by the U.S. State Department to use his influence there to counteract Axis propaganda, he did so by preaching the organic philosophy of North-South harmony.

For the rest of his life, Frank continued to expound the same message - as is evident in Birth of a World (1951) and Cuba: Prophetic Island. Ogorzaly holds that his message rested on superficial study and observation. All too often, "facts" were employed only to bolster Frank's preconceived conclusions.

Significantly, these conclusions usually coincided with Latin American self-evaluations formulated during the generations and resting on the conviction that spirituality was more highly prized in the lands to the south of the Rio Grande than it was to the north. In decrying materialism in North Americans, Frank essentially told Latin American cultural elites what they wanted to hear, and he thus assured himself a high standing among them.

It was the regard for Frank, in fact, that perhaps best helped to win friends for the Good Neighbor policy among Latin Americans.
Subjects: American Authors, American literature, Biography, Historiography, In literature, Knowledge, Latin America, Latin American influences, Spain, Spanish influences, Frank, waldo david, 1889-1967, American literature, foreign influences, Latin america, historiography, Latin america, in literature, Spain, historiography, Spain, in literature
Places: Latin America, Spain
People: Waldo David Frank (1889-1967)
Time periods: 20th century