The New Criterion

All nations exhibit some degree of chauvinism, and embattled Mexico—“so far from God and so close to the United States” in the words of a distinguished ex-president—has certainly indulged in its share of nationalistic rhetoric and chest-pounding. But since the revolution in the early 1920s, Mexico has also opened out onto the world. It welcomed hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Spanish Civil War, and in general has pursued a cultural policy emphasizing the unity of Spanish-speaking peoples by means of prizes, symposia, invitations, and publishing houses that are open to all Spaniards and Spanish Americans. Just in the past year, for instance, the cultural arms of both the federal government and of Mexico City itself have been celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the birth of the Argentinian poet Jorge Luis Borges with numerous symposia. As the editor of a recent bilingual edition of Borges’s Selected Poems ...