Abstract

This paper proposes to look into certain issues that have made us what we are. If, as Paul Ricoeur states, “to acknowledge that our being is in debt to who have made us be what we are, is to feel responsible for them”, we should revise our debts and be grateful for our gifts. Most of Latin American people have celebrated two thousand years of Independence from the power of the European conqueror. This event invited us to take over a pending task: to face the problematic issue of our identity, and urges us to give up the conqueror’s speech that we still have within ourselves. This commemoration, which celebrates the end of our situation as a colony, compels us to acknowledge and abandon our colonized peoples’ speech. Perhaps, this is our time to face the origin of our Latin American being, of our common history, of our common sorrow and fate.