The Museum of the Hispanic Society of America, reveals that the end of the civil war in United States means, first of all, the abolution of slavery. Whitout slaves the new nation’s imagination begins to invent individual and collective rights, that will lead to the industrial revolution. This new era brings a new upper class, very rich and powerfull but whitout history. Similar to a Monsanto fruit, a flat Coca-Cola or a song whitout instruments. As usually happens in periods of great changes people questioned the status quo.
Before the end of the nineteen century Andrew Carnegie had paid off The Carnegie Hall where many years later our beloved Celia Cruz will throw monumental parties. Carnegie wrote The Gospel of Wealth or The Savage Wealth, in this essay he addressed the social responsability of spread the wealth, generated wellfare and guarantee progress. And urged this new upper class to fulfill this matter through philanthropy. Carnegie dischard charity and invented a tax system to reward this investments. Incipient capitalism à l’american. One of the three thousand millionaires that read Carnegie essay was Archer Milton Huntington: writer, hispanophile and traveler. He identifies with Carnegie’s ideas, maybe because he was aware of the emptiness in his country, a young powerfull country, but very little cultural imaginary, that is to say, a fragile country. A ceviche whitout lime, a taco whitout chili, a Pizza Hut.
Huntington practice philanthropy and sponsored many cultural intstitutions as The American Academy of arts and letters, The American Numismatic Society, The Brookgren Garden, The Maritime Museum, and probably the most atractive of all: The Hispanic Society of America, which we visited with Alice Fremont to make this reportage co-produced by Continental University of Peru, with participation of professionals and friends as Ramses Saldarriaga and Luigi Capasso.
reportage by
Ruben Romero Prieto – Ramsés Saldarriaga and Alice Fremont