History
The Academy of Latinity was created in Rio de Janeiro, during a meeting occurred on March 11, 12 and 13, 2000, at the Candido Mendes University, with the high sponsorship of the Brazilian President and of the Ministers of Education of France and Italy. The meeting was preceded by one year of researches and meetings conducted in Italy, France and Brazil, and notably during the Meeting Latinity in Search of the Universal, organized at the Castello di Gargonza, in Tuscany, Italy, on September 18 and 19, 1999.
On January, 1999, Nelson Vallejo-Gomez, former executive secretary of the Academy, suggested to Catherine Bizot, Foreign Relations adviser to France’s former Minister of Education, Claude Allègre, the idea of “Latinity” as a federalist concept – at the geopolical and cultural levels -, capable of providing a global reading for the different manners of benefiting from the Minister’s official visit to Brazil, foreseen for the month of April of that same year. Allègre would certainly be interested in the political strengthening of Latin countries’ cultural, historical and linguistic relations, under the intermediation of Brazil and France.
Candido Mendes, founding member and present secretary-general of the Academy of Latinity, then thought on the possibility of resorting to the existing fraternity between the two countries’ Academies of Letters. These had just created a joint grand award, the Latinity Award [Prêmio da Latinidade], and were up to meet in Paris to choose the name of the first laureate (Carlos Fuentes). Candido Mendes made that a diner in honor of the French Minister, on 14 March, at the Hôtel de Crillon, brought together several Latin personalities, among which Edgar Morin, Maurice Druon, Marc Fumaroli, Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, Hector Bianciotti, Pierre-Jean Rémy, Eduardo Portella, and Arnaldo Niskier.
During the diner, it has been long debated the urgency of initiatives to be taken in order to reinforce the solidarity among peoples of Latin culture, as for the transmission of their linguistic, historical and cultural contributions. Then, Marc Fumaroli and Candido Mendes asked for the support of the French Minister to the creation of an Academy of Latinity, proposing as well that, from that very moment on, the participants of the dinner became the Academy’s founding members. The idea had been launched, and Candido Mendes would be in charge of making from it a reality.
On April 20, 1999, Candido Mendes presents the candidacy of Claude Allègre to the Palmas Acadêmicas, a decoration conferred by the Brazilian Academy of Letters [Academia Brasileira de Letras – ABL]. In his words of welcome to the Minister, at the ABL, he convinces him that the fraternal links uniting France and Brazil should include a common utopia in favour of Latinity. As an answer, in the course of that extraordinary session for delivering such a highly prestigious decoration, Allègre recalls the 14th March “conspiracy”, in Paris, and again introduces the idea of creating an Academy of Latinity. He says to the Brazilian academicians and other personalities present at the event: “I think that this effort to promote Latinity could make that, in the future, an International Academy of Latinity would be founded, which would be transversal in relation to all the others, and would allow for the coming together of Latin authors and creators of Latinity”. Then, the French Minister pointed out that, to him, such relation would be extended to Italy, and would plunge its roots into the classical western culture. Effectively, on July 2, 1998, in Siena, Italy, Claude Allègre and Luigi Berlinguer sign a protocol – in presence of Lionel Jospin, the French Prime Minister, and of Romano Prodi, the President of the Italian Council -, whose theme is the support and promotion “of the classical culture of Europe, for sometimes we tend to neglect it”. “I believe – he will say to the Brazilians – that this attachment to the classical culture is shared by the Latin American countries, and I think that we could combine this French-Italian effort with yours”.
Without any preconception about the new forms that would be needed for resuming the dialogue between the marginalized peripheries of the great metropolises and the so-called Classical Culture, Candido Mendes returns to Paris on the following may. However, in the meantime, he had already obtained the unconditional support of José Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Federico Mayor, Nélida Piñon, and Henrique Iglesias. He is received in an official audience by Minister Claude Allègre in order to jointly study the development of the project. Afterwards, he is introduced to the French Ambassador to the UNESCO, Jean Musitelli, and is taken to the office of Hubert Védrine, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs.
He also makes connection with Geraldo Cavalcanti, Secretary-General of the Latin Union. An agreement between the future Academy of Latinity and this intergovernmental institution is then evoked. Such agreement will be signed in Rio de Janeiro, on March 12, 2000, so establishing both missions’ identities and differences.
During the audience with the French Minister, Candido Mendes presents a first working document called “Toward an Academy of Latinity”, where an invitation for the Gargonza meeting is suggested.
In remembering the fraternal links between the Brazilian Academy of Letters and the French Academy, Mendes already foresaw that the Latinity Award would be developed into a much more comprehensive project. Besides the prize itself, regardless of any deserved reward, the wager fell entirely on the idea of Latinity. It had been this the idea which, in the diner of the March 14, 1999, at the Hôtel de Crillon, attained a deeper sentiment, much more than the francophonic and lusophonic game that will be treated in its due moment: it is a matter of cultural identities reinforcement, of the foresight of an implacable combat for the future survival of Latinity. The appeal for a “Europe of the Cultures”, launched out here and there at the European Union, unveils another approach and emphasizes the significance of the Academy of Latinity in an era of globalizations, “single thoughts”, and domination of the simulacra displayed by the universe of the media.
On the other hand, that first working document already mentions the idea, rejected some months later, at Gargonza, of a “meta-academy” bringing together the other national academies.
The central idea of the Academy of Latinity consists in establishing a relationship between those personalities reflecting on the end of the diverse cultures involved by the Latin spirit, on one hand, and the new generations, on the other, – so as to assure a continuous creative activity, as well as a spiritual focus providing the interchange between them. However, before all else, the case is of
“constituting an independent authority”.
As a well known scientist, willing the establishment of a relationship between the Academy of Latinity and the issues of bioethics followed by the French Academy of Sciences, Claude Allègre introduced the Rector Candido Mendes to this Academy’s Perpetual Secretary, the notorious biologist François Gros.
The meeting between them occurred at the Hôtel de Crillon, on July 5. François Gros and Candido Mendes signed an agreement on some points that can be considered a “participation of scientists” in the area of Latinity. Among these: that it is necessary to promote a “new Latin renaissance” in the once so rich interchange between scientists and men of letters, which had characterized the Latin diversity and cultural openness; that the Latin countries have, in their life experiences and in their memories, a particular sensibility to an “ethics of man”, when it comes to the recurrences of science – while the Nordic countries are more sensible to an ethics of the environment; that it is necessary to identify the elements approximating natural sciences and human sciences, for they all find themselves isolated in society
Thus, they privileged the isolation characterizing scientific techniques (nuclear, biotechnologies, chemistries), that are beyond the comprehension of the large public and can be seen as dangers capable of unchaining mythical or irrational fears. It exists above all, on the international scientific scene, the real danger of a “pan-American” homogenization, controlling the system of scientific evaluation and publication, and conducing especially to the loss of cultural and linguistic diversity. Whereas, through the languages and the science, the cultures, the history or the ethics, we can find again the presence of Latinity in a totality, responding to the planetary economic needs, discovering a new value of Latin culture before the anonymity of the market in the economic era.