The Cuadernos del CILHA presents a dossier coordinated by two researchers, one of them Argentine and the other Brazilian. Comparatism in Latin America, the subject of the dossier that we present, begins there, that is, by the effort of thinking the objects of study from divergent perspectives but at some point they are confluent. Comparatism acts in this way, as it dismantles works or dissects literary movements, among other purposes, to find the intercultural element that gives them a particular character. Comparatism has had different meanings over a long time. On the one hand, there has been a vertical comparativism, in a certain hierarchical way, of one literature over another, in which the search for influences has been decisive. On the other hand, a comparativism of a horizontal nature has been taking shape for some time now, which disregards the nation-state paradigm for thinking about literatures. It does not look for influences but intercultural footprints. The dossier that the reader has contributes to consolidate the new comparative orientation.

The cardinal points have some interference in this new comparatism. North-South relations are replaced or complemented by others such as South-South. This does not mean either isolation or a puerile pedantry. It is about developing methods and theories about our own literary cultures, but from themselves. This implies the recovery of a tradition coming from Latin American humanist teachers such as Alfonso Reyes and Pedro Henríquez Ureña, for whom culture was not a question of borders or languages, but rather the opposite. In that channel the works of an intra Latin American comparatism are inscribed, like those that work in this dossier, which has abandoned reverences to genealogies coming from the North. However, it makes use of those devices that favor a better understanding of phenomena not considered from other aspects. By case, in a comparatism of broader horizons, less hierarchical and open have room for the “other” literatures, such as those of pre-Columbian languages.

Finally, a Latin American comparatism, for the organizers of this dossier, also appeals to an “ethical twist” to use the terms of Alfonso Reyes. Indeed, Marcela Croce and Claudia Fonseca warn us in the introduction that comparative work is not only a matter of literature, but that it has a medium and long-term consequence on Latin American consciousnesses, since they broaden our knowledge of other cultures literary or cultures in general. In a moment of depression of the continental solidarity projects, comparing is also linking.