Abstract
Accompanying the advance of absolutism, in the 18th century a major cultural mutation took place which we call by the convenient term “Enlightenment”. In Latin America it is more a question of a group of mutations in the domain of ideas, imagination, values and behaviour of an extraordinary complexity throughout the century, whose rhythms and geographies are multiple. We shall try to underline an essential aspect of this mutation, which can be considered to be at the heart of a new reference system: the victory of the individual, considered as the supreme value and reference criterion by which institutions as well as behaviours should be measured. Unlike in the Anglo-Saxon north where modernity found a place in harmony with religious culture, in Latin America modernity was forged in opposition to Catholic culture—hence the attempt to propagate a religious culture in elective affinity with liberal modernity. In examining the causes of the diffusion of Protestant societies in the mid-19th century, in measuring the density and implantation of these religious sociabilities, we need to understand the formation of this new social and political actor, the bearer of a project of democratic modernity, and grasp the bases of this cultural mutation.