| OCR Text |
Show EDITORIAL Speech delivered by Dr. Miguel Leon-Portilla, director of the Inter-American Indian Institute on the occasion of "Inter-American Indian Day," Mexico, D. F., April 19, 1965. From America Indigena, July, 1965. We have met today to commemorate a truly significant occasion. In April, 1940, exactly 25 years ago, there gathered in Patzcuaro, Mich-oacan, for the first time in the history of the Americas, anthropologists and investigators, representatives of governments and of some Indian communities to discuss, from an Inter-American viewpoint, a series of questions directly related to the integral development and effective participation of the millions of Indians, descendants of the earliest Americans, in the life and institutions of their respective countries. It is true that from the time of the 16th century itself there have been extraordinary figures who have concerned themselves with the fate of the Indian populations. Outstanding among them are Don Vasco de Quir-oga, founder of towns and maker of Utopias, Friar Bartolome de las Casas, vigorous defender of the Indian, and Friar Bernardino de Sahagun, father of anthropology in the New World. Many years later, right after the independence of the American nations there occurred what we shall call the idealistic and romantic attitude of the new governments who came to believe that, in declaring the legal equality of the Indian, his equality and betterment in practice were also achieved. Unfortunately, as is well known, this did not happen and the ideals were not translated into reality. |
