Bajo el manto de un sarape: colores y conciliaciones internacionales a través de un objeto de arte popular
Textiles, as any other cultural artifact, weave history and creativity. This paper records the history of a sarape form Saltillo, that has hitherto kept the secrets of its singularity , not only related to its manufacture technique and design, but, particularly to a political, social and diplomatic dimension: it was witness to the cultural conciliation between  Mexico and the United States of America during the 1930´s. Like the warp and woof in this textile, the approach of these two nations interwined of ideas and acts; one of them was that of Dwight and Elizabeth Morrow in acquiring this textile featuring unusual values.
The Enormous Vogue of Things Mexican: Cultural Relations between the United States and Mexico, 1920-1935
The histories of Mexico and the United States have been intertwined since the beginning of their existence as independent nations. Diplomatic relations were established in 1822 and were maintained despite occasional ruptures, and economic links were forged early in the 19th century and became increasingly important with the passage of time. Beginning about 1900 the expanded international role of the United States brought increased attention to the cultures of other peoples, and an important aspect was a growth of interest in Latin America. By 1910, Spanish language classes were offered in American secondary schools, and because of substantial economic investments the American community in Mexico consisted of nearly 21,000 residents. Reviewing two books with Mexican themes in 1929, Waldo Frank saw them as heralds of "a campaign of an aesthetic, emotional, intellectual infiltration" of the United States by Mexico. Frank was referring to a flowering of cultural relations between the United States and Mexico that began in the 1920s and matured in the mid-1930s. The term "cultural relations" is used here to designate connections, both personal and institutional, that exposed artists and intellectuals in each country to developments in art, music, literature, and archaeology in the other. One result of these relationships was unprecedented exposure to all facets of Mexican culture in the United States, either in original form or as filtered through the consciousness of US interpreters. Delpar describes the development of cultural relations as well as the conditions in both countries that made it possible. These include the early enthusiasm of American liberals and leftists for the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the rise of cultural nationalism in Mexico and the United States, and the admiration of American neoromantics for "authentic" peoples and cultures such as might be found in Mexico. By drawing attention to the cultural link between the neighbouring republics at a time of creative ferment in both, this book complements studies of diplomatic and economic relations.
The Rise and Decline of the Ariel-Caliban Antithesis in Spanish America
Seldom has a literary device had such international political resonance as the famous Ariel-Caliban contraposition of José Enrique Rodó's essay. In the decades immediately following its publication in 1900 Ariel was an exceptionally valued credo for Spanish American youth, not only for its intrinsic grace, but also because it provided a timely answer to a widespread need. To a generation depressed by the frequently pessimistic conclusions of racist doctrines and an uneasy sense of inferiority, and irked by the admonitions of ninteenthcentury “Nordomaniacs,” Ariel offered in sonorous periods a set of values assumed to be peculiarly Latin and therefore the patrimony of Latin America. As Alberto Zum Felde says, “It was the longed-for reply of this weak backward America to the Titanic potentiality of the North: its self-justification, its compensation, its retaliation.” Luis Alberto Sánchez's generation must have derived, as he says he did, its primary image of the United States from Ariel. Arturo Torres-Ríoseco describes it as “the ethical gospel of the Spanish-speaking world.”