[The transcultural process in Latin America]

Are we living in an age of rapid changes, or are we actually experiencing an existencial mutation? The author believes the analysis of today's transcultural processes in Latin America to be vital to the understanding of the society which is an emergent of these processes. He defines the concepts of transculturation, aculturation, adaptation creative integration and of assimilation in its biological, cultural and religious aspects. He outlines the general characteristics of a complex problem: the unity or heterogenity of the Latin American people with relation to the interaction, juxtaposition or synthesis of their different indigenous, european and african cultures over a period of four centuries. He classifies five ideological proposals which have arisen from this process: 1) the ultraconservative proposal; 2) the nationalistic proposal; 3) the indigenistic proposal; 4) the proposal of imitation; 5) the proposal of a transcendent synthesis. The subject is the transcultural process in persons who have migrated from rural areas to large cities, and from one country to another. The author describes four adoptive or integrative phases; he emphasizes that this experience implies mourning, transition and working-through for both the individual and the community. Migrants are faced with "horizontal" as well as "vertical" mobility, thus having to deal with a mobilization implying changes which may cause persecutory, depresive and confusional anxieties. These crises test the person's degree of individuation and identity, as reflected in different types of behavior.