O'Gorman, Edmundo (1906–1995)

Edmundo O'Gorman (b. 24 November 1906; d. 28 September 1995), Mexican historian of ideas and institutions. Born in Mexico City, O'Gorman was the grandson of the third commissioner of the first British mission to Mexico, Charles O'Gorman. Edmundo O'Gorman spent the first ten years of his professional life as a lawyer following completion of his degree at the National University (UNAM) in 1928. After working at the Archivo General de la Nación, he received his Ph.D. in history from UNAM in 1951. He published extensive original research on colonial Mexico, historiography, and intellectual history as well as editions of the writings of sixteenth-century historians such as Bartolomé de Las Casas, José de Acosta, and Fr. Toribio de Motolinía. O'Gorman's major subjects include the Conquest of the New World and America as a European cultural creation. He debated these topics extensively with the highly regarded social theorists Silvio Zavala, Marcel Batallion, Georges Baudot, Miguel Leónportilla, and Octavio Paz. He served as a member of the governing board of the National University and as director of a seminar at the Archivo General de la Nación. In 1967 he was named professor emeritus at UNAM. He died in 1995.

O'Gorman's most important works include La idea del descubrimiento de América (1951), which argues that America was not discovered but rather constructed by its early chroniclers, a proposition continued in La invención de América (1958). Some of his other important contributions include La supervivencia política novo-hispana (1969), a look at monarchism as a political concept in nineteenth-century Mexico, and Destierro de sombras (1986), an analysis of the devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe.

See alsoGuadalupe, Virgin of; Mexico: The Colonial Period.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Patrick Romanell, The Making of the Mexican Mind: A Study in Recent Mexican Thought (1952), pp. 176-185.

Francisco Larroyo, "El ser histórico de América de Edmundo O'Gorman," in Conciencia y autenticidad históricas: Escritos en homenaje a Edmundo O'Gorman, edited by Juan Antonio Ortegy y Medina (1968), pp. 41-47.

Carmen Ramos, "Edmundo O'Gorman como polemista," in Conciencia y autenticidad históricas: Escritos en homenaje a Edmundo O'Gorman, edited by Juan Antonio Ortega y Medina (1968), pp. 49-67.

Additional Bibliography

Celorio, Gonzalo. Ensayo de contraconquista. Mexico City: Tusquets, 2001.

Elizundia Ponce, María del Carmen. Cultura mexicana: Antología de textos. México: Universidad Anáhuac del Sur, 1999.

Jaimes, Héctor. "La visión del la historia en el ensayo hispanoamericano contemporáneo: Germán Arciniegas, Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, Octavio Paz, Edmundo O'Gorman, Leopoldo Zea, Mariano Picón-Salas." Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1998.

Lozoya, Jorge Alberto. La miel de la piedra: Reflexiones sobre la invención de Iberoamérica. Barcelona: Lunwerg Editores; SECIB, 2003.

                              Carmen Ramos-EscandÓn