Both modernism and postmodernism were coined in Hispanic America before Europe.

Evidence

‘Postmodernism’ as term and idea supposes the currency of ‘modernism’. Contrary to conventional expectation, both were born in a distant periphery rather than at the centre of the cultural system of the time: they come not from Europe or the United States, but from Hispanic America. We owe the coinage of ‘modernism as an aesthetic movement to a Nicaraguan poet, writing in a Guatemalan journal, of a literary encounter in Peru. Rubén Dario’s initiation in 1890 of a self-conscious current that took the name of modernismo drew on successive French schools — romantic, parnassian, symbolist — for a ‘declaration of cultural independence’ from Spain that set in motion an emancipation from the past of Spanish letters themselves, in the cohort of the 1890’s. Where in English the notion of ‘modernism’ scarcely entered general usage before mid-century, in Spanish it was canonical a generation earlier. Here the backward pioneered the terms of metropolitan advance — much as in the nineteenth century, ‘liberalism’ was an invention of the Spanish rising against French occupation in the epoch of Napoleon, an exotic expression from Cadiz at home only much later in the drawing-rooms of Paris or London. — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 10

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the debate over cultural periphery vs. center, echoing Jameson’s later account of postmodernism as a specifically American/North Atlantic cultural logic, and to the broader question of which geography produced the terms. — connects to: Multiple comparable early nationalist movements in Spanish America predate Europe’s — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 787; Latin America pioneered cultural racism as social control before Europe formalized it — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1134
• QUESTION: Worth checking how this Hispanophone-origin claim sits against rival etymologies, e.g. whether ‘modernism’ truly entered English only at mid-century or had earlier English-language uses.

Broader Connections

• Multiple comparable early nationalist movements in Spanish America predate Europe’s #corroborates (0.82) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 787
• Latin America pioneered cultural racism as social control before Europe formalized it #corroborates (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1134