Spanish colonial rule fossilized clergy and military as Latin America’s traditional intellectuals.

Evidence

No vast category of traditional intellectuals exists in Central or South America either, but the question does not present itself in the same terms as with the United States. What in fact we find at the root of development of these countries are the patterns of Spanish and Portuguese civilisation of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, characterised by the effects of the Counter Reformation and by military parasitism. The change-resistant crystallisations which survive to this day in these countries are the clergy and a military caste, two categories of traditional intellectuals fossilised in a form inherited from the European mother country. The industrial base is very restricted, and has not developed complicated superstructures. The majority of intellectuals are of the rural type, and, since the latifundium is dominant, with a lot of property in the hands of the Church, these intellectuals are linked with the clergy and the big landowners. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 317

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the toolkit concept of ‘traditional intellectuals’ as a scaffolding term later readings on ideology and hegemony will assume.