Latin America - a Civilization in Transition Viewed from the Angle of the Emotions

Latin America is a civilization in transition, a kind of ‘in-between’, as Rafael López-Pedraza would coin the expression: it is associated not only with various levels of pre-existing consciousness, but also with the emotional life of its inhabitants. This Latin American baroque speaks not only of the cultural complexes which pertain to all of the peoples in this vast territory, but also of why certain emotions - cruelty, intolerance, anxiety, sadness, resentment, joy, rage, envy, suffering, fear, indignation, jealousy, sorrow and shame, to name a few - move these complexes and acquire certain shades in each region and in each inhabitant. Let us remember the relationship that Jung establishes between the emotions and the complexes. For him, although the emotions are the same in their content, they cluster in the complexes of each individual or collective in such a specific, automatic, spontaneous and involuntary way that they possess their own energy, and no one can ignore them. Taking into account these notions of emotion and complex, we analyze some emotions proposed by López-Pedraza (2008) in his book, Emotions: A List, to draw a picture of the collective emotions that predominate among Latin Americans.