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Objective/Context: This text sets out a succinct overview of the sweep of the history of emotions and sentiments, from the decisive steps taken by Peter N. Stearns and Carol Z. Stearns in the 1980s up to some of the essential contributions made to the field by numerous academics from Latin America in subsequent moments. The fundamental goal of this exercise is to provide context for the contributions of the articles included in the current issue of Historia Crítica. Methodology: I will point out the main methods and approaches of numerous papers about the history of emotions and sentiments produced in North America and Europe. At the same time, I will inquire about the attention this field has received in Latin American historiography and present the articles of the dossier. Originality: The text condenses and compares a substantial set of historical viewpoints about emotions and sentiments, the pathways it opens to widening historical explanations and invites exploring them from Latinamerican historiography. Conclusions: The articles collected in this issue suggest the importance of continuing to move forward in the study of the history of emotions and sentiments in Latin America, given the authors of these texts prove that the weight of regimes and the signification of emotional experiences matter in the spectrum of causalities, in the decisions, and the agency of individuals and groups, in the formation of political loyalties, in power contests, in revolutions, and wars, in the representations of order and the manners in which to subvert it, but also in the elucidation of the deepest creases of the lives, feelings, and words of the societies of the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the development of an idea: American continental unity as an object of study in Latin American intellectual history of the twentieth century. To achieve this, the article is organized in three stages: the idealist, which starts with José Enrique Rodó; the confrontation between Pan-Americanism and Americanism, which rises from the opposition against imperialism and the revindication of mixed heritages (mestizaje); and the confrontation between policies to implement development and revindicate continental unity driven by the Cuban Revolution. The paper emphasizes that gray area that emerges today, marked by an open questioning of national unity as a paradigm; in other words, the paper sets forth a question regarding the political and intellectual relevance of a topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]