Latin American political thought and scholarship has historically evidenced preoccupation with the problem of self-definition. Simón Bolívar, for example, concerned with the distinctive quality of Latin American civilization, said that it was not European nor North American nor Indian, but a new synthesis. A century later Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, father of the Aprista political movement, insisted that he had spawned a new ideology derived from the unique reality of Indoamerica. The contemporary Christian Democratic movement formally acknowledges its debt to the European tradition but also highlights its differences, which stem from the disparity between industrial and emerging nations. The well-known thesis of Herbert Eugene Bolton and the ‘Atlantic Triangle’ of Arthur P. Whitaker are variations on the same theme.