the hedgehog way of thinking carries the seeds of authoritarianism and totalitarianism, while that of the foxes embodies liberal pluralism. Véliz argues that Latin American culture is like a ‘hedgehog’: he sees it as marked by a monolithic, ordering vision composed of centralisation, civil law, Baroque classicism, and a notion of society as a hierarchical, organic whole, in which each person has his or her place. For Véliz, English-speaking North Americans, by contrast, are ‘foxes’. Their culture has featured decentralisation, the common law, romanticism and the Gothic.
