Neither Peace nor Freedom: The Cultural Cold War in Latin America

by Patrick Iber

  23. Remarkably, Cárdenas’s only prior trip outside Mexico was a day visit to Los Angeles in 1957. The only other time he would leave his country would be to travel to Cuba later in 1959. Cárdenas Solórzano, Sobre mis pasos, 63. The diary entry mentioning China is in Cárdenas, Apuntes, 1941–1956, 88. The one defining the Mexican Revolution is from 1961 and is in Cárdenas, Apuntes, 1957–1966, 210. The comparative mildness of Mexico’s revolutionary experience is put in stark relief by Friedrich Katz, “Violence and Terror in the Mexican and Russian Revolutions,” in A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence during Latin America’s Long Cold War, ed. Greg Grandin and Gilbert M. Joseph (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010), 45–61. On the hopes of Cárdenas for Cuba, see Cárdenas, Apuntes, 1941–1956, 91.

  24. The meeting took place on 2 August 1956. Cárdenas, Apuntes, 1941–1956, 646–647.

  25. “Se informa en relación con las actividades del Ing. Jorge L. Tamayo,” 11 June 1960, Lázaro Cárdenas del Río—versión pública, binder 2, gallery 1, AGN.

  26. Víctor Flores Olea, “Cuba, una democracia concreta,” Política 1, no. 2 (15 May 1960): 10–11; Castro is quoted in Carlos Fuentes, “Primero de mayo en la Habana,” Política 1, no. 2 (15 May 1960): 46–47.

  27. “El preso 46788/60,” Política 1, no. 9 (1 September 1960): 5–20; “La sentencia de David Álfaro Siqueiros y Filomeno Mata, se finca en informes policiacos, en opiniones y noticias periodistas, relacionado esto con las finalidades y principales del Partido Comunista Mexicano,” Heriberto Jara Papers, box 47, folder 1530, AHUNAM; Julio Scherer García, La piel y la entraña (Siqueiros) (Mexico City: Era, 1965), 12.

  28. The foreign delegates were Domingo Vellasco of Brazil, Tomás Alberto Casella of Argentina, and Olga Poblete of Chile, all members of their respective national peace organizations. Lázaro Cárdenas, Domingo Vellasco, and Alberto T. Casella, “Convocatoria,” 17 January 1961, PCM archive, box 40, folder 20, CEMOS.

  29. Memo, 5 March 1961, DFS archive, file 11–6–1961, gallery 1, AGN.

  30. “Conferencia Latinoamericana por la Soberanía Nacional, la Emancipación Económica y la Paz: Documentos,” 1961, 3–4, PCM archive, box 40, folder 86, CEMOS.

  31. Carlos Fuentes, “Siete días con Lázaro Cárdenas,” Política 1, no. 23 (1 April 1961): 16, 22.

  32. The executive and coordinating committee consisted of Alonso Aguilar Monteverde, Narciso Bassols Batalla, Enrique Cabrera, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, Enrique González Pedrero, Braulio Maldonado, and Manuel Terrazas. “Movimiento de Liberación Nacional, bases generales de organización aprobadas por unanimidad en la asamblea nacional celebrada en la ciudad de México, D.F., los días 4 y 5 de agosto de 1961,” Heriberto Jara Papers, box 47, folder 1523, AHUNAM; Memo, 30 October 1961, DFS archive, file 11–6–61, gallery 1, AGN; “Llamamiento al pueblo mexicano del Movimiento de Liberación Nacional,” Siempre!, no. 429 (13 September 1961): 132–133.

  33. Cárdenas, Apuntes, 1957–1966, 213–216; Doyle, “After the Revolution”; Olga Pellicer de Brody, México y la revolución cubana (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1972), 91. Cárdenas rejected taking a salary for the Balsas River position. Cárdenas, Apuntes, 1957–1966, 270.

  34. Rodrigo García Treviño, “Cárdenas y la conferencia comunista,” Examen, no. 20 (April 1961): 12; Cárdenas, Apuntes, 1957–1966, 192.

  35. “Se informa en relación con el Partido Popular Socialista,” 20 December 1960, VLT—versión pública, volume 5, gallery 1, AGN; “Lista de personas, agrupaciones, comités de auspicio, municipios, etc. que cooperaron para los trabajos de la Conferencia Latinoamericana por la Soberanía Nacional, la Emancipación Económica, y la Paz,” April 1961, Clementina Batalla de Bassols Papers, box 3, folder 10, gallery 7, AGN; Jorge L. Tamayo to Victor Chkhikvadze, 20 January 1961, LCR Papers, section “Consejo Mundial de la Paz—II: Enero a Diciembre de 1961,” roll 23, AGN; Memorandum, 14 March 1961, document 11–6–61, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solorzano file—versión pública, gallery 1, AGN. The Argentine journalist was Sara Goldenberg, editor of the Argentine Peace Council’s magazine, Queremos Vivir; Argentine police had raided her apartment. “Informe sobre Sara Goldenberg,” 27 February 1961, file 11–6–61, gallery 1, AGN.

  36. “Movimiento de Liberación Nacional,” 25 October 1961, DFS archive, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas—versión pública, volume 1, AGN; Keller, “Foreign Policy for Domestic Consumption,” 114–115.

  37. On the nature of the Mexican press in that era, see Chappell Lawson, Building the Fourth Estate: Democratization and the Rise of a Free Press in Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Richard Ray Cole, The Mass Media of Mexico: Ownership and Control (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Xerox University Microfilms, 1972); and Rafael Rodríguez Castañeda, Prensa vendida: Los periodistas y los presidentes; 40 años de relaciones (Mexico City: Grijalbo, 1993). Excélsior and Novedades had declined to run paid advertisements for the event in January. Daniel Ramos Nava, “Nada perjudica tanto a la libertad de prensa como el uso irresponsable: Coinciden el juicio de López Mateos y el de la SIP,” Novedades, 12 March 1961, 1; Cárdenas, Apuntes, 1957–1966, 186; Cárdenas Solórzano, Sobre mis pasos, 50–51.

  38. Rodríguez Castañeda, Prensa vendida, 80–83; Lawson, Building the Fourth Estate, 90.

  39. On Pagés Llergo, see María Emilia Paz Salinas, Strategy, Security, and Spies: Mexico and the U.S. as Allies in World War II (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), 29–30; John Mraz, “Today, Tomorrow, and Always: The Golden Age of Illustrated Magazines in Mexico, 1937–1960,” in Fragments of a Golden Age: The Politics of Culture in Mexico since 1940, ed. Gil Joseph, Anne Rubenstein, and Eric Zolov (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001), 121, 156. At Novedades the supplement had been known as México en la Cultura; the director of Novedades was a de facto member of the anti-MLN group discussed later in this chapter, the Frente Cívico Mexicano de Afirmación Revolucionaria.

  40. Problemas Agrícolas e Industriales de México began publication in the summer of 1946 as Problemas Económico-Agrícolas de México and changed its name in 1949. It ceased publication in 1959. Many of its contributors, include Marcué Pardiñas, Alonso Aguilar, Elí de Gortari, Vicente Lombardo Toledano, Manuel Mesa, Enrique Ramírez y Ramírez, and Carlos Sánchez Cárdenas, went on to active militancy in the MLN. Juan Rafael Reynaga Mejía, La revolución cubana en México a través de la revista Política: Construcción imaginaria de un discurso para América Latina (Toluca, Mexico; Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, 2007), 33–34.

  41. “Actividades del Ing. Manuel Marcué Pardiñas,” 12 October 1961, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas—versión pública, gallery 1, AGN. The document that claims Soviet and Cuban support dates from 1965, and the timing of this possible dependence is not well understood. By 1965 and 1966 the Mexican government’s monitoring of Manuel Marcué Pardiñas and his personal and financial problems allowed it to exert substantial power over Política, which led to its eventual dissolution at the end of 1967. Jacinto Rodríguez Munguía, La otra guerra secreta: Los archivos prohibidos de la prensa y el poder (Mexico City: Random House Mondadori, 2007), 197–207.

  42. Narciso Bassols and Jesús Silva Herzog were instrumental in the creation of PIPSA. Jesús Silva Herzog, Una vida en la vida de México (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1972), 157–158. “A nuestros lectores,” Política 1, no. 11 (1 October 1960): unnumbered page facing page 1; “Intervención contra ‘Política,’ ” Política 1, no. 12 (15 October 1960): unnumbered page facing page 1; “La maniobra continúa,” Política 1, no. 13 (1 November 1960): unnumbered page facing page 1.

  43. Memo, 23 August 1961, DFS archive, file 48–59–61, gallery 1, AGN; Rodrigo García Treviño and Benjamín Tobón to Serafino Romualdi, 11 July 1949, International Affairs Department, box 22, folder 21, George Meany Memorial Archives (GMMA), Silver Spring, Md.; “Revolucionarios amillonados,” Política 2, no. 33 (1 September 1961): 5. On the functions of the FCMAR, see Robert J. Alexander interview with Horacio Porres, president o
f section six of the FCMAR, 24 August 1963, Robert J. Alexander Interview Collection, reel 10, frame 370, Archibald S. Alexander Library, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J.; Doyle, “After the Revolution”; and José Agustín, Tragicomedia mexicana, vol. 1 (Mexico City: Planeta, 1991), 195. Cárdenas, Apuntes, 1957–1966, 241.

  44. Carr, Marxism and Communism in Twentieth-Century Mexico, 227–228; Doyle, “After the Revolution.”

  45. Heriberto Jara to Hugo Cuesta Jara, 24 October 1961, Heriberto Jara Papers, box 47, folder 1522, AHUNAM; “Delegación Mexicana a la Conferencia de los Pueblos Latinoamericanos en La Habana, Cuba,” 23 January 1962, file 11–6–62, gallery 1, AGN; Lázaro Cárdenas to Vicente Lombardo Toledano, 9 July 1962, Lázaro Cárdenas Papers, section “Comité Mexicano por la paz, 1955–1963,” roll 23, AGN. Carlos Maciel, El Movimiento de Liberación Nacional: Vicisitudes y aspiraciones (Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa, 1990), 143. “Declaraciones del Movimiento de Liberación Nacional sobre las posiciones del Partido Popular Socialista,” 18 June 1962, Heriberto Jara Papers, box 47, folder 1523, AHUNAM.

  46. Circular, 9 May 1963, Heriberto Jara Papers, box 47, folder 1523, AHUNAM; “El PCM ha hecho y seguirá hacienda sus mejores esfuerzos para vigorizar el MLN,” n.d. [October 1963], PCM archive, box 48, folder 3, CEMOS; “El MLN reafirma su posición unitaria y denuncia la conducta provocadora de líderes del PC y del FEP,” n.d. [October 1963], El Día, in PCM archive, box 49, folder 56, CEMOS. Cárdenas Solórzano, Sobre mis pasos, 61–63; Arnoldo Martínez Verdugo, Historia del comunismo en México (Mexico City: Grijalbo, 1985), 294–295. Memo, 14 August 1964, DFS archive, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano—versión pública, volume 3, AGN. The best guide to the MLN’s internal fissures, precisely because it is a partisan text, is Maciel, Movimiento de Liberación Nacional.

  47. Jon Lee Anderson, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life (New York: Grove Press, 1997), 457. Lázaro Cárdenas to Olga Poblete, 6 March 1962, LCR Papers, section “Conferencia Latinoamericana y Tricontinental—I,” roll 24, AGN; Lázaro Cárdenas to Fidel Castro, 25 September 1962, LCR Papers, section “Cuba—III,” roll 25; and Olga Poblete to Lázaro Cárdenas, 26 November 1962, and J. D. Bernal to Lázaro Cárdenas, 14 December 1962, LCR Papers, section “Consejo Mundial de la Paz—III,” roll 23, AGN; “Notas informativas sobre el Congreso Mundial por el Desarme General y la Paz,” 1 August 1962, LCR Papers, section “Conferencia Latinoamericana y Tricontinental—II,” roll 25, AGN; “The Hemisphere: Where Did Everybody Go?,” Time, 5 April 1963, 30.

  48. “Comité del pueblo chino por la defensa de la paz mundial,” 21 February 1962, LCR Papers, section “China,” roll 26, AGN; Lázaro Cárdenas to Kuo Mo-jo, 5 September 1963, and “Puntos principles enunciados en el artículo titulado ‘El origen y el desarrollo de las diferencias entre la dirección del P.C. de la URSS y nosotros,’ ” 6 September 1963, LCR Papers, section “China,” roll 26, AGN.

  49. Guevara had been considered pro-China since 1963, but in fact, he was not satisfied with the behavior of either the USSR or China. Jorge G. Castañeda, Compañero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 285–292; U.S. Senate, Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, The Tricontinental Conference of African, Asian, and Latin American Peoples (Washington, D.C.: USGPO, 1966), 96; Anderson, Che Guevara, 682–686; Tad Szulc, Fidel: A Critical Portrait (New York: Avon, 1986), 672–673; Jorge I. Domínguez, To Make a World Safe for Revolution: Cuba’s Foreign Policy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), 69–72.

  50. Kate Doyle, “El pacto secreto: México-EU-Cuba, 1964,” Proceso, no. 1374 (2 March 2003): 37–43; Jefferson Morley, Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008).

  6. Modernizing Cultural Freedom

  1. This trend toward “experts” was in some ways global, although it was more pronounced in certain places than in others. On the shift in Argentina, see Federico Neiburg and Mariano Ben Plotkin, Intelectuales y expertos: La constitución del conocimiento social en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 2004). Carlos Carranza to Juan Antonio Solari, 13 June 1961, Juan Antonio Solari Papers, binder 3, Centro de Documentación e Investigación de la Cultura de Izquierdas en Argentina, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Luis Mercier Vega to Millares Reyes, 31 March 1963, International Association for Cultural Freedom Papers (IACF), series VI, box 2, folder 13, Joseph L. Regenstein Library, University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center (UC/SCRC), Chicago.

  2. On the contributions of politicians from Latin America to the construction of the Alliance for Progress, see Christopher Darnton, “Asymmetry and Agenda-Setting in U.S.–Latin American Relations: Rethinking the Origins of the Alliance for Progress,” Journal of Cold War Studies 14, no. 4 (Fall 2012): 57–58. On the way in which it functioned in practice, see Jeffrey F. Taffet, Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy: The Alliance for Progress in Latin America (New York: Routledge, 2007).

  3. W. W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960); Arthur Meier Schlesinger, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), 589.

  4. Fernández Retamar is quoted in Irwin Silber, ed., Voices of National Liberation: The Revolutionary Ideology of the “Third World” Expressed by Intellectuals and Artists at the Cultural Congress of Havana, January 1968 (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Central Book Company, 1970), 179; Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, Dependency and Development in Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), xxiv.

  5. Irving Louis Horowitz, The Rise and Fall of Project Camelot: Studies in the Relationship between Social Science and Practical Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1967), 7–8.

  6. Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (New York: New Press, 2000), 234–251.

  7. Josep Alemany, “Entrevista con Louis Mercier Vega,” Interrogations, no. 13 (January 1978): 23–39; “Luis Mercier Vega—Curriculum Vitae,” IACF, series VI, box 23, folder 5, UC/SCRC; Botsford to Colleagues [Hunt and Josselson], 12 March 1963, Keith Botsford Papers, box “Botsford Letters A–G,” folder “Botsford to CCF, 1963,” Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscripts Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.; “Datos acerca del Centro de Documentación Social y Político del Centro Argentino del I.L.A.R.I.,” n.d., IACF, series VI, box 15, folder 5, UC/SCRC; when Mercier Vega took over, Gorkin remained editor of Cuadernos. Gorkin to Pedro Vicente Aja, 16 October 1961, IACF, series II, box 210, folder 8, UC/SCRC.

  8. Mercier to Guillermo de Torre, 13 February 1964, IACF, series VI, box 3, folder 11, UC/SCRC; Luis Mercier Vega, “Rapport sur Le Congrès pour la Liberté de la Culture en Amérique Latine,” 2 June 1953, IACF, series II, box 204, folder 7, UC/SCRC.

  9. “Case Study: Uruguayan National Representative,” IACF, series VI, box 8, folder 6, UC/SCRC; Aldo E. Solari, El tercerismo en el Uruguay (Montevideo: Editorial Alfa, 1965). Milla eventually left his son, Leonardo, in charge of Alfa and moved to Venezuela, where he founded Monte Ávila Editores, which later distributed one of Mercier Vega’s monographs. On Milla and the publishing situation in Uruguay as a precursor to Mundo Nuevo, see Karina Jannello, “El boom Latinoamericano y la Guerra Fría cultural: Nuevas aportaciones a la gestación de la revista Mundo Nuevo,” Ipotesi 47, no. 2 (July–December 2013): 115–133.

  10. Mercier to Arciniegas, 29 May 1963, IACF, series VI, box 3, folder 3, UC/SCRC. Sur’s finances had been severely strained during the presidency of Juan Domingo Perón, and the magazine’s relationship with the CCF helped stabilize its precarious financial situation; the CCF paid for Sur to publish a series of monographs in a collection under the Tercer Mundo label. Baráibar to Hunt, 10 Jan 1964, IACF, series VI, box 3, folder 14, UC/SCRC.

  11. Hunt to Botsford, 10 October 1961, IACF, series II, box 46, folder 3, UC/SCRC.

  12. “Badge of honor
”: e-mail from Keith Botsford to the author, 30 September 2006. Botsford did work in U.S. Army Counterintelligence in Europe during 1946 and 1947. Botsford Curriculum Vitae, attached to Botsford to Hunt, 13 August 1961, IACF, series II, box 46, folder 3, box 46, UC/SCRC. Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift (New York: Viking, 1973), 75. Bellow and Botsford worked on the short-lived magazine The Noble Savage together, which was published between 1960 and 1962; Botsford to Congress, n.d. [mid-1962], Keith Botsford Papers, box “Botsford Letters A–G,” folder “Congress,” Yale.

  13. Stefan Baciu, Juan Bosch, un hombre solo (Madrid: Benzal, 1967), 11–16; Peter Burke and Maria Lúcia G. Pallares-Burke, Gilberto Freyre: Social Theory in the Tropics, 2nd ed. (New York: Peter Lang, 2008), 115–123.

  14. John Crowe Ransom, The New Criticism (Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1941); Afrânio Coutinho, Da crítica e da nova crítica (Rio de Janeiro: Civiliação Brasileira, 1975); Saunders, Cultural Cold War, 240–244.

  15. Nabokov to Baciu, 2 April 1962, IACF, series VI, box 2, folder 6, UC/SCRC; Baciu to Mercier, 14 August 1962, IACF, series VI, box 2, folder 5, box 2, UC/SCRC.

  16. Riordan Roett argues that disagreements stemming from different visions for SUDENE (Furtado in social and economic terms, the U.S. Agency for International Development in national security terms) contributed to the agency’s failure. Riordan Roett, The Politics of Foreign Aid in the Brazilian Northeast (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1972), 92.

  17. Kristine Vanden Berghe, Intelectuales y anticomunismo: La revista Cadernos Brasileiros (1959–1970) (Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 1997), 59. Botsford’s comments on Lowell are quoted in Ian Hamilton, Robert Lowell: A Biography (New York: Random House, 1982), 300–302. Botsford to Hunt and Josselson, 10 September 1962, Keith Botsford Papers, box “Botsford Letters A–G,” folder “Congress,” Yale.