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

by Patrick Iber

18. Thomas E. Skidmore, Politics in Brazil, 1930–1964: An Experiment in Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 218, 234–239. The gallery was known as the Goeldi Gallery, named after Oswaldo Goeldi, a Brazilian artist who had died in 1961. Coutinho to Hunt, 3 April 1964, IACF, series II, box 47, folder 4, UC/SCRC.

  19. The United States had planned to move an aircraft carrier and several destroyers into place to support the military in case of civil war, but this plan was never carried out. How consequential U.S. actions were for developments in Brazil remains a subject of debate. The anti-Goulart views of the United States were certainly known; it was also certainly much less involved in creating the conditions for the coup than it had been in Guatemala in 1954, for example. James Naylor Green, We Cannot Remain Silent: Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010), 18–48; U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968: South and Central America; Mexico, ed. David C. Geyer, David H. Herschler, and Edward C. Keefer (Washington, D.C.: USGPO, 2004), 398–544; Phyllis R. Parker, Brazil and the Quiet Intervention, 1964 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979); Jan Knippers Black, United States Penetration of Brazil (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977); Ruth Leacock, Requiem for Revolution: The United States and Brazil, 1961–1969 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1990).

  20. John Hunt to Afrânio Coutinho, 21 April 1964, IACF, series II, box 47, folder 4, UC/SCRC. Hunt’s was also the position of the U.S. ambassador to Brazil, Lincoln Gordon, who had approved and arranged for covert support to antigovernment groups but warned Castelo Branco of the negative effect on international opinion of withdrawing the rights of Furtado. United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 464.

  21. Coutinho to Hunt, 3 April 1964, and Coutinho to Hunt, 30 April 1964, IACF, series II, box 47, folder 4, UC/SCRC.

  22. To write the report, the CCF sent Peruvian mining engineer Mario Samamé Boggio, a democracy and education activist, to conduct the investigation. The science arm of the CCF was run by Edward Shils, who edited the magazine Minerva for the CCF. The funding for Samamé Boggio’s trip came from the Minerva account. Robert J. Oppenheimer and Edward Shils to Samamé Boggio, 27 August 1964, Nicholas Nabokov Papers, box 5, folder 1, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas Libraries, Austin; Raúl-Estuardo Cornejo, Mario Samamé Boggio (Lima: Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, 1990); Mario Samamé Boggio, La revolución por la educación (Lima: Editorial Gráfica Labor, 1969). Vicente Barreto to Hunt, 11 March 1965, IACF, series II, folder 5, box 47, UC/SCRC. By 1966 Cadernos Brasileiros was clearly in the opposition camp. Vanden Berghe, Intelectuales y anticomunismo, 200, 46. Compare the ambivalent “Direto à heresia,” Cadernos Brasileiros 6, no. 3 (May–June 1964): 4, with the increasingly critical Wilson Figueiredo, “Doze mêses depois,” Cadernos Brasileiros 7, no. 28 (March–April 1965): 5–13, and the clearly oppositional Vicente Barreto, “O perfil do reacionarismo,” Cadernos Brasileiros 8, no. 37 (September–October 1966): 3–6.

  23. Keith Botsford, “Report on Mexico,” September 1964, p. 25, IACF, series VI, box 4, folder 1, UC/SCRC; Mercier to Hunt, 30 November 1961, IACF, series VI, box 1, folder 14, UC/SCRC. Examen’s issue 28, from February 1962, was the first number to bear no imprint of the CCF; no. 30, from April 1962, was the final issue. On García Treviño, see Robert J. Alexander in conversation with Pedro Pagès and Sra. de Pagès, August 20, 1963, Robert J. Alexander Interview Collection, reel 10, frames 38, 256, Archibald S. Alexander Library, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J.

  24. Mercier to García Treviño, 2 November 1961, IACF, series VI, box 1, folder 14, UC/SCRC.

  25. Botsford to Hunt and Josselson, IACF, series II, box 46, folder 6, UC/SCRC; Botsford, “Report on Mexico,” September 1964, p. 25, IACF, series VI, box 4, folder 1, UC/SCRC.

  26. Botsford had to push a bit to ensure that Pablo Neruda’s (nonpolitical) poetry would be included, but he said that it would be absurd to do an anthology of Latin American poetry without the continent’s best poet. Neruda, like other poets who were to be included, was selecting fifty of his poems for inclusion, from which the editorial board could choose to include some or none. Botsford to Hunt, n.d. [likely 1963], Keith Botsford Papers, box “Botsford Letters H–R,” folder “John Hunt,” Yale. The social science review was to have been edited by the Ph.D. student John Womack Jr., then in Mexico researching his dissertation on Emiliano Zapata. Before he joined the CIA, Hunt had been a teacher at a secondary school in Missouri, and Womack had been one of his students. In addition to Rulfo and Fuentes, other writers of note who received grants from the CME included Juan José Arreola, Alí Chumacero, Rosario Castellanos, Carlos Monsiváis, José Agustín, Gustavo Sainz, Vicente Leñero, Luisa Josefina Hernández, Emilio Carbaillido, Inés Arredondo, Ricardo Garibay, Jorge Ibargüengoitia, Marco Antonio Montes de Oca, and Elena Poniatowska. Martha Domínguez Cuevas, Los becarios del Centro Mexicano de Escritores (1952–1997) (Mexico City: Editorial Aldus, 1999). Margaret Shedd, “I Hate You, Cruz Rivera,” Encounter 19, no. 4 (October 1962): 11–15; Margaret Shedd, “The Everlasting Witness,” Encounter 21, no. 2 (August 1963): 48–53; Juan Rulfo, “They Gave Us the Land,” trans. Jean Franco, Encounter 25, no. 3 (September 1965): 11–15.

  27. Hunt to Botsford, 27 June 1962, Keith Botsford Papers, box “Letters to Botsford D–I,” folder “Hunt, John,” Yale; Shedd to Botsford, 15 December 1963, IACF, series II, box 46, folder 6, UC/SCRC. In a forthcoming work I will describe the organizational history of the CME and its funding sources in detail.

  28. “Talón de Aquiles,” Revista Mexicana de Literatura, no. 1 (Septenber–October 1955): 90–95; “Talón de Aquiles,” Revista Mexicana de Literatura, no. 2 (November–December 1955): 192–193; M.A.R., “La región más transparente,” Examen, no. 1 (July–August 1958): 92–101; Botsford to Hunt, 25 May 1964, Keith Botsford Papers, box “Botsford Letters H–R,” folder “John Hunt,” Yale; Botsford to Hunt, 25 May 1964, IACF, series II, box 46, folder 7, UC/SCRC. Botsford to Fuentes, 19 October 1964, Carlos Fuentes Papers, box 89, folder 29, Firestone Library, Princeton University, Princeton, N.J.

  29. Jorge Ibargüengoitia, “Os relâmpagos de agôsto,” Cadernos Brasileiros 5, no. 6 (November–December 1963): 45–48; Jorge Ibargüengoitia, “En primera persona: Hijo de Bloomsbury,” El Porvenir, 28 November 1983.

  30. Jorge Ibargüengoitia, Los relámpagos de agosto: La ley de Herodes (Mexico City: Promexa Editores, 1979), 235.

  31. Keith Botsford, “Yanqui Gringo,” Encounter 25, no. 3 (September 1965): 27–28. The CCF or Farfield paid for travel to Bled for Julio Cortázar, João Guimarães Rosa, David Rousset, Heinrich Böll, P. Hartling, Stephen Spender, M. Hayward, Nicola Chiaromonte, Ignazio Silone, G. Herling, Carlos Fuentes, Emir Rodríguez Monegal, and possibly Wole Soyinka. The CCF also paid for René Tavernier, Pierre Emmanuel, Kot Jelenski, and Manès Sperber to attend. Tim Foote to Botsford, 2 July 1964, IACF, series II, box 46, folder 9, UC/SCRC.

  32. Luis Mercier Vega and Keith Botsford, “Draft Memorandum on Latin American Intellectuals,” 14 May 1963, IACF, series VI, box 2, folder 18, p. 24, UC/SCRC; Botsford to Hunt and Josselson, 11 February 1962, Keith Botsford Papers, box “Botsford Letters A–G,” folder “Congress,” Yale; Arciniegas to Botsford, 11 May 1964, Keith Botsford Papers, box “Letters to Keith Botsford A–C,” folder “Arciniegas,” Yale. Arciniegas argued that Alejo Carpentier, for example, was an agent of the Cuban government to such a degree that he no longer wrote literature. Arciniegas thought that the only thing to be done was to work with the “free” Cubans.

  33. Horacio Daniel Rodríguez to Mercier, 20 September 1963, IACF, series VI, box 2, folder 10, UC/SCRC; Murena to Mercier, 30 May 1964, IACF, series VI, box 3, folder 11, UC/SCRC.

  34. Mercier to Rodríguez Monegal, 8 January 1965, IACF, series VI, box 5, folder 17, UC/SCRC. Germán Arciniegas and Antonio Cacua Prada, Germán Arciniegas: Cien años de vida para contar (Santafé de
Bogotá: Fundacion Universidad Central, 1999), 474. Arciniegas to Josselson, 19 August 1965, IACF, series II, box 34, folder 6, UC/SCRC.

  35. The campaign has been described in Saunders, Cultural Cold War, 349–351. The evidence is found in letters and memos between Gorkin, Hunt, and René Tavernier from 1963 in IACF, series II, box 300, folder 9, and box 301, folder 2, UC/SCRC. The focus on Neruda during 1963 began after Ernesto Dethorey, who was the Spanish Republic’s representative in Sweden and an anti-Communist, wrote to Luis Mercier Vega suggesting that the CCF take actions to counter those of Artur Lundkvist and other fellow travelers who were lobbying for him. Mercier Vega to Hunt, 22 November 1962, IACF, series II, box 227, folder 4, UC/SCRC.

  36. The European popularity of Borges had already begun to expand after he shared the International Publishers’ Prize in 1961 with Samuel Beckett. María Esther Vázquez, Borges: Esplendor y derrota (Barcelona: Tusquets Editores, 1996), 236–247; Edwin Williamson, Borges: A Life (New York: Viking, 2004), 345–347. Hunt to Luis Mercier Vega, 10 December 1962, IACF, series VI, box 22, folder 9, UC/SCRC. For Borges’s 1963 trip, mostly to the United Kingdom, the CCF paid his plane fare and that of his mother, while the British Council bore the rest of the expenses. Scott Charles to Evelyn Best, 8 January 1963, IACF, series IV, box 5, folder 6, UC/SCRC. For his European trip of 1964, he came as the guest of the CCF. Williamson, Borges, 355.

  37. Luis Mercier Vega to John Hunt, 19 December 1962, IACF, series VI, box 3, folder 4, UC/SCRC. Adam Feinstein, Pablo Neruda: A Passion for Life (New York: Bloomsbury, 2004), 333–335; Jorge Amado, Navegação de cabotagem: Apontamentos para um livro de memórias que jamais escreverei (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Record, 1992), 105–107; Williamson, Borges, 426.

  38. Ana Alejandra Germani, Gino Germani: Antifascism and Sociology (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2008), 27; Joseph Kahl, Three Latin American Sociologists: Gino Germani, Pablo Gonzales Casanova, Fernando Henrique Cardoso (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1988); Alejandro Blanco, Razón y modernidad: Gino Germani y la sociología en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 2006).

  39. Nils Gilman, Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 3. On modernization theory’s use as Cold War ideology, see Michael E. Latham, Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and “Nation Building” in the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000).

  40. Mariano Ben Plotkin, Mañana es San Perón: A Cultural History of Perón’s Argentina, trans. Keith Zahniser (Wilmington, Del.: SR Books, 2003), x; Joseph Kahl, “Gino Germani, 1911–1979,” Latin American Research Review 16, no. 2 (1981): 188; Germani, Gino Germani, 113; Federico Neiburg, Los intelectuales y la invención del peronismo: Estados de antropología social y cultural (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1988), 119; Silvia Sigal, Intelectuales y poder en Argentina: La década del sesenta (Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno, 2002), 84–90.

  41. Rostow, Stages of Economic Growth, 144.

  42. Seymour Martin Lipset and Aldo E. Solari, Elites in Latin America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), viii.

  43. Ángel Rama, “Las Condiciones del Diálogo,” Marcha, no. 1258 (11 June 1965): 29.

  44. Aldo Solari to Director of Marcha, Marcha, no. 1303 (13 May 1966): 28.

  45. Ángel Rama, “Los intelectuales en la época desarrollista,” Marcha, no. 1305 (27 May 1966): 31; Rama, “Nota de Redacción,” Marcha, no. 1303 (13 May 1966): 29; Rama, “Las fachadas culturales,” Marcha, no. 1306 (3 June 1966): 31; Emir Rodríguez Monegal to Vicente Barreto, Emir Rodríguez Monegal (ERM) Papers, box 4, folder 6, Princeton.

  46. Volker Rolf Berghahn, America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe: Shepard Stone between Philanthropy, Academy, and Diplomacy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001), 214–249. “Patman Attacks ‘Secret’ C.I.A. Link,” New York Times, 1 September 1964, 1, 19; Foster Hailey, “Kaplan Fund, Cited as C.I.A. ‘Conduit,’ Lists Unexplained $395,000 Grant,” New York Times, 3 September 1964, 1, 10; Patrick Iber, “ ‘Who Will Impose Democracy?’: Sacha Volman and the Contradictions of CIA Support for the Anti-Communist Left in Latin America,” Diplomatic History 37, no. 5 (November 2013): 995–1028. Sol Stern, “NSA and the CIA,” Ramparts 5, no. 9 (March 1967): 30–31; “C.I.A. Issue Dropped,” New York Times, 1 September 1964, 19; Peter Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Struggle for the Mind of Postwar Europe (New York: Free Press, 1989), 220.

  47. “Organizational Conference of the Instituto Latinoamericano de Relaciones Internacionales—Lima, Peru; 29 November–3 December 1965,” IACF, series VI, box 8, folder 2, UC/SCRC; Cosío Villegas to Mercier, 18 January 1966, IACF, series VI, box 8, folder 3, UC/SCRC. Octavio Paz’s note, declining the invitation, can be found in Paz to Mercier, 14 January 1966, IACF, series VI, box 8, folder 4, UC/SCRC; Mercier to Cosío Villegas, 7 November 1966, IACF, series VI, box 8, folder 3, UC/SCRC; “Functions and Programs of the Instituto Latinoamericano de Relaciones Internacionales,” IACF, series VI, box 20, folder 11, UC/SCRC. On the arts scene in Argentina in the 1960s and its attempts to achieve international recognition through cultural “modernization,” see John King, El Di Tella y el desarrollo cultural argentino en la década del sesenta (Buenos Aires: Ediciones de Arte Gaglianone, 1985), and Andrea Giunta, Vanguardia, internacionalismo y política: Arte argentino en los años sesenta (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 2001).

  48. “Functions and Programs of the Instituto Latinoamericano de Relaciones Internacionales,” IACF, series VI, box 20, folder 11, UC/SCRC.

  49. José Donoso, Historia personal del “boom” (Santiago, Chile: Alfaguara, 1998), 122. Gabriel García Márquez, “Cien años de soledad,” Mundo Nuevo, no. 2 (August 1966): 5–11. The chapters were passed to Rodríguez Monegal by Carlos Fuentes. Gerald Martin, Gabriel García Márquez: A Life, 1st U.S. ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), 298. José Donoso, “El obsceno pájaro de la noche,” Mundo Nuevo, no. 13 (July 1967): 14–22. Sarduy and Cabrera Infante’s contributions were numerous. Rodríguez Monegal negotiated with publishers to support Sarduy and Cabrera Infante; his lobbying led to the publication of Cabrera Infante’s Tres tristes tigres by Seix Barral, establishing it as one of the key experimental novels of the boom. María Eugenia Mudrovcic, Mundo Nuevo: Cultura y guerra fría en la década del 60 (Rosario, Argentina: Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 1997), 100–102. John King, Sur: A Study of the Argentine Literary Journal and Its Role in the Development of a Culture, 1931–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 185.

  50. Founded in Montevideo in 1939 by Carlos Quijano and headed by him until its close in 1974, Marcha in the 1960s was a combative cultural, literary, and political magazine oriented toward the emerging politics of tercerismo. On the history of Marcha, see Emir Rodríguez Monegal, Literatura uruguaya del medio siglo (Montevideo: Alfa, 1966), 22–46; Luisa Peirano Basso, Marcha de Montevideo y la formación de la conciencia latinoamericana a través de sus cuadernos (Buenos Aires: Javier Vergara Editor, 2001); Pablo Rocca, 35 años en Marcha: Crítica y literatura en Marcha y en el Uruguay, 1939–1974 (Montevideo: División Cultura, Intendencia Municipal de Montevideo, 1992); and Mabel Moraña and Horacio Machín, eds., Marcha y América Latina (Pittsburgh, Penn.: Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, 2003). Salvador de Madariaga suggested the name Mundo Nuevo to Rodríguez Monegal. Emir Rodríguez Monegal to Luis Guillermo Piazza, 31 January 1966, ERM Papers, box 12, folder 13, Princeton.

  51. Alfred Mac Adam and Emir Rodríguez Monegal, “The Boom: A Retrospective,” Review: Latin American Literature and Arts, no. 33 (September–December 1984): 31. Hunt to Mercier, 2 October 1964, IACF, series VI, box 4, folder 10, UC/SCRC; Mudrovcic, Mundo Nuevo, 11–12.

  52. Miller had met Neruda at the PEN Conference in Bled and had promised to help him obtain a visa. Since typically this sort of active campaign was necessary to overcome State Department resistance, Miller’s lobbying was responsible for securing permission for
Neruda to attend. Feinstein, Pablo Neruda, 341–343.

  53. Carlos Fuentes, “ ‘El P.E.N.: Entierro de la Guerra Fría en la literatura,’ ” Life en Español 28, no. 3 (1 August 1966): 54–59. Deborah Cohn, “PEN and the Sword: U.S. Latin American Cultural Diplomacy and the 1966 PEN Club Congress,” in Hemispheric American Studies, ed. Caroline F. Levander and Robert S. Levine (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2008), 206–222.

  54. Judith A. Weiss, Casa de las Américas: An Intellectual Review in the Cuban Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Estudios de Hispanófila, 1977), 48; King, Sur, 185; Van Gosse, Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America and the Making of a New Left (London: Verso, 1993), 151; Jorge Edwards, Adios, poeta . . . : Memorias (Barcelona: Tusquets Editores, 1990), 92.

  55. Carlos Fuentes and Emir Rodríguez Monegal, “Situación del escritor en América Latina,” Mundo Nuevo 1, no. 1 (July 1966): 21. For more on how Mundo Nuevo used aesthetic experimentation to shift the definition of commitment toward that of the “independent” intellectual, see Russell Cobb, “The Politics of Literary Prestige: Promoting the Latin American ‘Boom’ in the Pages of Mundo Nuevo,” A Contracorriente 5, no. 3 (Spring 2008): 84.

  56. On anti-intellectualism in Cuba and the pro-Cuban left, see Claudia Gilman, Entre la pluma y el fusil: Debates y dilemas del escritor revolucionario en América Latina (Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno, 2003), 151–187.

  57. Roberto Fernández Retamar, “Los dichos y los hechos: Cartas vistas,” Marcha, no. 1295 (11 March 1966): 29.

  58. Emir Rodríguez Monegal, “Los dichos y los hechos: Cartas vistas,” Marcha, no. 1296 (18 March 1966): 29. Draper’s criticism was that the Dominican invasion was a betrayal of the Latin American Democratic Left. Its expanded version was published as Theodore Draper, The Dominican Revolt: A Case Study in American Policy (New York: Commentary Reports, 1968). Roberto Fernández Retamar, “Los dichos y los hechos: Cartas vistas,” Marcha, no. 1296 (18 March 1966): 29. Fernández Retamar was referring to Theodore Draper, Castro’s Revolution: Myths and Realities (New York: Praeger, 1962). Emir Rodríguez Monegal, “Cartas vistas (III),” Marcha, no. 1302 (6 May 1966): 29; “La CIA: ¿Cerebro Político o Chivo Emisario?,” Marcha, no. 1302 (6 May 1966): 16–18.