by Patrick Iber
In one of the classics of Latin American left-wing cultural criticism, 1971’s How to Read Donald Duck, its authors write that “the world of Disney is the world of the interests of the bourgeoisie without its dislocations.” In their analysis, Disney cartoons’ treatment of money, of violence, and of “primitive” regions and peoples all reflected imperial privilege without ever seeing the problems in the value system they depicted. But the statement could be modified to apply to the front groups of the Cultural Cold War as well. The work of the CCF represented the interests of the anti-Communist Left without its dislocations; the WPC, those of the Communist world; Casa de las Américas, those of Cuban revolutionaries. Each represented a political fantasy. But the dislocations were inescapable, and each of the front groups experienced discredit because of its affiliations. All the groups advocated democratic practices in some contexts while excusing authoritarian ones in others. But in the end, neither the organized forces who claimed peace nor those who claimed freedom could escape the consequences of having been part of imperial projects. The politically engaged artists and intellectuals who participated in the Cultural Cold War had been defenders of both liberation and oppression simultaneously, regardless of the side that they chose. They enjoyed neither peace nor freedom as they worked to produce art and ideas, and they obtained neither through the roles they played in the Cold War.4
ABBREVIATIONS AND ARCHIVAL SOURCES
NOTES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INDEX
Abbreviations and Archival Sources
Abbreviations
AEAA
Asociación de Escritores y Artistas Americanos
AFL
American Federation of Labor
APRA
Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana
CCC
Continental Cultural Congress
CCF
Congress for Cultural Freedom
CIA
Central Intelligence Agency
CME
Centro Mexicano de Escritores
CTAL
Confederación de Trabajadores de América Latina
CTC
Confederación de Trabajadores de Cuba
CTM
Confederación de Trabajadores de México
FCMAR
Frente Cívico Mexicano de Afirmación Revolucionaria
FRD
Frente Revolucionario Democrático
FTUC
Free Trade Union Committee
IACF
International Association for Cultural Freedom
IADF
Inter-American Association for Democracy and Freedom
ICFTU
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
ILARI
Instituto Latinoamericano de Relaciones Internacionales
LEAR
Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios
MLN
Movimiento de Liberación Nacional
ORIT
Organización Regional Interamericana de Trabajadores
PCB
Partido Comunista do Brasil
PCM
Partido Comunista Mexicano
PNR
Partido Nacional Revolucionario (1929–1938)
POUM
Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista
PP
Partido Popular (after 1960: Partido Popular Socialista, PPS)
PRI
Partido Revolucionario Institucional (1946–present)
PRM
Partido de la Revolución Mexicana (1938–1946)
WFTU
World Federation of Trade Unions
WPC
World Peace Council
Archival Sources
• Archibald S. Alexander Library, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J.
—Robert J. Alexander Papers
—Frances Grant Papers
• Archivo del Colegio de México, Mexico City, Mexico
—Daniel Cosío Villegas Papers
• Archivo General de la Nación (AGN), Mexico City, Mexico
—Gallery 1—Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS)
—Gallery 2—Dirección General de Investigaciones Políticas y Sociales (DGIPS)
—Gallery 3—Presidentes
· Lázaro Cárdenas del Río (LCR) Records
· Manuel Ávila Camacho (MAC) Records
· Miguel Alemán Valdés (MAV) Records
· Adolfo Ruiz Cortines Records
—Gallery 7—Archivos Particulares
· Clementina Batalla de Bassols Papers
—Mapoteca y Micropelícula
· Lázaro Cárdenas Papers
• Archivo Histórico de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (AHUNAM), Mexico City, Mexico
—Heriberto Jara Papers
• Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscripts Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
—Keith Botsford Papers
—Victor Serge Papers
• Biblioteca Ernesto de la Torre Villar, Instituto José María Luis Mora, Mexico City
—Archivo de la Palabra
• Capilla Alfonsina, Mexico City, Mexico
—Alfonso Reyes Papers
• Centro de Documentación e Investigación de la Cultura de Izquierdas en Argentina. Buenos Aires, Argentina
—Juan Antonio Solari Papers
• Centro de Estudios del Movimiento Obrero y Socialista (CEMOS), Mexico City, Mexico
—Partido Comunista Mexicano (PCM) Papers
• Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New York, N.Y.
—Frank Tannenbaum Papers
• Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, D.C., files released to author through Freedom of Information Act
—Julián Gorkin File
—Vicente Lombardo Toledano (VLT) File
—Victor Serge File
• Firestone Library, Princeton University, Princeton, N.J.
—Carlos Fuentes Papers
—María Rosa Oliver (MRO) Papers
—Emir Rodríguez Monegal (ERM) Papers
—Mario Vargas Llosa Papers
• Ford Foundation Archives (FFA), New York, N.Y.
• George Meany Memorial Archives (GMMA). Silver Spring, Md.
—Record Group 18–001: International Affairs Department
—Record Group 18–004: Irving Brown Papers
—Record Group 18–009: Serafino Romualdi Papers
• Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin
—Nicholas Nabokov Papers
• Hoover Institution Archives (HIA), Stanford, Calif.
—James Burham Papers
—Theodore Draper Papers
—Georgie Anne Geyer Papers
—Sidney Hook Papers
—Hoover Institution Library Society Papers, Congress for Cultural Freedom
—Jay Lovestone Papers
—Joaquín Maurín Papers
• Institut Curie, Paris, France
—Frédéric Joliot-Curie Papers
• Joseph L. Regenstein Library, University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center (UC/SCRC), Chicago, Ill.
—International Association for Cultural Freedom Papers (IACF)
• Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.
—Serafino Romualdi Papers
• National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), College Park, Md.
—CIA Records Search Tool
—Record Group 59—Records of the Department of State
—Record Group 226—Records of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)
• New York Public Library, New York, N.Y.
—Norman Thomas Papers
• Tamiment Library, New York University, New York, N.Y.
—American Committee for Cultural Freedom Papers (ACCF)
• University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Ill.
—Oscar and
Ruth Lewis Papers
Notes
Introduction
1. Cardoso is quoted in Joseph Kahl, Three Latin American Sociologists: Gino Germani, Pablo Gonzales Casanova, Fernando Henrique Cardoso (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1988), 179. Fuentes is quoted in Jorge G. Castañeda, Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left after the Cold War (New York: Knopf, 1993), 182. On inequality in Latin America, see Paul Gootenberg and Luis Reygadas, eds., Indelible Inequalities in Latin America: Insights from History, Politics, and Culture (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010); and Kelly Hoffman and Miguel Angel Centeno, “The Lopsided Continent: Inequality in Latin America,” Annual Review of Sociology 29 (2003): 363–390.
2. Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt (New York: Knopf, 1961), 249. Nicola Miller has also argued that the “national redeemer” idea of intellectuals was a myth, invented by Spanish American intellectuals in the early twentieth century in a bid to recover lost status. Nicola Miller, In the Shadow of the State: Intellectuals and the Quest for National Identity in Twentieth-Century Spanish America (London: Verso, 1999), 246.
3. E. P. Thompson, Beyond the Cold War: A New Approach to the Arms Race and Nuclear Annihilation, 1st U.S. ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), 158; “World Congress of Culture in Defense of Peace,” For a Lasting Peace, for a People’s Democracy, 1 September 1948, 1; Thomas W. Braden, “I’m Glad the CIA Is ‘Immoral,’ ” Saturday Evening Post, 20 May 1967, 12.
4. Ronald Aronson, Camus and Sartre: The Story of a Friendship and the Quarrel That Ended It (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 128.
5. Camus, Rebel, 4; Irving Howe, A Margin of Hope: An Intellectual Autobiography (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982), 132.
6. Sartre’s major work from this era is Jean-Paul Sartre, The Communists and Peace, trans. Martha H. Fletcher (New York: George Braziller, 1968). Sartre broke from this position following the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956: Jean-Paul Sartre, “La Fantôme de Staline,” Les Temps Modernes 12, nos. 129–130–131 (November 1956–January 1957): 577–696.
7. The “public relations” quote is from Jacobo Timerman, Cuba: A Journey, trans. Toby Talbot (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 32. There were personal elements to the antagonism of García Márquez and Vargas Llosa in addition to their political differences. The “famous punch” quote is from Gerald Martin, Gabriel García Márquez: A Life, 1st U.S. ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), 375–376. On Vargas Llosa and Camus, see Efraín Kristal, Temptation of the Word: The Novels of Mario Vargas Llosa (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1998), 25, 100; and Mario Vargas Llosa, Contra viento y marea, 1962–1982 (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1983), 72–74, 231–252. On the general subject of García Márquez’s friendship with Castro, see also Ángel Esteban and Stéphanie Panichelli, Fidel and Gabo: A Portrait of the Legendary Friendship, trans. Diane Stockwell (New York: Pegasus Books, 2009).
8. Contrary to his reputation, Benda was not in fact opposed to all political participation by intellectuals and was writing largely against France’s nationalist Right, who, in his view, let politics determine morality. Julien Benda, The Treason of the Intellectuals (La trahison des clercs), trans. Richard Aldington (New York: Norton, 1969); Tony Judt, Reappraisals (New York: Penguin Press, 2008), 12–13; Mark Lilla, The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics (New York: New York Review Books, 2001), 197–198.
9. Antonio Gramsci, The Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings, 1916–1935, trans. David Forgacs (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 300–311. Although the term “organic” is commonly used to designate any progressive intellectual aligned with oppressed classes, in Gramsci an “organic” intellectual is simply a class-identified one, regardless of that class. A useful guide to the large literature on the various types of intellectual classifications scholars produced during the twentieth century is Charles Kurzman and Lynn Owens, “The Sociology of Intellectuals,” Annual Review of Sociology 28 (2002): 63–90.
10. Christopher Lasch, The Agony of the American Left (New York: Vintage Books, 1969), 111. The most apologetic history of the CCF is by a former participant, Peter Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Struggle for the Mind of Postwar Europe (New York: Free Press, 1989). The critical literature includes Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (New York: New Press, 2000); Andrew Rubin, Archives of Authority: Empire, Culture, and the Cold War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2012); and Inderjeet Parmar, Foundations of the American Century: The Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller Foundations in the Rise of American Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). It is Giles Scott-Smith who most explicitly uses Gramscian language, although his scholarship emphasizes the plural nature of the construction of the anti-Communist organizations. Giles Scott-Smith, The Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA, and Post-war American Hegemony (London: Routledge, 2002), 138.
11. The major examples of this line of scholarship include Hugh Wilford, The CIA, the British Left, and the Cold War: Calling the Tune? (London: Frank Cass, 2003); Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008); Luc van Dongen, Stéphanie Roulin, and Giles Scott-Smith, eds., Transnational Anti-Communism and the Cold War: Agents, Activities, and Networks (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Nathan Suhr-Sytsma, “Ibadan Modernism: Poetry and the Literary Present in Mid-century Nigeria,” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 48, no. 1 (2013): 41–59; and Eric D. Pullin, “ ‘Money Does Not Make Any Difference to the Opinions That We Hold’: India, the CIA, and the Congress for Cultural Freedom, 1951–58,” Intelligence and National Security 26, nos. 2–3 (June 2011): 377–398. See also Greg Barnhisel, Cold War Modernists: Art, Literature, and American Cultural Diplomacy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 8–9, 136–178.
12. Almost all histories of the Cultural Cold War focus on one side over the other. A major exception is David Caute, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
13. Democratic, that is, in the sense of Elizabeth S. Anderson, “What Is the Point of Equality?,” Ethics 109, no. 2 (January 1999): 287–337. The literacy statistics are in Kenneth Sokoloff and Stanley Engerman, “Institutions, Factor Endowments, and Paths of Development in the New World,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 14, no. 3 (Summer 2000): 229.
14. Roque Dalton, Taberna y otros lugares (Havana: Casa de las Américas, 1969), 7; Castañeda, Utopia Unarmed, 196.
15. Ángel Rama, The Lettered City, trans. John Charles Chasteen (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996). Rama’s short, posthumously published essay is necessarily an oversimplification with many omissions. For more details that incorporate differences between different national settings, see Carlos Altamirano, ed., Historia de los intelectuales en América Latina, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires: Katz, 2008); Oscar Terán, ed., Ideas en el siglo: Intelectuales y cultura en el siglo XX latinoamericano (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2004); Tulio Halperín Donghi, Letrados y pensadores: El perfilamiento del intelectual hispanoamericano en el siglo XIX (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 2013); and Mabel Moraña and Bret Gustafson, eds., Rethinking Intellectuals in Latin America (Madrid: Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2010).
16. Altamirano, Historia de los intelectuales en América Latina, 1:21. The word “intellectual” entered into public use during the Dreyfus affair in France. Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who was Jewish, was falsely imprisoned for treason against the French army in 1894; the novelist Émile Zola was the most prominent of the “intellectuals” who demanded the truth about the case. Anti-Dreyfusards insisted that the legitimacy of pillars of society, such as the army and the church, required that Dreyfus remain guilty. Hundreds of books have been written about the Dreyfus affair; few are more useful than Michael Burns, France and the Dreyfus Affair: A Documentary History (Boston: Bedford, 1999). Some recent scholarship has qualified the qualities assoc
iated with the Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards: Ruth Harris, Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion and the Scandal of the Century (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010). Tony Judt cogently observes that in the sense of being committed to “higher truths” rather than the basic truthfulness of facts, the anti-Dreyfusards in many ways had more in common with the typical twentieth-century intellectual than did the Dreyfusards. Tony Judt and Timothy Snyder, Thinking the Twentieth Century (New York: Penguin Press, 2012), 287. And although the term “intellectual” does date to the Dreyfus affair, the type emerged in eighteenth-century Europe; Didier Masseau, L’invention de l’intellectuel dans l’Europe du XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994), 6.