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

by Patrick Iber

  10. Arciniegas to Daniel Cosío Villegas, 30 May 1949, Daniel Cosío Villegas Papers, box 12, folder 71, El Colegio de México, Mexico City; Arciniegas to Burnham, 20 September 1950, James Burnham Papers, box 11, folder 2, HIA.

  11. On Burnham’s career in the CIA, see Daniel Kelly, James Burnham and the Struggle for the World: A Life (Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2002), 149–193. Arciniegas to Burnham, 20 September 1950; and Burnham to E. Howard Hunt, 27 September 1950, James Burnham Papers, box 11, folder 2; and Burnham to Frank Wisner and Gerald Miller, 11 December 1950, box 11, folder 3, HIA; Arciniegas to Alfonso Reyes, 23 December 1950, and Reyes to Arciniegas, 29 December 1950, Alfonso Reyes Papers, correspondence files, folder 135, Capilla Alfonsina, Mexico City.

  12. Julián Gorkin, “Pour un Congrès pour la Liberté de la Culture en Amérique Latine,” 30 May 1952, International Association for Cultural Freedom Papers (IACF), series II, box 204, folder 5, Joseph L. Regenstein Library, University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center (UC/SCRC), Chicago, Ill.; Julián Gorkin, “Report,” 18 July 1953, IACF, series II, box 205, folder 1, UC/SCRC.

  13. Romuladi to Irving Kristol and Nabokov, IACF, series II, box 204, folder 5, UC/SCRC.

  14. “Continental Cultural Congress,” 24 December 1952, 398.44-SA/12–2452, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), College Park, Md.; Dialoguitos, El Siglo, 16 January 1953, 3; Sims to Clarence A. Canary, 3 July 1953, and Embassy Dispatch no. 1250, 12 May 1953, 398.44-SA/6–853, NARA.

  15. “Sus reservas frente al Congreso de la Cultura plantean intelectuales,” La Nación, 24 April 1953, 6. The manifesto was signed by, among others, Eduardo Anguita, Jaime Castillo Velasco, Eduardo Frei, Alejandro Magnet, Georg Nicolai, Chela Reyes, Andrés Santa Cruz, Radomiro Tomic, and Gabriel Valdés Subercaseaux. Jorge Edwards, Adios, poeta … : Memorias (Barcelona: Tusquets Editores, 1990), 46.

  16. On Baráibar’s reporting, see “Revista de la radio,” El Siglo, 25 April 1953, 4; “Revista de la radio,” El Siglo, 9 May 1953, 4; “Por la libertad de la cultura,” El Mercurio, 23 April 1953, 3; and Julián Gorkin, “Detrás del telón de hierro se oculta la realidad de la experiencia soviética,” El Mercurio, 29 April 1953, 1. On the formation of the committee, see Germain to Josselson, 5 October 1953; and Carlos de Baráibar to Michael Josselson, 5 July 1953, IACF, series II, box 204, folder 6, UC/SCRC.

  17. Jaime Castillo, “El Congreso Continental de la Cultura de Santiago de Chile,” Cuadernos, no. 2 (June–August 1953): 84. Delegates included Jorge Mañach and Mario Llerena from Cuba, Salvador Pineda and Rodrigo García Treviño from Mexico, Carlos Izaguirre and Mirta Rinza from Honduras, Rubem Braga from Brazil, Roberto Ibáñez and F. Ferrándiz Alborz (a Spanish exile) from Uruguay, and J. González, Ramón Cortés, Alejandro Magnet, Jaime Castillo Velasco, and Carlos de Baráibar from Chile.

  18. Nicolai to Josselson, 26 June 1954, IACF, series II, box 204, folder 8, UC/SCRC; Wolf W. Zuelzer, The Nicolai Case: A Biography (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1982).

  19. Julián Gorkin to Carlos de Baráibar, 21 September 1954, IACF, series II, box 212, folder 1; and Josselson to Nicolai, 19 July 1954, IACF, series II, box 204, folder 8, UC/SCRC.

  20. The United Fruit Company did subsidize the New Leader, which featured an anti-Communist perspective similar to that of the CCF, and also received CIA funds. The New Leader was not, however, affiliated with the CCF. Stephen C. Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, rev. and exp. ed. (Boston: David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, 2005), 89; Saunders, Cultural Cold War, 163. “Imperialismo de la libertad nació en congreso de intelectuales: Seis países preparan en Santiago una réplica al congreso del 53; El sabio Nicolai dividió al mundo en culturas,” Ercilla, no. 998 (15 June 1954): 13; “Polémicas y derechos del hombre,” Cultura y Libertad, no. 1 (December 1954): 18–19.

  21. “Congrès pour la liberté de la culture: Comités nationaux,” n.d. [1958?], IACF, series II, box 210, folder 5, UC/SCRC. For more details on the local organizations of the CCF in Latin America, see Karina Jannello, “Los intelectuales de la Guerra Fría: Una cartografía latinoamericana (1953–1962),” Políticas de la Memoria, no. 14 (Summer 2013/2014): 79–101.

  22. Robert J. Alexander and Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre, Aprismo: The Ideas and Doctrines of Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1973); Felipe Cossío del Pomar, Víctor Raúl: Biografía de Haya de la Torre (Mexico City: Editorial Cultura, 1961); Harry Kantor, The Ideology and Program of the Peruvian Aprista Movement (New York: Octagon Books, 1966); Robert J. Alexander, Rómulo Betancourt and the Transformation of Venezuela (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1982); Rómulo Betancourt and Manuel Caballero, Rómulo Betancourt: Leninismo, revolución y reforma (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1997); Manuel Caballero, Rómulo Betancourt, político de nación (Caracas, Venezuela: Alfadil, 2004); Alejandro Gómez, Rómulo Betancourt y el Partido Comunista de Costa Rica (1931–1935) (San José: Editorial Costa Rica, 1994).

  23. Charles D. Ameringer, The Caribbean Legion: Patriots, Politicians, Soldiers of Fortune, 1946–1950 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996); Fabrice E. Lehoucq and Iván Molina, Stuffing the Ballot Box: Fraud, Electoral Reform, and Democratization in Costa Rica (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 210–225.

  24. Cossío del Pomar, Víctor Raúl, 228.

  25. Truman administration officials preferred Acción Democrática in Venezuela but did virtually nothing to support it when it was overthrown in 1948. Figueres in Costa Rica got tacit support from the United States during his civil war but later had to deal with hostility. Juan Bosch of the Dominican Republic also received covert U.S. support at some points during his career, but his restoration to office was blocked by the U.S. military in 1965. Steven Schwartzberg, “Rómulo Betancourt: From a Communist Anti-imperialist to a Social Democrat with US Support,” Journal of Latin American Studies 29, no. 3 (October 1997): 661; Kyle Longley, “Peaceful Costa Rica, the First Battleground: The United States and the Costa Rican Revolution of 1948,” Americas 50, no. 2 (October 1993): 150–151; Charles D. Ameringer, Don Pepe: A Political Biography of José Figueres of Costa Rica (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1978); 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. On the anti-Communist Left more broadly, see Charles D. Ameringer, The Democratic Left in Exile: The Antidictatorial Struggle in the Caribbean, 1945–1959 (Coral Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press, 1974).

  26. Paul W. Drake, Socialism and Populism in Chile, 1932–52 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 255; Alexander, Rómulo Betancourt, 155. The president of Cuba in 1950 was Carlos Prío, who will be discussed in Chapter 4. Caballero, Rómulo Betancourt, 280.

  27. “Report on the American Federation of Labor Delegation to the Inter-American Conference for Democracy and Freedom,” n.d., Record group 18–009, Serafino Romualdi Papers, box 10, folder 5, George Meany Memorial Archives (GMMA), Silver Spring, Md.

  28. “Inter-American Association for Democracy and Freedom,” n.d., Record Group 18–009, Serafino Romualdi Papers, box 10, folder 5, GMMA. On Grant, see David Mark Carletta, “Frances R. Grant’s Pan American Activities, 1929–1949” (Ph.D. diss., Michigan State University, 2009).

  29. Van Gosse, Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America and the Making of a New Left (London: Verso, 1993), 23–24, 77; Inter-American Association for Democracy and Freedom, Report of the Second Inter-American Congress: Maracay, Venezuela, April 22 to 26, 1960 (New York: Inter-American Association for Democracy and Freedom, 1961), 44–76. The IADF received small contributions from groups associated with the CIA, like the Free Trade Union Committee, but they were a small part of the budget. The IADF, in other words, was not a CIA front. The financial records are in the Frances Grant Papers, box 28, folders 1–19, Archibald
S. Alexander Library, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J.

  30. On the “bourgeois law,” see Nick Cullather, Secret History: The CIA’s Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala, 1952–1954 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999), 22; and Daniel Wilkinson, Silence on the Mountain: Stories of Terror, Betrayal, and Forgetting in Guatemala (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002), 165. On the CTAL and peace movement connections, see Ronald M. Schneider, Communism in Guatemala, 1944–1954 (New York: Praeger, 1958), 153. On the reasons that the Eisenhower administration chose hostility to the revolutionary government in Guatemala but accommodation in Bolivia, see Kenneth Lehman, “Revolutions and Attributions: Making Sense of the Eisenhower Administration Policies in Bolivia and Guatemala,” Diplomatic History 21, no. 2 (Spring 1997): 185–213.

  31. Bryce Wood, The Dismantling of the Good Neighbor Policy (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985), xiv. Arguing the case for the United Fruit Company’s influence in the decision to depose Arbenz, the major work is Schlesinger and Kinzer, Bitter Fruit. Those who emphasize political factors include Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944–1954 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991); and Cullather, Secret History. See also Richard H. Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982). On the isolation of Guatemalan Communism from the Soviet Union, see especially Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, 184–188. Arbenz, three years after he was deposed, did join the Communist Party.

  32. Cullather, Secret History, 67; Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, 317–318. Culturcongress to Gorkin, 10 June 1954, IACF, series II, box 204, folder 10; and “Information sur La Reunion de Santiago du Chili,” 1954, box 204, folder 11, UC/SCRC.

  33. Gorkin to Carlos de Baráibar, 21 December 1954, IACF, series II, box 212, folder 1, box 212, UC/SCRC; Juan José Arévalo to Basili Pyakubovsky, 18 March 1945, IACF, series II, box 51, folder 6, UC/SCRC. Both the Soviet embassy in Mexico and the U.S. embassy in Guatemala were aware that the letter was a forgery. Juan José Arévalo and Oscar de León Castillo, Despacho presidencial: Obra póstuma (Guatemala City: Editorial Oscar de León Palacios, 1998), 164–166. Gorkin may have first seen the letter when it was published by a Mexican tabloid in 1946 amid photographs of car crashes and anti-Red propaganda. The letter, in facsimile, is identical to the one found among Gorkin’s papers in the IACF archive. “México, Sede de un Vasto Complot Rojo,” Prensa Gráfica, 13 July 1946, 3.

  34. Julián Gorkin, “La experiencia de Guatemala: Por una política de la libertad en Latinoamérica,” Cuadernos, no. 9 (November–December 1954): 92–93.

  35. Raymond Aron first broached the subject of the “end of ideology” at the conference; in their original formulations, both Aron and Shils posed the “end of ideology” as a question. Daniel Bell, also in attendance in Milan, published an expanded exploration of the “end of ideology” thesis in 1960 (without the question mark), arguing that Marxism had lost its capacity to appeal to intellectuals. Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties; With “The Resumption of History in the New Century,” 40th anniversary ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000).

  36. Nor did liberal-socialist consensus extend to Friedrich von Hayek, in attendance in Milan, who thought that the welfare state led inexorably to totalitarian serfdom. Ignoring this form of right-wing ideology was one of the more significant errors of the “end of ideology” thesis.

  37. Edward Shils, “The End of Ideology?,” Encounter 5, no. 5 (November 1955): 57. “Meeting between the North and South American Delegates at the Milan Conference,” September 1955, American Committee for Cultural Freedom (ACCF) Papers, box 2, folder 3, Tamiment Library, New York University, New York.

  38. “Censuras y loas de culturólogos a Estados Unidos,” Excélsior, 22 September 1956, 11.

  39. Pedro de Alba’s remarks are in “Hoy se inaugura la Asamblea pro Cultura Libre,” Excélsior, 18 September 1956, 4. On government relations, see “Publicidad por radio y televisión a la conferencia interamericana del Congreso por la Libertad de la Cultura,” n.d., IACF, series II, box 229, folder 7, UC/SCRC. When it had formed, the Asociación Mexicana had sent a letter to President Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, expressing complete agreement with his policies and pledging to cooperate as much as possible with his government. Asociación Mexicana por la Libertad de la Cultura to Adolfo Ruiz Cortínes, 3 March 1954, Gallery 3—Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, box 472, folder 437.1/133, Archivo General de la Nación (AGN), Mexico City. Rodrigo García Treviño reported that Serafino Romualdi and Arturo Jáuregui of ORIT had assured him that they could ask Fidel Velázquez to fill seats if necessary. García Treviño to Gorkin, 12 April 1956, IACF, series II, box 228, folder 11, UC/SCRC.

  40. “Discurso de Luis Alberto Sánchez” and “Discurso de Ricardo Montilla,” both in IACF, series II, box 229, folder 1, UC/SCRC.

  41. “Todos los esfuerzos de los pensadores de América y España, pro libertad de prensa,” Excélsior, 20 September 1956, 11.

  42. “Intervención del Sr. Mario Monteforte Toledo,” IACF, series II, box 229, folder 2, UC/SCRC. Mario Monteforte Toledo, Guatemala, monografía sociológica, vol. 1 (Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1959); Mario Monteforte Toledo, La revolución de Guatemala, 1944–1954 (Guatemala City: Editorial Universitaria, 1974); Luis Cardoza y Aragón, Enrique Muñoz Meany, Jorge Luis Arriola, Arturo Taracena Arriola, Arely Mendoza Deleón, and Julio César Pinto Soria, El placer de corresponder: Correspondencia entre Cardoza y Aragón, Muñoz Meany y Arriola (Guatemala City: Editorial Universitaria Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, 2004), 268; Arévalo and León Castillo, Despacho presidencial, 68–89, 94, 289, 364, 401, 502; Seymour Menton, Historia crítica de la novela guatemalteca, 2nd ed. (Guatemala City: Editorial Universitaria de Guatemala, 1985), 311.

  43. “Intervención del Sr. Madariaga para hacer algunas aclaraciones sobre lo que está hablando el Sr. Monteforte,” IACF, series II, box 229, folder 2, UC/SCRC.

  44. Arthur Whitaker, for example, argued that Eduardo Santos was incorrect in arguing that the United States had done nothing to protest the actions that the Argentine government of Juan Domingo Perón had taken against the press of that country. “Intervención del Sr. Arthur Whitaker” and “Intervención del Sr. José Luis Romero,” both in IACF, series II, box 229, folder 2, UC/SCRC. Monge’s remarks are in “Censuras y loas de culturólogos a Estados Unidos,” Excélsior, 22 September 1956, 11.

  45. “Minutes of October 1, 1956 meeting,” ACCF Papers, box 7, folder 3, Tamiment Library; Norman Thomas to Michael Josselson, 5 October 1956, IACF, series II, box 229, folder 8; and Roger Baldwin to Nicholas Nabokov, 1 November 1956, IACF, series II, box 42, folder 12; Josselson to Michael Polanyi, 30 October 1958, IACF, series II, box 267, folder 2, UC/SCRC.

  46. Baráibar to Gorkin, 21 July 1955 and 13 October 1955, IACF, series II, folder 9, box 51, UC/SCRC. Baráibar reported that after the Youth Congress was banned in Chile, it was rescheduled for Brazil, but the head of the youth section of the CCF in Chile took the CCF propaganda to Brazil, and the government banned the gathering there as well. Baráibar interview with Robert J. Alexander, 23 July 1956, in Santiago, folder 23, box 6, Robert J. Alexander Interview Collection, Archibald S. Alexander Library, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. On the National Student Association and its relationship with the CCF in Chile, see Karen Paget, Patriotic Betrayal (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2015), 164–169. For praise from Frei, see Baráibar to Gorkin, 24 August 1955, IACF, series II, folder 9, box 51, UC/SCRC. After Neruda’s Continental Cultural Congress in 1953, Argentine Communists tried to hold an Argentine Congress of Culture but were blocked, as usual, by government harassment. Jorge Nállim, Transformations and Crisis of Liberalism in Argentina, 1930–1955 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012), 179–180. For a detailed account of the Chilean operations of the CCF, see Karina
Jannello, “El Congreso por la Libertad de la Cultura: El caso chileno y las ‘ideas fuerza’ de la Guerra Fría,” Revista Izquierdas, no. 14 (December 2012): 14–52. On its operations in Argentina, see Karina Jannello, “Redes intelectuales y Guerra Fría: La agenda argentina del Congreso por la Libertad de la Cultura,” Revista de la Red Intercátedras de Historia de América Latina Contemporánea 1, no. 1 (June 2014): 60–85; and Jorge Nállim, “Local Struggles, Transnational Connections: Latin American Intellectuals and the Congress for Cultural Freedom,” in The Material of World History, ed. Tina Mai Chen and David S. Churchill (New York: Routledge, 2015), 106–131.

  47. John M. Crewdson and Joseph B. Treaster, “Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the C.I.A.,” New York Times, 26 December 1977, 37; Josselson to Praeger, 19 December 1957, IACF, series II, box 267, folder 11, UC/SCRC. The book was brought out as Milovan Djilas, La nueva clase: Análisis del régimen comunista (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1957).

  48. Schlesinger and Kinzer, Bitter Fruit, 230. In Schlesinger and Kinzer’s book, the quote is anonymous. However, the speaker is described as the publisher of some of the works of Guatemalan Communist double agent Carlos Manuel Pellecer, and that was almost certainly Costa Amic; Carlos Manuel Pellecer, Renuncia al Comunismo, 4th ed. (Mexico City: Costa-Amic, 1965). On the CCF’s publishing relationships in Argentina, see Karina Jannello, “Las políticas culturales del socialismo argentino bajo la Guerra Fría: Las redes editoriales socialistas y el Congreso por la Libertad de la Cultura,” Papeles de Trabajo 7, no. 12 (Spring 2013): 212–247.

  49. Glondys, Guerra fría cultural y el exilio republicano español, 88–89; Jean Franco, The Decline and Fall of the Lettered City: Latin America in the Cold War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 35.