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

by Patrick Iber

  50. For an example of how Gallegos was seen by anti-Communists, see Raúl Roa, “Rómulo Gallegos, novelista con novela,” in Retorno a la alborada, vol. 1, 3rd ed. (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1977), 689–697. Gerald Martin, Gabriel García Márquez: A Life, 1st U.S. ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), 311.

  51. “Así Veían a Stalin,” IACF, series II, box 204, folder 1, UC/SCRC; “SECh cambió a Pablo Neruda por otro poeta: Julio Barrenechea,” El Mercurio, 21 April 1959; “Las mentiras del Señor Baráibar,” El Siglo, 23 April 1959; “¿Qué pasó en la Sociedad de Escritores?,” Las Últimas Noticias, 18 April 1959. Baráibar wanted to help Barrenechea financially and in terms of prestige by sending him on a CCF-sponsored lecture tour and publishing his books in the United States. Baráibar to Gorkin, IACF, series II, box 208, folder 7, UC/SCRC. Juan Ramón Jiménez, Españoles de tres mundos (Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1942), 122–125. See also Arturo Torres Rioseco, “Neruda y sus detractores”; Ricardo Paseyro, “Neruda: Vuelta y fin”; and Juan Ramón Jiménez, “Un gran mal poeta,” in Cuadernos, no. 30 (May–June 1958): 49–59. Ricardo Paseyro, Mito y verdad de Pablo Nerudo (Mexico City: Asociación Mexicana por la Libertad de la Cultura, 1958); Pablo Neruda and Jorge Edwards, Correspondencia entre Pablo Neruda y Jorge Edwards: Cartas que romperemos de inmediato y recordaremos siempre, ed. Abraham Quezada Vergara (Santiago, Chile: Alfaguara, 2008), 96–97. For more on the anti-Neruda campaigns, see Chapter 6.

  52. Robin Adèle Greeley, “Muralism and the State in Post-revolution Mexico, 1920–1970,” in Mexican Muralism: A Critical History, ed. Alejandro Anreus, Robin Adèle Greeley, and Leonard Folgarait (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 29.

  53. “No hay más ruta que la nuestra,” published in 1945, is now extremely rare. Selections can be found in David Álfaro Siqueiros and Raquel Tibol, Palabras de Siqueiros (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1996), 238–257. The painters’ debate in the late 1940s is well covered in Rafael Loyola Díaz, Una mirada a México: El Nacional, 1940–1952 (Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1996), 114–120.

  54. Luis Suárez, Confesiones de Diego Rivera (Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 1962), 160. Toward the end of his life, Rivera reversed some of his criticisms of Tamayo. Raquel Tibol, Diego Rivera, luces y sombras (Barcelona: Lumen, 2007), 174.

  55. Suárez, Confesiones de Diego Rivera, 156–157. The debate about abstract expressionism and the Cold War has been substantial. Among the works that see it as a tool of U.S. propaganda are Eva Cockcroft, “Abstract Expressionism, Weapon of the Cold War,” Artforum 12, no. 10 (June 1974): 39–41; and Serge Guilbaut, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom, and the Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). Those who include other, more complex causes in the rise of abstract expressionism include Annette Cox, Art-as-Politics: The Abstract Expressionist Avant-Garde and Society (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1982); and Diana Crane, The Transformation of the Avant-Garde: The New York Art World, 1940–1985 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). On the shifting meaning of modernist culture in the Cold War, see Greg Barnhisel, Cold War Modernists: Art, Literature, and American Cultural Diplomacy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015).

  56. “Mexico,” n.d. [1955], IACF, series II, box 52, folder 4, UC/SCRC. The Mexican Association for Cultural Freedom claimed Paz as a member, but there is no evidence that this was so. Although he spoke at this event, he never appeared on letterhead as one of the many members of the Mexican Association. When approached directly about joining the CCF in the 1960s, Paz declined. F. Cossio del Pomar, “Exposición de ‘La Jovén Pintura’ en México,” Cuadernos, no. 34 (January–February 1959): 100.

  57. Víctor Alba, “Coloquio con Rufino Tamayo,” Cuadernos, no. 22 (January–February 1957): 98; Elena Poniatowska, “Artes plásticas: Juan Soriano,” Universidad de México 12, no. 10 (June 1958): 22–24.

  58. The original plan had been to invite Rufino Tamayo, Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, Federico Cantú, Antonio Ruiz, Agustín Lazo, Leonora Carrington, Dr. Atl, Juan Soriano, José Luis Cuevas, Vlady, Harold Winslow, and several other painters. The styles of these painters ranged from abstraction to surrealism to “classic” Mexican muralism. García Treviño to Gorkin, 25 February 1957, IACF, series II, box 206, folder 5, UC/SCRC. Manuel Rodríguez Lozano criticized Rufino Tamayo in an interview in El Universal. García Treviño blamed the political pressure on Rivera, Siqueiros, and Lázaro Cárdenas, but there is probably no way to evaluate this claim. García Treviño to Gorkin, 22 March 1957, IACF, series II, box 206, folder 5, UC/SCRC. The exhibition ran from 12 August to 5 September 1957. Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, Alberto Gironella, Bridget Bate Tichenor, Margarita Michelena, Margarita Nelken, and Rodrigo García Treviño were among those who attended the opening. “Exposición colectiva en Galerías Excélsior,” Excélsior, 14 August 1957, 3B. Rafael Anzures, “Exposición de ‘La Joven Pintura,’ ” Examen, no. 3 (November–December 1958): 79–81. Enrique F. Gual, “Las difíciles novedades,” Excélsior (supplement Diorama de la Cultura), 12 October 1958. On Sicre, see Claire F. Fox, “The PAU Visual Arts Section and the Hemispheric Circulation of Latin American Art during the Cold War,” Getty Research Journal, no. 2 (2010): 83–106; and Claire Fox, Making Art Panamerican: Cultural Policy and the Cold War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013).

  59. Nicanor Parra, Poemas para combatir la calvicie: Muestra de antipoesía (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1993), 178.

  4. The Anti-Communist Left and the Cuban Revolution

  1. Lillian Guerra, Visions of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Redemption, and Resistance, 1959–1971 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 59; Van Gosse, Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America and the Making of a New Left (London: Verso, 1993), 108.

  2. Rafael Rojas, “México, las dictaduras caribeñas y los orígenes de la Guerra Fría, 1934–1959,” in Los diplomáticos mexicanos y la Guerra Fría: Memoria e historia, 1947–1989, ed. Leticia Bobadilla González (Morelia, Michoacán: Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, 2009), 234–235.

  3. Mario Llerena, “Manifiesto ideológico del Movimiento 26 de Julio,” Humanismo 6, no. 44 (July–August 1957): 88–103. The special issue, number 47, was from January–February 1958. Fidel Castro Ruz, “Figueres,” Humanismo 8, nos. 55–56 (May–August 1959): 71–75. For the change of sponsorship, see nos. 58–59 (November 1959–February 1960): 8. The magazine disappeared after issue nos. 60–61. On the puppy story, see Jon Lee Anderson, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life (New York: Grove Press, 1997), 458.

  4. The best treatment of the sensitive matter of Communist influence over the course of the revolution is Guerra, Visions of Power in Cuba.

  5. Quoted in Lars Schoultz, That Infernal Little Cuban Republic: The United States and the Cuban Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 24. On the close cultural relationship between the United States and Cuba, see especially Louis A. Pérez Jr., On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).

  6. Hugh Thomas, Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 591–594; Calixto Masó, Historia de Cuba: La lucha de un pueblo por cumplir su destino histórico y su vocación de libertad, 2nd ed. (Miami, Fla.: Ediciones Universal, 1976), 538–540. Masó was a member of the CCF.

  7. Marifeli Pérez-Stable, The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course, and Legacy, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 41; Louis A. Pérez Jr., Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 203–209.

  8. Rafael E. Tarragó, “ ‘Rights Are Taken, Not Pleaded’: José Martí and the Cult of the Recourse to Violence in Cuba,” in The Cuban Republic and José Martí: Reception and Use of a National Symbol, ed. Mauricio A. Font and Alfonso W. Quiroz (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2006), 59; Charles D. Ameringer, The Cuban Democratic Experience: The Auténtico
Years, 1944–1952 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000), 14.

  9. Message of Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar, 2 September 1949, Miguel Alemán Valdés 433/503, Gallery 3, Archivo General de la Nación (AGN), Mexico City.

  10. The ratio of congressional laws passed to executive decrees issued under Batista was 1:57; under Grau, 1:70, and under Grau’s successor, Carlos Prío, 1:26. Pérez-Stable, Cuban Revolution, 45. The danger of the university is in Fidel Castro, Rolando E. Bonachea, and Nelson P. Valdés, Revolutionary Struggle, 1947–1958 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1972), 16. On the acquisition of arms, see Ameringer, Cuban Democratic Experience, 73; and Charles D. Ameringer, The Caribbean Legion: Patriots, Politicians, Soldiers of Fortune, 1946–1950 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 36–37. Juan Bosch to Theodore Draper, 5 February 1964, Theodore Draper Papers, box 24, envelope “Misc. Correspondence,” Hoover Institution Archives (HIA), Stanford, Calif.

  11. The Ministry of Education was one of the principal vehicles for the distribution of the spoils of corruption. Ameringer, Cuban Democratic Experience, 74–75, 88; Pérez-Stable, Cuban Revolution, 50; Pérez, Cuba, 217.

  12. Rojas, “México, las dictaduras caribeñas y los orígenes de la Guerra Fría,” 229; Ameringer, Cuban Democratic Experience, 90–91; Carlos Zapata Vela, Conversaciones con Heriberto Jara (Mexico City: Costa-Amic Editores, 1992), 157–159; Thomas, Cuba, 765. A photo of Lombardo in the Cuban prison appears in Vicente Lombardo Toledano, “Carta abierta a Carlos Prío Socarrás,” Siempre!, no. 429 (13 September 1961). Julián Gorkin, El revolucionario profesional: Testimonio de un hombre de acción (Barcelona: Aymá, 1975), photo plates; Herbert R. Southworth, “ ‘The Grand Camouflage’: Julián Gorkin, Burnett Bolloten and the Spanish Civil War,” in The Republic Besieged: The Civil War in Spain, 1936–1939, ed. Paul Preston and Ann L. Mackenzie (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996), 264; Charles D. Ameringer, Don Pepe: A Political Biography of José Figueres of Costa Rica (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1978), 165; Jesús Arboleya, The Cuban Counterrevolution (Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 2000), 69.

  13. Romualdi to George Meany, Matthew Woll, and David Dubinsky, 18 February 1946, Serafino Romualdi Papers, box 4, folder 1, Kheel Center, Ithaca, N.Y.; Cornell University; Thomas, Cuba, 748–753; Ameringer, Cuban Democratic Experience, 45–49. From 1 January to 30 November 1951, for example, the AFL contributed $30,150 to ORIT, the Congress of Industrial Organizations contributed $25,500, the United Mine Workers $12,000, and the CTC $12.916.66. No other Latin American federation contributed more than $100. “Organización Regional Interamericana de Trabajadores, estado de situación,” 30 November 1951, Serafino Romualdi Papers, box 7, folder 13, George Meany Memorial Archives (GMMA), Silver Spring, Md. Even after the Mexican CTM joined ORIT in 1953, the CTC still contributed more financially.

  14. James Dunkerley, Political Suicide in Latin America, and Other Essays (London: Verso, 1992), 35–37; Luis Conte Agüero, Eduardo Chibás, el adalid de Cuba (Miami: La Moderna Poesía, 1987), 718–785; Tad Szulc, Fidel: A Critical Portrait (New York: Avon, 1986), 212.

  15. Robert J. Alexander, “Confidential Report to Executive Council of the American Federation of Labor: On Cuban Labor Situation after Batista Revolt,” Jay Lovestone Papers, box 286, folder 12, HIA; Lovestone to Romualdi, 20 March 1952, Serafino Romualdi Papers, folder 2, box 4, Kheel. In 1958 the CTC defeated a motion advanced by Luis Alberto Monge to label Batista’s government a dictatorship. Report, 3 February 1958, Serafino Romualdi Papers, box 4, folder 4, Kheel; CTC in exile to Bill Kemsley, 18 July 1957, Serafino Romualdi Papers, box 4, folder 3, Kheel; Thomas, Cuba, 1177–1179.

  16. Schoultz, That Infernal Little Cuban Republic, 47, 61.

  17. On the mythologizing of the Cuban Revolution, see Julia Sweig, Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 1–5.

  18. Carlos Franqui, Family Portrait with Fidel: A Memoir (New York: Random House, 1984), xiii; Antonio Rafael de la Cova, The Moncada Attack: Birth of the Cuban Revolution (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007), 236; Fidel Castro, The Prison Letters of Fidel Castro, ed. Ann Louise Bardach and Luis Conte Agüero (New York: Nation Books, 2007); Thomas, Cuba, 1273.

  19. Interview with Alberto Bayo Hijo, 12 February 1986, Georgie Anne Geyer Papers, box 7, folder 31, HIA; “Cuba: Hairbreadth Escape,” Time, 7 June 1954, 42; Thomas, Cuba, 854–862.

  20. Alfred Padula, “Financing Castro’s Revolution, 1956–1958,” Revista/Review Interamericana 8, no. 2 (Summer 1978): 234.

  21. Ameringer, Cuban Democratic Experience, 91.

  22. Lázaro Cárdenas, “México contra la guerra,” América 1, no. 1 (January 1939): 5–10; and Cordell Hull, “En pro del acercamiento intelectual,” América 1, no. 1 (January 1939): 10–12. The AEAA was created in 1934 and given status as an autonomous international organization for the public good in 1936.

  23. Membership on the board of directors of the AEAA was extensive and, in overlap with the CCF, included most of the writers in the Cuban Association of the CCF, among them Jorge Mañach, Francisco Ichaso, Pastor del Río, and Luis A. Baralt. Pedro Vicente Aja to Gorkin, 31 July 1957, International Association for Cultural Freedom Papers (IACF), series II, box 206, folder 4, Joseph L. Regenstein Library, University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center (UC/SCRC), Chicago; “Por la libertad de la cultura,” América 47, nos. 1, 2, and 3 (January, February, and March 1956): photo plates; Idalia Morejón Arnaiz, Política y polémica en América Latina: Las revistas Casa de las Américas y Mundo Nuevo (Mexico City: Educación y Cultura, 2010), 61.

  24. Mario Llerena, The Unsuspected Revolution: The Birth and Rise of Castroism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1978); Thomas, Cuba, 910.

  25. Enrique de la Osa, Visión y pasión de Raúl Roa (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1987), 9; Llerena, Unsuspected Revolution, 82–91. After Llerena left for Mexico, his salary was passed on to his wife (who remained in Cuba) for the business of the association. Given the danger of continued operation, the Cuban Association of the CCF was shut down at the end of 1957. When it became clear to Gorkin that Llerena was operating in an executive capacity with the Cuban Association for Cultural Freedom and the 26th of July Movement, he asked Llerena to step down as an officer of the Cuban Association for Cultural Freedom. Llerena remained a member, and Gorkin continued to assist him in New York. Gorkin to Llerena, 17 June 1957; Gorkin to Llerena, 29 November 1957, IACF, series II, box 206, folder 4, UC/SCRC.

  26. In Mexico, Llerena was hosted by Rodrigo García Treviño. Llerena to Gorkin, 8 May 1957; Gorkin to Llerena, 17 May 1957; Llerena to Gorkin, 31 October 1957, IACF, series II, box 206, folder 4, UC/SCRC. On Mañach’s beating, see Carlos Franqui, Diary of the Cuban Revolution (New York: Viking Press, 1980), 44–45. “Las dictaduras contra ‘Cuadernos,’ ” Cuadernos, no. 33 (November–December 1958): 113; and Jorge Mañach, “El drama de Cuba,” Cuadernos, no. 30 (May–June 1958): 63–76. The manifesto in the supplement was signed in Cuba by Roberto Agramonte, Manuel Bisbé, Roberto Esquenazi Mayo, Mario Llerena for the 26th of July Movement, Salvador Massip, Felipe Pazos, and Manuel Urrutia. It was also signed by, among others, Jorge Luis Borges. On Llerena’s press work in the United States, see Llerena, Unsuspected Revolution, 121, 148–149; and Gosse, Where the Boys Are, 77.

  27. Guevara is quoted in Thomas, Cuba, 1038–1039. Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar, Cuba Betrayed (New York: Vantage Press, 1962), 52. Anthony DePalma, The Man Who Invented Fidel: Cuba, Castro, and Herbert L. Matthews of the New York Times (New York: Public Affairs, 2006), 100–101, 116–117.

  28. On the Granma, see Padula, “Financing Castro’s Revolution,” 236; Castro, Bonachea, and Valdés, Revolutionary Struggle, 82. Interview with Alberto Bayo Jr., 12 February 1986, Georgie Anne Geyer Papers, box 7, folder 31, HIA. On Figueres, see Fernando Salazar Navarette in conversation with Robert J. Alexander, 1 July 1967, Robert J. Alexander
Interview Collection, reel 6, frame 420, Archibald S. Alexander Library, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J.; Castro, Bonachea, and Valdés, Revolutionary Struggle, 80; and Huber Matos, Cómo llegó la noche (Barcelona: Tusquets Editores, 2002), 76–81. Figueres also financed another invasion by Aureliano Sánchez Arango that arrived in Cuba after the rebel victory in 1959 and turned over its arms to the new government. Interview with José Figueres, 27 May 1985, Georgie Anne Geyer Papers, box 9, folder 5, HIA. On U.S. relations with Castro before his victory, see Vanni Pettinà, Cuba y Estados Unidos, 1933–1959: Del compromiso nacionalista al conflicto (Madrid: Libros de la Catarata, 2011), 150–161, 211–271; Sweig, Inside the Cuban Revolution, 29, 92, 178; Thomas G. Paterson, Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 63–64, 105–106, 112–117, 218–223; and Anderson, Che Guevara, 271–273.

  29. Gosse, Where the Boys Are, 77; Sheldon Liss, Roots of Revolution: Radical Thought in Cuba (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987), 121.

  30. Pedro Vicente Aja to Gorkin, 13 January 1959, box 208, folder 9; Llerena to Gorkin, 18 August 1958, box 208, folder 1; García Treviño to Gorkin, n.d., box 208, folder 10; Gorkin to Aja, 20 January 1959, box 208, folder 9; all in IACF, series II, UC/SCRC.

  31. Betsy Maclean, Haydée Santamaría (Melbourne: Ocean Press, 2003). From the perspective of the Cuban government, Casa de las Américas began more as a rival to the Fondo de Cultura Económica, the publishing house that operated with Mexican government support and was seen by Cuba to represent a more ossified revolutionary tradition. Judith A. Weiss, Casa de las Américas: An Intellectual Review in the Cuban Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Estudios de Hispanófila, 1977), 42–43.

  32. The crowd was dispersed by Camilo Cienfuegos, one of the heroes of the guerrilla struggle. Interview of Julio Amoedo by Keith Botsford, n.d., Julio Amoedo Papers, HIA. On the withdrawal from ORIT, see Alfonso Sánchez Madariaga to William F. Schnitzler, 11 September 1959, Serafino Romualdi Papers, folder 6, box 4, Kheel; Thomas, Cuba, 1250–1251; and Guerra, Visions of Power in Cuba, 126–127. “Lázaro Peña habla de la nueva ley de organización sindical,” Verde Olivo, 27 August 1961, 47–49; Serafino Romualdi, Presidents and Peons: Recollections of a Labor Ambassador in Latin America (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1967), 213–214.