The Latin American Literary Boom And U S Nationalism During The Cold War

How the dissemination of Latin American literature in the U.S. was "caught between the desire to support the literary revolution of the Boom writers and the fear of revolutionary politics" (John King).

Patrick Iber tells the story of left-wing Latin American artists, writers, and scholars who worked as diplomats, advised rulers, opposed dictators, and even led nations during the Cold War. Ultimately, they could not break free from the era’s rigid binaries, and found little room to promote their social democratic ideals without compromising them.

The dominant tradition in writing about U.S.-Latin American relations during the Cold War views the United States as all-powerful. That perspective, represented in the metaphor "talons of the eagle," continues to influence much scholarly work down to the present day. The goal of this collection of essays is not to write the United States out of the picture but to explore the ways Latin American governments, groups, companies, organizations, and individuals promoted their own interests and perspectives. The book also challenges the tendency among scholars to see the Cold War as a simple clash of "left" and "right." In various ways, several essays disassemble those categories and explore the complexities of the Cold War as it was experienced beneath the level of great-power relations.

The dominant tradition in writing about U.S.–Latin American relations during the Cold War views the United States as all-powerful. That perspective, represented in the metaphor “talons of the eagle,” continues to influence much scholarly work down to the present day. The goal of this collection of essays is not to write the United States out of the picture but to explore the ways Latin American governments, groups, companies, organizations, and individuals promoted their own interests and perspectives. The book also challenges the tendency among scholars to see the Cold War as a simple clash of “left” and “right.” In various ways, several essays disassemble those categories and explore the complexities of the Cold War as it was experienced beneath the level of great-power relations.

This book seeks to address US public diplomacy strategies in Latin America, of particular importance during the 1960s when the leadership of the United States had been questioned after the Cuban Revolution. The implicit mandate was "No more Cubas" so that what happened in the Caribbean country would not spread to other countries. The actions of the United States toward its southern neighbors in the first half of the twentieth century are quite well known. In contrast, Latin American scenarios of the Cultural Cold War have remained relatively less well known. The contributors and editors of this volume examine various facets and means of action used by the "US machinery of persuasion" with the aim of disseminating the virtues of its socioeconomic and political model, including both public and private efforts, and the significance of nonstate actors. Subjects examined include the impact of the theory of modernization; anti-Americanism; the deployment of public diplomacy in the region; the activities of the Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Rockefeller Foundation; and the influence of these efforts on sporting, artistic, and musical events. This volume will be of value to students and scholars alike interested in Latin American history and history of the Americas.

In the decade from the early 1960s to the early 1970s, Latin American authors found themselves writing for a new audience in both Latin America and Spain and in an ideologically charged climate as the Cold War found another focus in the Cuban Revolution. The writers who emerged in this energized cultural moment--among others, Julio Cortázar (Argentina), Guillermo Cabrera Infante (Cuba), José Donoso (Chile), Carlos Fuentes (Mexico), Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia), Manuel Puig (Argentina), and Mario Varas Llosa (Peru)--experimented with narrative forms that sometimes bore a vexed relation to the changing political situations of Latin America. This volume provides a wide range of options for teaching the complexities of the Boom, explores the influence of Boom works and authors, presents different frameworks for thinking about the Boom, proposes ways to approach it in the classroom, and provides resources for selecting materials for courses.

This book offers a comprehensive guide to global literary engagement with the Cold War. Eschewing the common focus on national cultures, the collection defines Cold War literature as an international current focused on the military and ideological conflicts of the age and characterised by styles and approaches that transcended national borders. Drawing on specialists from across the world, the volume analyses the period’s fiction, poetry, drama and autobiographical writings in three sections: dominant concerns (socialism, decolonisation, nuclearism, propaganda, censorship, espionage), common genres (postmodernism, socialism realism, dystopianism, migrant poetry, science fiction, testimonial writing) and regional cultures (Asia, Africa, Oceania, Europe and the Americas). In doing so, the volume forms a landmark contribution to Cold War literary studies which will appeal to all those working on literature of the 1945-1989 period, including specialists in comparative literature, postcolonial literature, contemporary literature and regional literature.

The cultural Cold War in Latin America was waged as a war of values--artistic freedom versus communitarianism, Western values versus national cultures, the autonomy of art versus a commitment to liberation struggles--and at a time when the prestige of literature had never been higher. The projects of the historic avant-garde were revitalized by an anti-capitalist ethos and envisaged as the opposite of the republican state. The Decline and Fall of the Lettered City charts the conflicting universals of this period, the clash between avant-garde and political vanguard. This was also a twilight of literature at the threshold of the great cultural revolution of the seventies and eighties, a revolution to which the Cold War indirectly contributed. In the eighties, civil war and military rule, together with the rapid development of mass culture and communication empires, changed the political and cultural map. A long-awaited work by an eminent Latin Americanist widely read throughout the world, this book will prove indispensable to anyone hoping to understand Latin American literature and society. Jean Franco guides the reader across minefields of cultural debate and histories of highly polarized struggle. Focusing on literary texts by Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosa, Roa Bastos, and Juan Carlos Onetti, conducting us through this contested history with the authority of an eyewitness, Franco gives us an engaging overview as involving as it is moving.