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

by Patrick Iber

During the Cold War, left-wing Latin American artists, writers, and scholars worked as diplomats, advised rulers, opposed dictators, and even led nations. Their competing visions of social democracy and their pursuit of justice, peace, and freedom led them to organizations sponsored by the governments of the Cold War the Soviet-backed World Peace Council, the U.S.-supported Congress for Cultural Freedom, and, after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the homegrown Casa de las Américas.Neither Peace nor Freedom delves into the entwined histories of these organizations and the aspirations and dilemmas of intellectuals who participated in them, from Diego Rivera and Pablo Neruda to Gabriel García Márquez and Jorge Luis Borges. Patrick Iber corrects the view that such individuals were merely pawns of the competing superpowers. Movements for democracy and social justice sprung up among pro-Communist and anti-Communist factions, and Casa de las Américas promoted a brand of revolutionary nationalism that was beholden to neither the Soviet Union nor the United States.But ultimately, intellectuals from Latin America could not break free from the Cold War’s rigid binaries. With the Soviet Union demanding fealty from Latin American communists, the United States zealously supporting their repression, and Fidel Castro pushing for regional armed revolution, advocates of social democracy found little room to promote their ideals without compromising them. Cold War politics had offered utopian dreams, but intellectuals could get neither the peace nor the freedom they sought.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction

336 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 13, 2015

Reviews

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trying to learn more about Latin America but realizing I have so much more to learn. This was an interesting read on cultural aspects of the Cold War I the Americas.

[Montana Goodman · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oftentimes a seemingly endless list of acronyms and conference names, this book tries so hard to be unbiased and not favor capitalism or communism. But as a *history writer*, this author should know that we are all biased! You’re supposed to be biased! Stand up for what you believe is right and then make it clear what your bias is. This whole tradition of “neutrality” in history is BS and you know it.

Also, for the love of god why are we still conflating democracy with capitalism and also Stalinism/Marxist-Leninism with communism? Communism is the most democratic thing ever, and being a communist doesn’t mean you support Stalin. And there seemed to be a strange use of the term anti-communist as well. It took me a while to catch on that this author was using his own definitions for these terms.

This book would be best used as a general review as far as events in Latin America go. Specifically the Mexican revolution and the Cuban revolution. The content is supplemental at best, unless you are really looking for a list of poets who attended some semi-socialist conference in Brasil in 1956 (no there probably wasn’t one but guess what, like most of what was in this book, I DONT CARE).

[Gregory · Rating 4 out of 5]

Patrick Iber's Neither Peace Nor Freedom: The Cultural Cold War in Latin America (2015) examines the intellectual struggle the U.S. and the Soviet Union waged in Cold War Latin America. More importantly, it examines how the results were unpredictable. Many people associated with the organizations did not share the views of the funders, which found them difficult to control--local interests sometimes trumped the funders. It's a very good read.

The two big players were the Soviet-funded World Peace Council (WPC) and the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF). These were, as Iber, points out, imperial projects. The people in the front organizations, however, did not feel that way. They felt, only occasionally correctly, that they were struggling on behalf of peace and liberty.

Yet all this did not mean they were "working for" the U.S. and the USSR. They were publishing and talking in ways they believed, which happened in some manner to overlap with these powerful countries. Yet sometimes they didn't overlap. This is the point that I think needs to be remembered the most. People are not necessarily just puppets, and during the Cold War many Latin Americans were trying to figure out how to get the money necessary to reach a wider audience. At the same time, if someone exposes your funding to be CIA or the Kremlin, then your credibility gets hit. That started to happen at the end of the 1960s for the CCF.

Oddly enough, the adamantly anti-Communist CCF helped encourage the Cuban revolution (with money from the CIA!) because it was anti-Batista, then of course grew disenchanted with it. Especially after the revolution, the CCF and WPC touched directly or indirectly a seemingly endless spiderweb of political and cultural organizations. In the midst of all this, the Cuban government launched its own cultural war (through the Casa de las Américas).

The cultural war in Cold War Latin America was a messy business, indeed so complicated ideologically that it led to the decline of intellectuals' influence in Latin America. Iber's book is a reminder not to assume that anyone ultimately gets what they want.

From http://weeksnotice.blogspot.com/2016/...

[Riet · Rating 3 out of 5]

In dit boek legt de schrijver uit hoe tijdens de Koude Oorlog de intelligentsia en de kunstenaars in Latijns-Amerika werden beinvloed, soms geleid, door enerzijds de Soviet Unie en anderzijds de USA of liever de CIA. Veel is al bekend, maar het blijft een interessant verhaal. Er zijn geen echte verrassingen. Jammer, dat de schrijver wat langdradig en soms zelfs saai is.