Deborah Cohn presents an illuminating study of the crucial impetus given by different US groups to the boom in Latin American literature in the 1960s and 1970s in the context of the Cold War. Since international attention to the boom was significantly shaped by the US reaction, her account is of interest to any literary scholar involved with the period. Cohn has written a history of a literary phenomenon – a study not of the literature itself nor of how its content relates to historical and political contexts, but of how the authors and their work became caught up in ideological battles in the Americas. The authors sought to project their work on the international stage, and that effort coincided with the aims of different players in the United States. Cohn explains that there were various groups in the United States which promoted the projection of Latin American literature to the public: leading writers, commercial and academic publishers, translators, academics, philanthropic organisations and government departments. Even though the translations had mixed commercial success, the writers were taken very seriously by these groups, albeit for different reasons. Cohn traces the ways in which the approaches of these groups were at times complementary and at others contradictory.
She emphasises that the key contextual factor for US cultural diplomacy at the time was the Cuban Revolution and how it affected hemispheric political and ideological relations during the Cold War. Many of the writers were enthusiastic early supporters of it, though that support was significantly modified later (especially after the notorious Padilla affair). Simultaneously, US philanthropic organisations (like Ford and Rockefeller) and government departments sought to limit the impact of the revolution within the region and consolidate Latin America within the US sphere of influence. The Latin American writers were seen as having significant influence in their societies, with the potential to change attitudes. And so public and private forces in the United States worked together to open up opportunities for Latin American writers to get published, spend time in universities and meet US writers, with a view to persuading them to embrace liberal values and adopt a sympathetic view of the United States. While she warns against reducing the boom to the effect of institutional and political factors in the United States, Cohn shows that the Latin Americans benefited from US efforts to contain perceived ideological dangers. Those efforts were at times clumsily contradictory – public and private bodies created programmes to bring writers to the United States and promote popular and specialist interest in their literature, but simultaneously official fears about the spread of communism led to the blocking of entry to many of the same people. Even Borges had visa difficulties in the early 1950s; others, such as Fuentes and Neruda, had multiple applications refused or received very limited visas.
Cohn makes a detailed study of three particular factors which significantly influenced the reception of Latin American writing in the United States: the 1966 PEN Congress in New York, the rise of Latin American studies, and the Center for Inter-American Relations. The PEN Congress was a turning point because Latin American writers were prominent in it for the first time, with the effect of putting their writing on the international literary map. It also enabled them to network with one another and with prominent US figures, though radical voices outside the Congress were critical of what they saw as writers being seduced by US initiatives. The growth of Latin American studies in the United States broadly increased awareness of the region, and Latin American writers benefited from the visiting positions offered and the opportunities to lecture. Certain universities, such as Columbia, Iowa, Virginia and Cornell, played an important role in promoting Latin American writing through their ambitious programmes of events. These programmes were often supported by finance from philanthropic organisations. It is striking how many philanthropic organisations were involved, all with the shared conviction that mutual understanding between the United States and Latin America could be improved via the promotion of literary translations. But Cohn shows that philanthropic organisations were often vehicles for official US policy towards Latin America, and that some (such as the Farfield Foundation) received funding from the CIA, channelled through the Congress for Cultural Freedom (a body that was also thought to be financing the leading literary journal Mundo Nuevo). Although government and philanthropic programmes were broadly coordinated, their effects were not always foreseen and the political agendas of the philanthropic organisations sometimes deviated from government positions. For example, Cohn argues that the literary programme of the Center for Inter-American Relations, far from neutralising ‘the Communist threat’, created opportunities for writers associated with the rising tide of Marxism and, through promoting the translation of their works, helped disseminate the ideology that the state was intent on eliminating. In fact, Latin American writers were adept at turning US programmes to their own literary and political advantage and were able to consolidate a new literary tradition by influencing both academic and popular audiences.
Cohn's analysis effectively fulfils her aim ‘to redefine the parameters of study of literary history during this period as fundamentally transnational’ (p. 9). It also benefits from its foundation in comparative literary studies: Cohn has a grasp of what was at stake for both US and Latin American writers. Significant archival work clearly underpins the book, which assembles and synthesises a large amount of data, though there is a lot of straightforward narrating of events in it, some of which is a little humdrum, and it is arguable that a more selective approach might have sustained the focus more effectively. For example, there is a sense of repetition in the coverage of the aims of the different organisations, the controversies related to cultural programmes and their independence, and the question of covert finance from government. The book is at its most interesting when it deals with underlying political tensions, and particularly the complexities of the ideological manoeuvring over the Cuban Revolution. Overall, it provides a valuable new angle on the internationalisation of Latin American literature in the 1960s.
