Introduction

Those of us whose academic careers evolved during the Cold War have intensely experienced pressures on our approaches to teaching and research. Some of us in North American universities were affected by anticommunist hysteria, required to sign loyalty oaths and face surveillance by the FBI and the CIA. Our work on Latin America sometimes involved protests of U.S. policy and direct or covert intervention into the affairs of countries in the hemisphere. The predominant role of the United States in Latin America dates to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 and the nineteenth-century acquisition of territory through wars with Mexico and Spain. Academic interest in Latin America during the early twentieth century was largely shaped by diplomatic history and U.S. expansionism and imperialism. The end of World War II and the onset of the Cold War in 1945 saw the beginnings of Latin American studies as an interdisciplinary field. The outreach of the United States into Latin America in the early years of the Cold War initially aimed at containing communist influence through support of conservative authoritarian rule and later emerging social democratic regimes during the 1950s. The Cuban Revolution in 1959 and the rise of revolutionary movements throughout Latin America led to U.S. counterrevolutionary strategies and eventually to intervention, covert (as in Guatemala, Brazil, Cuba, Chile) and overt (the Dominican Republic). Authoritarianism throughout the region brought repression, censorship, and imprisonment or expulsion of many intellectuals, who sought exile abroad and carried with them cultural and political influences that accompanied the establishment of centers of Latin American studies.

The idea of a special journal issue on the origins and evolution of Latin American studies originated in 2015 in discussion between Ronald Chilcote and Rory Miller in the light of new studies drawn from once-closed government, foundation, and private archives that revealed ties between government and the scholarly community. They organized a featured session, “The Cold War and the Early Stages of Latin American Studies,” at the 2016 Congress of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), in which Chilcote presented a paper on Cold War influences on Latin American studies in the United States, Miller focused on the early growth of Latin American studies in the United Kingdom, and Steven Palmer examined Latin American studies in Canada. Judith Adler Hellman offered a helpful synthesis of studies in these three countries, of which she had personal experience. Thereafter, Latin American Perspectives agreed to publish a special issue on the theme and to invite scholars from other countries to provide historical sketches and analyses of the origin and evolution of Latin American studies in their particular countries.

This issue includes an introductory essay by Chilcote focused on the United States as a central player in the Cold War. It recounts the development of Latin American studies in the United States from their origins through the Cold War, including the predominance of establishment intellectuals, the founding of early North American journals on Latin America, the interests of major foundations, the influence of U.S. foreign policy in the region, and the ties between government (especially State Department and CIA) and U.S. universities and leading scholars, especially in anthropology, history, and literature. A radical challenge to LASA by a new generation of West Coast intellectuals committed to bringing relevance to the field and its professional association through progressive journals and scholarship based on field research is shown to have brought Latin Americanists closer to the work of Latin American scholars and fostered the latter’s broad participation in the association and their involvement in the rapidly growing network of universities and research centers that make up the Consejo Latinamericano de Estudios Sociales (CLACSO) in Buenos Aires.

The three papers on the influence of the Cold War on academic study of Latin America in European countries reflect varying patterns attributable to the different perspectives emanating from local political and cultural conditions, but all of them are characterized by tensions between older and younger generations of Latin Americanists and the influence of exiled Latin American intellectuals. Several moments challenged old understandings and led to generational debates, varying political outlooks, and new ways of understanding developmental solutions: the Cuban Revolution (1959), the Chilean coup (1973), and the rise of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua (1979).

Rory Miller observes that the Cold War in the United Kingdom had little influence in the establishment of five Latin American studies centers and that British interest in Latin America emanated from limited colonial experience, particularly in the Caribbean, with the Cuban Revolution, the rise of authoritarian regimes in Latin America during the 1960s, and the modest influence of Marxists such as Eric Hobsbawm, Perry Anderson, and Robin Blackburn and leftist Latin American exiles stimulating new thinking toward the end of the decade. Miller acknowledges the financial support of the Ford Foundation but discounts any substantial U.S. policy influence.

The Dutch had long been involved in the colonial experience in Brazil and the Caribbean and a continuing interest in Surinam, but academic attention to Latin America, as succinctly described by Michiel Baud, revolved around the Center for Latin American Research and Documentation, founded in 1964 as the major Latin American studies center in the Netherlands. Baud identifies an awakening academic Dutch interest to the U.S. intervention in Guatemala, the Cuban Revolution, and the military coups in Chile in 1973 and in Argentina in 1976. Politically, new lines of thought were influenced by Christian and social democratic currents in the Netherlands to which exiled Latin American intellectuals contributed.

Hans-Jürgen Puhle delves into the origins, interests, and influences in the study of Latin America in Germany, with attention to centers of study and major scholars in both West and East Germany during the Cold War after 1945. Despite the lack of a colonial tradition and limited German business and political interests in Latin America, Latin American studies evolved substantially. Puhle describes two tiers of study centers (universities and independent research institutes) and two funding foundations (Konrad Adenauer and Friedrich Ebert Foundation) that influenced and supported the emergence of Latin American studies in West Germany and argues that the Cuban Revolution, the military coup in Chile, and an influx of exiles ensured the Latin American revolutionary experience a place in German scholarly writings and in the student movement after 1968.

Study of Latin America during the Cold War was also of interest to the research institutes established in the Soviet Union and China. In his comprehensive and critical overview of scholarship in the Soviet Union, Russell Bartley looks at the controversial relationships between U.S. and Soviet scholars and the difficulties of independent and reliable research and writing. He identifies and analyzes Soviet institutional, research, and policy initiatives related to Latin America throughout the Cold War. Mao Xianglin and Shi Huije identify five phases in the evolution of Chinese Latin American studies before and after the establishment of the Institute of Latin American Studies on July 4, 1961. They emphasize the rapid development of research and study after 2000 and distinguish between Chinese and Soviet initiatives in Latin America

Sorely missed in this collection is an account of the Cuban experience. The Cuban Revolution inspired intellectuals everywhere to study, understand, and analyze Cuba. There was interest in establishing a Cuban study center on Latin America as early as 1960 (Luís Suárez Salazar, personal communication, May 2017). The overthrow of the government of Chilean President Salvador Allende forced into exile many scholars of Chile’s Centro de Estudios Sociales, which focused on problems of dependency and underdevelopment in the hemisphere. One of them, the Argentine Marxist Tomás Amadeo Vasconi, found himself in Cuba, where he became active in bringing Cubans and exiles together in 1976 to establish the Centro de Estudios sobre América (CEA), which published research and policy papers and occasional issues of the journal Cuadernos de Nuestra América. Early relations between LAP and Cuba are explored by honorary editor Joel Edelstein, who had participated in debates at the CEA in 1993 and 1994, in the journal’s July 2002 issue. The CEA was closed and its scholars dispersed in 1996 as a reaction within the Cuban Communist Party after two small planes of a Cuban exile group in Miami dropped leaflets over Havana and were shot down for violating Cuban airspace. Several CEA scholars remain participating editors of Latin American Perspectives, including its former director, Luís Suárez Salazar, and Rafael Hernández, editor of the prestigious Cuban magazine Temas.