The Latin American Literary Boom and U.S. Nationalism during the Cold War

3. Latin America and Its Literature in the U.S. University after the Cuban Revolution

95 3 Latin America and Its Literature in the U.S. University after the Cuban Revolution The surge in attention to Latin America in the 1960s also rippled through the U.S. academy. Following World War II, government and philanthropic support for area studies programs flourished. For the most part, though, such programs were focused on regions of strategic interest to U.S. national security such as the Soviet Union, Asia, and Africa. Thus, when the Cuban Revolution took place, few universities had Latin American Studies programs—a situation that changed dramatically over the next few years. As scholars such as Mark Berger, Howard Cline, Helen Delpar, and others have discussed, the revolution brought about both awareness of the need for an institutional umbrella for the study of Latin America and the Caribbean and an influx of financial support from public and private sources that made such research possible. Since 1917, as Cline details, Latin Americanist scholars had attempted multiple times to create an organization to help coordinate and disseminate their work.1 But this was an elusive goal: several were formed over the years, only to fold, in some cases as a result of the loss of impetus and of funding as interest in Latin America waned in the postwar years. Even the Association of Latin American Studies, which had been founded on the heels of the revolution with assistance from the Car­ negie Corporation, collapsed under the weight of its own disorganization (see Cline, 62–63). In 1966, though, the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) was incorporated, and the newly formed Latin American Research Review, a beneficiary in its early years of funding from the Ford Foundation, became the official organ of LASA. As Cline observes, “At some point in its future career, [LASA] might well erect a monument to Fidel Castro, a remote godfather. His actions in Cuba jarred complacency in official and university circles, dramatically revealing that all was not well in Latin America, 96 The Latin American Literary Boom and U.S. Nationalism during the Cold War and that something must be done about it. Revived national concern with Latin America again created a climate in which serious programs could begin and even flourish” (64). Such programs did indeed flourish, with support from private organizations such as the Carnegie Corporation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Ford Foundation, the last authorizing more than $11 million in grants to support Latin American studies between 1962 and 1966 alone (Cline, 65). Public funding was instrumental in this process as well. The National Defense Education Act (NDEA) of 1958 was expanded to allow for the provision of fellowships for advanced training in Latin America, while Title VI of the NDEA allocated federal funds to universities to establish area studies programs and centers.2 As Delpar details, the rise in interest in Latin America was also evident in the established disciplines (174–83). The number of course offerings on Latin America increased substantially, particularly in literature and history. According to a survey conducted by Martin Needler and Thomas Walker, the number of courses on Latin America given at U.S. colleges and universities in 1969 was twice what had been reported in surveys from 1949 and 1958, revealing a sharp jump in offerings in the years after the revolution (133). Like Cline, Needler and Walker also attributed the difference to the “increased interest in Latin America that followed on Fidel Castro’s assumption of power in Cuba,” as well as to “the worsening of relations between Cuba and the United States, and the heightened emphasis put on Latin America by the Kennedy administration” (133–34). In Response to Revolution, Richard Welch Jr. analyzes the early support for Castro among university students and faculty and concludes that scholars were stymied in their protests against U.S. policy toward Cuba by divided opinion about the revolution and their own poor organization. He argues, “With a single exception [i.e., C. Wright Mills’s Listen, Yankee!], one cannot point to a speech, article, book, or open letter by an American academic and say with confidence that it influenced either public opinion or government policy” (151). This chapter challenges the assumption that the sphere of action and measure of success for U.S. academics interested in Cuba—and, more broadly, inter-American relations—lay in directly influencing public policy and opinion through traditional scholarly venues . I explore here several university-based initiatives that sprang up in the years following the Cuban Revolution and that...