patrick iber

I have a journal article, now published in The Americas, about the Writers’ Workshop (Taller de Escritores) at the University of Concepción, and its relationship to the Rockefeller Foundation and the cultural politics of the Cold War. Longtime readers of the Patrick Iber Extended Universe will remember that the Centro Mexicano de Escritores was an interest of mine that spun out of my first book. While researching the history of the CME, I came across another Writers’ Workshop supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. Instead of lasting 50+ years, it lasted three. But although seemingly a minor episode, learning more about it kept turning up fascinating dynamics that fed into the “boom” in Latin American letters. The story of the Taller de Escritores demonstrated quite a bit about the frictions between different visions of anti-Communism that were sometimes at play in the soft diplomatic initiatives, as well as the work that writers made of the opportunities they were given. The whole article is available for free via open access, as it should be.