Ilari and the culture war: the formation of intellectual agendas in Latin America

Abstract

This article addresses cultural policies and the involvement of intellectuals in culture war. It focus on Ilari, the Latin American Institute of International Relations/Instituto Latino Americano de Relações Internacionais, an organ of the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF). While literature and the visual arts, or fine arts, were the focus of CCF’s investment in the 1950s, its new emphasis in the post-Cuban revolution stage was on strong financing and support to Social Sciences and the creation of “Latin American issues”. In this text, we point out how this agenda was formed and how a mismatch started to appear between CCF policies and dictatorships coming to power in South America, despite logistic and political support the United States granted these latter.

Keywords: culture war; Congress for Cultural Freedom; Ilari.