Abstract

NALLIM, Jorge. Transnational networks, anti-Peronism and Cold War: the origins of the Asociación Argentina por la Libertad de la Cultura. Prismas [online]. 2012, vol.16, n.1, pp.121-141. ISSN 1852-0499.

This article explores the local and transnational processes that resulted in the creation of the Asociación Argentina por la Libertad de la Cultura in December, 1955. The Asociación was a branch of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which was created in Berlin in 1950 as part of the American cultural strategy during the Cold War. Based on the analysis of a broad group of publications and institutions, the text traces the dense network of personal, institutional, ideological and political relations among the anti-Peronist Argentine intellectuals and between them and their European colleagues that led to the creation of the Asociación. Those relations, developed since the 1930s and deepened by the Peronist experience and the Cold War, were facilitated by common trajectories and themes such as the defense of political and cultural freedom and the superiority of the Western world, anti-fascism, and anti-communism. The analysis, part of a larger ongoing project, also sets the basis for future studies on the history of both the Asociación and anti-communist intellectual networks in Latin America during the Cold War.

Keywords : Anti-fascism; Anti-Peronism; Anti-communism; Cold War; Intellectuals.