Between 1950 and 1960 the leaders of two major Asian nations, using radically different methods, tried to institute reforms in their countries which would eliminate long-standing political, social, and economic problems. Both of these countries—China and India—were underdeveloped, largely peasant, and had experienced some form of foreign rule or domination for long periods in their past. From the beginning their efforts attracted the attention of reform-minded persons throughout the less-developed areas of the world, including most of the countries of Latin America, where it was felt that similar problems existed. Various students of the Latin American scene, including Víctor Alba, Tad Szulc, Robert J. Alexander, José Honório Rodrigues, have commented that by the end of 1960 many Latin Americans were closely following events in China. And, as Víctor Alba pointed out at the end of 1960, “India might have capitalised on her achievements, too, had she adopted the same policy of propaganda and invitations as China has. But what is happening in India is virtually unknown in Latin America, and the embassies of India (all too few) do nothing to give publicity to the democratic methods of development practised in their country.”1
The successful Chinese policy of “propaganda and invitations” to which Alba refers is one of the least studied and understood aspects of Communist foreign policy. As Richard L. Walker has written:2
The term “cultural diplomacy” probably represents a more accurate description of the Communist program than “propaganda” or “cultural relations,” because it calls attention to the fact that Sino-Soviet leaders utilize the exchange of information, ideas, persons, and culture as a systematic and unified arm of foreign policy.. . . Activities which for democratic societies are basically uncontrolled are within the Soviet-style framework an essential ingredient of foreign relations and the conduct of diplomacy.
Although these activities are sometimes directed primarily toward Communists and the spreading of Communism, this is not always true. In order to gain more appeal and credibility, Communist leaders have usually placed their emphasis elsewhere when practicing cultural diplomacy toward a non-Communist country.
Inasmuch as cultural diplomacy is merely one of several ways of carrying out a general foreign policy, its content and extent at a given time are determined by the needs of that general policy. The exchange of information, ideas, persons, and culture is effective for Communist countries mainly during periods when “peaceful coexistence” is the primary policy line, as it was for the Chinese between 1952 and 1958.3 During these years they clearly reflected this overall policy in their cultural diplomacy toward India, a country which has been called “perhaps the most favoured of non-Communist countries in its cultural relations with China.”4
The general Chinese policy line was not so clear, however, in cultural diplomacy toward Latin America. Two considerations in particular accounted for this difference. The first was geography, for Latin America was simply too far away from China to be of primary interest to her, especially between 1949 and 1958. During this first revolutionary decade the Chinese felt that their limited resources could be devoted more constructively to domestic projects or to foreign policy goals closer at hand. Second, in spite of the fact that throughout the 1950s the Chinese spoke of “the rising tide of the national liberation movement” in Latin America, it was not until the last years of the decade that they could discern any significant large-scale opposition to the United States and her “puppets.”
In the late 1950s, however, Chinese interest in Latin America grew rapidly. After the Soviets had launched their first earth satellite late in 1957, the Chinese increasingly felt that the balance of world power was shifting to the “anti-imperialist” camp. In their eyes one important indication of this was the great change in the revolutionary consciousness of the Latin American people which was reflected in the stormy reception given U. S. Vice-President Richard Nixon on his trip through South America in the spring of 1958. It was evident also in the overthrow of a series of dictators, including such figures as Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (Colombia, 1957) and Mareos Pérez Jiménez (Venezuela, 1958). Late in the summer of 1958 the Chinese premier, Chou En-lai, went so far as to assert that “the Latin American peoples are standing in the forefront of . . . [the] struggle against U. S. imperialism.”5
In August 1958 a Chinese journal of foreign affairs printed the first important general theoretical justification of armed struggle aimed exclusively at Latin America. It pointed out that armed struggle was appropriate in countries which had “pro-American reactionary regimes” or wherever “American imperialism is directly engaged in military intervention or plotting a reactionary military coup.”6 The article stated clearly, however, that these conditions did not exist in most Latin American countries during 1958. The victory of the armed struggle against Fulgencio Batista (Cuba, 1959) fell within this theoretical framework, and, although the Chinese warmly greeted Castro’s takeover, they did not immediately advocate the violent road to power in the majority of the Latin American countries. On the contrary, during 1959 the Chinese approach to the Western hemisphere continued on the whole to be peaceful and conciliatory, and cultural diplomacy toward Latin America entered its most productive phase.7
Even as this policy was reaching its peak in 1960, however, the Chinese began to speak in more far-reaching terms about the use of armed struggle in Latin America, as well as in the rest of the world. The proper road to political power became an increasingly important part of the growing Sino-Soviet dispute. As the differences within the Communist world grew more open, and as Chinese and Soviet tactics in the underdeveloped world continued to diverge, the growing Soviet opposition to the Chinese made cultural diplomacy less workable and less suited to the achievement of Chinese foreign policy goals.
Since this increasingly belligerent attitude was the main factor leading to a sharp decrease in cultural contacts between China and Latin America, it is necessary to determine just when this change in policy became clear in official Chinese statements regarding Latin America. The turning point seems to have come in mid-1960. Two articles in May 1960 in Red Flag (Hung Ch’i), the organ of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, contained long, laudatory comments on the Cuban guerrilla war and the Cuban example for Latin America.8 At a banquet in honor of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, during that guerrilla leader’s visit to China in November 1960, Chou En-lai gave a speech praising the Cuban people for the victory of their armed struggle and stated that “the Cuban people have become the hope and example of the other Latin American peoples.”9 A joint communique issued by Chinese Vice-Premier Li Hsien-nien and Che Guevara on November 30, 1960, stated in part that10
the Chinese side expressed admiration for and joy over the great victory of the Cuban people who, upholding unity and persisting in their armed struggle, have increased their forces from small to big and from weak to strong and finally succeeded in overthrowing the reactionary dictatorship of Batista. It considers that the Cuban people’s struggle and victory have provided abundant experience and set an example for all the oppressed peoples of the world, particularly the Latin American peoples, in their struggles to win and safeguard national independence.
It is particularly noteworthy that the Chinese chose to make this official statement jointly with Guevara, who had played a prominent role in the Cuban guerrilla struggle and had published his own manual, La guerra de guerrillas, earlier in the year.11
Thus throughout the 1950s and part of 1960 the Chinese emphasized the use of peaceful tactics in Latin America and established contacts with Latin Americans on as wide a scale as possible through cultural diplomacy. This approach was particularly well suited to winning the good will of many educated Latin Americans who had long felt that their societies were culturally and spiritually superior to the “materialistic” United States, a view expressed so forcefully at the beginning of the present century by José Enrique Rodó in his Ariel. By stressing cultural affinity in the broadest possible sense, within a violently anti-American framework, the Chinese were able to make a significant impression on many Latin American intellectuals with only a slight investment in money, time, and personnel.
Although the Chinese looked forward to the eventual communization of all Latin America, their immediate goals during this period were much more modest. They hoped: 1) to increase the already wide-spread anti-Americanism among Latin Americans and thus weaken the United States position in Latin America and the world; 2) to propagate among Communists and non-Communists the Chinese model for overcoming social and economic problems and occasionally for the seizure of political power; and 3) to improve the Chinese image among Latin Americans, so as to increase contacts of all kinds and also to gain support later for such Chinese foreign policy goals as the seating of the Peking regime in the United Nations.
The core of Chinese cultural diplomacy toward Latin America between 1949 and 1960 was its guided tourism—conducting foreign visitors on supervised tours through carefully selected and prepared parts of the People’s Republic. When considering the Latin Americans who made these expeditions it is generally more important to look at individuals than at delegations. As Herbert Passin has observed, “the overwhelming majority [of foreigners invited to China] are drawn from the most influential and articulate strata of their home countries.”12 Their influence at home is almost always determined on an individual basis.
Between 1949 and 1960 the number of visitors increased rapidly from under ten per year to more than five hundred. The totals for these years were: 1949-1951 (2 to 10 persons per year), 1952 (120+), 1953 (40+), 1954 (35+), 1955 (65+), 1956 (90+), 1957 (115+), 1958 (120+), 1959 (400+), and 1960 (500+).13 The large number of visitors in 1952 is accounted for by the attendance of at least 110 Latin Americans at the Preparatory and General Sessions of the Asian and Pacific Regions Peace Conference held in Peking in June and October respectively.14 During the 1953-1955 period the Chinese began to devote more of their resources to winning the friendship of their Asian neighbors, and the number of Latin Americans to visit China fell sharply. Significant changes, which will be discussed later, came in 1956, though it was not until 1957 and 1958 that the total number of visitors again reached the 1952 level. Latin Americans at the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the People’s Republic in October 1959 made up a large percentage of the greatly increased figure in that year. The number of visitors reached its peak in 1960 and fell dramatically in 1961 and thereafter. The figures for 1959 and 1960 were never equaled during subsequent years.
The number and makeup of delegations show which groups in Latin America (e.g. peace, cultural, labor, student, political) the Chinese considered most approachable and suitable for their policy objectives at any given time. One can observe a trend in the kinds of visitors to China from Latin America during the 1949-1960 period which reflects the Chinese analysis of Latin America and the overall emphasis of Chinese cultural diplomacy toward this hemisphere. In broad terms the delegation travel to China was: 1949-1955—peace, cultural; 1956-1958—cultural, labor, professional; 1959-1960—cultural, labor, professional, political, student, youth. Communists were present in all kinds of delegations, often not identified, but the proportion of them in the total number of visitors seems to have decreased as the decade progressed, except perhaps in 1959. Although a few Communists will be included in the general consideration of cultural diplomacy, most will be treated in a separate section.
Between 1949 and 1958 the larger and often more democratically governed Latin American countries generally received the most attention from the Chinese, though visitors from all countries went at one time or another. The following chart of the ten countries sending the most visitors to China between 1959 and 1961 makes clear several important trends in the number and nationalities of Latin Americans travelling to China during these years:
These figures suggest several generalizations: 1) The Chinese made their broadest appeal to a large number of countries in 1959. 2) Although the total number of visitors reached its peak in 1960, a few countries received more attention than in 1959, while most received a great deal less. 3) The number of Latin Americans, exclusive of Cubans, who visited China in 1961 fell to the level of 1958 (or even 1952). 4) Chinese invitations to Latin Americans after 1960 were directed primarily toward Cubans and secondarily toward Brazilians before the ouster of President João Goulart. Although the larger countries were usually better represented, there was no absolute correlation between the population of a country and the number of persons travelling to China. (For example, during 1960 and 1961 as many Costa Ricans [22+] visited China as Mexicans.)
Like other travellers during this period, Latin American visitors usually came to China while on a tour of the Communist world which included the Soviet Union and often other countries as well. During 1959 and 1960, however, an increasingly large number journeyed to China without visiting the Soviet Union. Most visitors came to attend a conference being held in China or to participate in the Chinese celebrations on May Day or October first. Only about 20 percent came under other circumstances.15 Latin Americans were usually invited to China by such organizations as the All-China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, the China Peace Committee, the Chinese People’s Association for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, the Sino-Latin American Friendship Association, or some other group allegedly independent of the Chinese Communist Party.
When they visited China their activities usually followed the pattern set for all visitors to the People’s Republic, though most of them probably did not realize this.16 They were entertained by prominent Chinese of their own occupation and members of the association which had invited them. Even the least important persons frequently had interviews (often in groups) with Mao Tse-tung, Chou En-lai, or some other top Chinese leader; the most important visitors invariably met Mao and other Chinese dignitaries as well. They were taken to impressive factories and public works from Manchuria to Canton. Almost every tour included a visit to a “reformed” businessman and a “typical” peasant village or commune. The exotic was added by trips to the historic Great Wall and such scenic attractions as West Lake at Hangchow. Those who were interested could attend services at one of the remaining Protestant or Roman Catholic churches in the cities or visit museums which told the Communist version of the Chinese revolution.
The Chinese hosts encouraged many Latin Americans while in China to make speeches and write articles about their countries and to give their impressions of “New China.” Visitors often recorded talks for Radio Peking which were later broadcast to Chinese, Latin American, and sometimes worldwide audiences.
Chinese confidence in the overall effectiveness of their guided tours is evident in the comment of a Chinese official to a discouraged Chilean student who spent fifteen months in China during 1960 and 1961: “You have perhaps found bad things here, but you can say what you wish. No one will believe you because many foreign delegations come here who say the contrary.”17 As Robert Guillain wrote in Le Monde (Paris) after a two-month stay in China early in 1956: “‘Come and see.’ This invitation is one of China’s most formidable weapons, a weapon which she uses with consummate skill.”18
The first two important Latin Americans to visit China were Vicente Lombardo Toledano, president of the Confederation of Latin American Workers, and Lázaro Peña, then secretary general of the Confederation of Cuban Workers. Both went to China from Moscow to attend the Trade Union Conference of Asian and Australasian Countries, which was held in Peking in November 1949.19 Union leaders from at least six countries visited China for the 1952 Peace Conference. Beginning in 1955, labor delegations from at least three or four countries (most frequently Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico) appeared at most May Day celebrations and at some meetings of Chinese labor organizations. Representatives from eight countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay, and Venezuela) attended the May Day festivities in 1959. At a single conference in May and June 1960, that of the World Federation of Trade Unions, seventeen Latin American countries and territories were represented (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela).
During the 1949-1960 period a high percentage of the Latin American visitors to China came in so-called cultural delegations. To an ever-increasing degree during these years, however, a delegation was designated “cultural” whenever no other classification seemed inclusive enough for its members. Thus although many of the most influential visitors, especially prior to 1956, were in fact cultural figures (who as often as not came as “peace” delegates), not all who came to China as “cultural delegates” were known at home primarily for their cultural activities. Among the cultural personalities to visit China during these years were: Raúl González Tuñón (in 1953-1954) and Alfredo Varela (1956) from Argentina; Jorge Amado (1952, 1957), Maria Martins (1956), and Guilherme Figueiredo (1959) from Brazil; Pablo Neruda (1951, 1957), Volodia Teitelboim (1952), Fernando Santiván (1952), José Venturelli (almost continuously from 1952 through 1960), and Ángel Cruchaga Santa María (1955-1956) from Chile; Miguel Ángel Asturias (1956) from Guatemala; Jacques Stephen Alexis (1959) and René Dépestre (1960) from Haiti; and Xavier Guerrero (1952), Fernando Benítez (1952), and David Alfaro Siqueiros (1956) from Mexico.
Teachers, physicians, lawyers, journalists, and other professionals were of particular interest to the Chinese because of the great influence they exerted in their own countries. Several dozen professionals, among them physicians Ismael Cosío Villegas (Mexico) and Samuel Barnsley Pessoa (Brazil), visited China in 1952. Senator Salvador Allende led a ten-man delegation from Chile in 1954 which was made up mainly of professors, doctors, and lawyers, and which included agronomist Alberto Graf Marín. In 1956 the Chinese welcomed delegations of lawyers (from Argentina, Brazil, and Chile), journalists (from Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru), and medical experts headed by Joaquín Argonz from Argentina. In 1960 alone over sixty lawyers made the trip.
Some idea of the emphasis given to professionals during 1959-1960 can be had by looking at the visitors from one profession—journalism. Among the score of journalists in 1959 were Juan Emilio Pacull, president of the Chilean Journalist Association, and Samuel Wainer, publisher of the Última Hora chain of papers in Brazil. In 1960 some four dozen journalists came from nine countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay).
Politicians were probably the last group to visit China in any significant number.20 One of the first important political visitors was the Chilean senator Salvador Allende in 1954. Jacobo Arbenz is said to have been in China a year or so after his overthrow in Guatemala.21 Five members of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies had front row seats at the June 22, 1956 meeting of the Chinese National People’s Congress; Getúlio Barbosa de Moura addressed the Congress on behalf of the group. A really substantive change came in 1959, however, when the number of delegations which could be considered political or civic increased six times over the number in 1958. The largest of the more than a dozen parliamentary delegations during 1959 were from Peru (26 members), Colombia (16), and Uruguay (6). Among the best known visitors were the former Mexican president, Lázaro Cárdenas, the former Chilean vice-president, Guillermo del Pedregal, and parliamentarians Marcos Ramírez (Chile), Jorge Errázuriz Echenique (Chile), Augusto G. Bayol (Argentina), and Francisco Rodríguez Camusso (Uruguay). The Brazilian Socialist, Domingos Vellasco, made his third trip during this year, having visited previously in 1956 and 1957. Though in 1960 the total number of political delegations fell by about a third from the 1959 level, important delegations went from Brazil (18), Costa Rica (12), and Bolivia (7). Among the prominent visitors were the former Mexican president Emilio Portes Gil, and parliamentarians Osear Donoso López (Bolivia) and Alfonso López Miehelsen (Colombia). The Chilean Socialist leader, Clodomiro Almeyda Medina, for some years one of the most outspoken admirers of Mao Tse-tung in Chile, led a thirteen-member agricultural delegation in China between May and July. A visit by Vice-President João Goulart of Brazil, originally planned for 1960, was rescheduled for 1961.
For several reasons Chinese contacts with and influence on Latin American Communists are best given separate consideration in any discussion of Chinese cultural diplomacy. First, these Latin Americans were close ideological allies. Second, contacts with Communists, and at times those with radical non-Communist revolutionaries as well, were not only aimed at the ordinary goals of cultural diplomacy, but also at times extended to include secret and systematic training in Communist ideology and revolutionary techniques. Although the latter is in some ways beyond the realm of cultural diplomacy, it will nonetheless be considered briefly here since the line between these forms of contact is often very fine.
The first Latin American Communist to visit China after the founding of the People’s Republic was the Cuban labor leader Lázaro Peña. He attended the Trade Union Conference in Peking in late 1949 with Vicente Lombardo Toledano. The Communist visitors in 1951 included Pablo Neruda, and those in 1952 included Nicolás Guillén (Cuba), Jorge Amado (Brazil), Diego Montaña Cuellar (Colombia), Ramón Amalla Amador (Honduras), and José Alberto Cardoza, Alfredo Silva Jonama, and Carlos Alvarado Jerez (Guatemala).
The first publicized meeting between the highest Chinese Communist leaders and a large group of clearly identified Latin American Communist officials took place in September and October 1956, when representatives from eleven parties (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Paraguay, and Uruguay) attended the Eighth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party as observers and guest speakers. Although most of the delegates were not identified, Arnedo Álvarez (Argentina) and Pedro Saad (Ecuador) are known to have been present. The unnamed Cuban delegate was probably Blas Roca.22
In 1956 special camps were set up in China for the training of Latin American Communists. According to Osvaldo Peralva, then a Brazilian Communist writer for a Cominform organ, some Latin American Communists went to these camps with Soviet approval to receive instruction in revolutionary theory and techniques. Peralva reports that shortly after the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in February 1956, the Soviet leaders agreed to place some of the underdeveloped Latin American countries in the Chinese sphere of influence. This action immediately brought a group of Brazilian Communists to China for a six-month course of study on those Chinese revolutionary techniques which seemed most useful for Communists in Brazil. Peralva clearly indicates that a number of other countries were involved also, though he does not name them.23 It is perhaps no coincidence that it was exactly six months between the CPSU Congress and the acknowledged arrival in China (September) of the officials from eleven Latin American parties for the Eighth Chinese Party Congress. The almost unanimous enthusiasm shown by these officials for the value of the Chinese revolutionary experience in Latin America was undoubtedly related to the formation of these schools, whether these officials had been students there themselves.
The next important influx of Latin American Communists came in 1959. During February and March of that year, officials from twelve parties (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela) met in Peking after attending a conference in Moscow. Again not all delegates were named, but Luis Corvalán (Chile), Gilberto Vieira (Colombia), Raúl Acosta and Jorge del Prado (Peru) attended openly.24 When the tenth anniversary of the People’s Republic was celebrated in September and October 1959 an even more impressive gathering assembled from fourteen countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela). The visitors included Victorio Codovilla, Rodolfo Ghioldi, and Miguel Contreras (Argentina), Luís Carlos Prestes (Brazil), José González (Chile), Aníbal Escalante (Cuba), and Jesús Faría (Venezuela).25 Thus in 1959 alone personal contacts were made with party heads from sixteen Latin American countries, including almost all of the important and influential Communist leaders in the hemisphere.
According to Chinese news releases, Blas Roca was one of the few important Latin American Communists to visit China in 1960. Even though some Communists visitors may not have been reported in the Chinese press, it is probable that the number did decrease sharply during the year. A particularly large and distinguished group of Communists had gone to China in 1959 for the tenth anniversary celebrations, and contacts could not continue at that level. Furthermore, during 1960 Latin American Communists became increasingly wary of contacts with the Chinese as the Sino-Soviet conflict emerged to public view.
Although observers have only begun to study Chinese influence on the activities and statements of Latin American Communists during the 1949-1960 period, two generalizations already seem possible. First, the Latin Americans praised the Chinese revolutionary experience enthusiastically and occasionally, when domestic conditions were favorable, adapted it for use in Latin America by both Communists and some radical revolutionaries. Second, during the years 1949-1959, and to some extent even in 1960, the Soviet Union apparently did not try to discourage the Latin American comrades from praising the Chinese or even from looking at some Chinese experiences as particularly relevant to Latin American conditions. Evidence now available suggests that it is unwise to read conscious pro-Chinese motivation into most criticism of the Soviet Union during these years or to see anti-Soviet intent in the widespread praise of the Chinese. At that time it was quite possible for most Latin American Communists to be pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese at the same time.
Visiting was not a one-way process, for between 1949 and 1960 many Chinese visited Latin America. In these cases the delegation as a unit was often of considerable importance because of its collective impact on the Latin American people. Individual members of delegations were also frequently influential at meetings with outstanding personalities in the countries they visited. Chinese delegations to Latin America, which began to arrive in 1953, may be classified as follows: 1953-1954—cultural; 1955-1958—cultural, trade; 1959-1960—cultural, trade, journalist, student, and youth.
No Latin American government during this period, with the partial exception of the Cuban government in 1959 and 1960, provided guided tours for the Chinese, as the Chinese government had for Latin Americans. Nonetheless, small groups of Chinese visited Latin America in cultural, trade, journalist, and youth delegations; larger numbers went in performing troupes on tour. Leading members of the Chinese delegations met outstanding political figures and attended legislative sessions in the countries they visited. They talked with university presidents and newspaper editors, visited overseas Chinese communities, and went to meetings of local friendship associations. Although they sometimes encountered criticism, as did Yao Chen’s journalist delegation from some of the Chilean press, they often made very favorable impressions on important members of the communities they visited and on the people at large.26
The first two Chinese to visit Latin America from the People’s Republic arrived in Chile as delegates to the American Continental Congress of Culture in May 1953. A Chinese cultural delegation, including the famous writers Emi Siao and Ai Ch’ing, spent several months in Chile beginning in July 1954 and attended a fiftieth birthday celebration for the poet Pablo Neruda.
The first large group of Chinese to travel in Latin America was the 85-member folk ensemble headed by Ch’u T’u-nan, which toured Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay between August and October 1956. The group gave 58 performances to live audiences of over 146,000 persons; an additional million saw the ensemble on television. Among the typical outside activities of the leaders were their meetings in São Paulo, Brazil, where they were received by the governor of São Paulo State (Jânio Quadros), the mayor of São Paulo, the rector of São Paulo University, and others. Chao Peng, a deputy director of the group, lectured on the Chinese classical theater before over 300 Brazilian artists.27
Prom September 1958 through part of April 1959 a 54-member troupe of acrobats, led by Chou Erh-fu, travelled and performed in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay. Visas to visit Mexico and Cuba were reportedly withdrawn following protests from the Nationalist Chinese.28 The Bolivian congress is reported to have passed a resolution in March 1959 demanding that the Chinese troupe be invited to Bolivia, but no visit took place.29 A three-man journalist delegation led by Yao Chen spent over three months in Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, and Cuba beginning in May 1959. In Chile on May 23 alone they met Raúl Juliet, president of the Chamber of Deputies, Salvador Allende, Luis Corvalán, Juan Emilio Pacull, and others.
Two particularly important groups toured several Latin American countries in 1960. A 99-member Chinese opera troupe visited Venezuela, Colombia, and Cuba for over three months beginning in mid-April. The group performed before live audiences of over 225,000 people, and before several million more on television. Its reception was generally very good. In Venezuela, for example, President Rómulo Betancourt attended a performance on May 3 and received the group’s leader Ch’en Chung-ching. On an invitation from the Venezuelan Labor Ministry, the troupe put on a show before 30,000 at the Plaza del Centro Simón Bolívar on the evening of May Day. The Minister of Labor gave a dinner for the group after its final performance.30 Between July and September a three-man journalist delegation toured Chile, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Brazil. The scope of their contacts is suggested by their meetings in Bolivia with both Víctor Paz Estenssoro and Juan Lechín, then president and vice-president respectively of the country.
Among the other Chinese groups to visit Latin American in 1960 youth delegations were the most common. Three went to Chile, one made up of three students who enrolled at the University of Chile; and three went to Cuba, one to attend the First Latin American Youth Congress and one of volunteer “model workers” to help build the Camilo Cienfuegos School City in the Sierra Maestra. The Chinese ambassador to Cuba and his staff arrived in Havana in December.31
During the 1949-1960 period only one Chinese organization set up permanent offices in a number of Latin American countries. This was the New China News Agency (NCNA), which established its first office in Havana, operated by Chinese personnel, in April 1959.32 By the end of 1960 branch offices were located in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela, though none of these was manned by Chinese Communist personnel.33 These branch offices of China’s only news agency were responsible for a substantial increase in the flow of Chinese propaganda in this hemisphere and for an extension of the Chinese intelligence network in Cuba and throughout Latin America. The NCNA exchanged news releases, film footage, and in general cooperated with the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina which was also set up in Havana early in 1959, and which immediately established offices all over Latin America. Prensa Latina, for example, was found to have organized a Chinese film festival which received unusually extensive press and radio advertising in Ecuador in 1960.
After guided tourism, the most important form of contact between the Chinese and Latin Americans was the printed page. Political, economic, social, military, and literary works by Chinese were circulated in Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English translations in Latin America, and Latin American literary works were translated for readers in China. The number of publications circulating in both China and Latin America increased substantially in the late 1950s.
The first pamphlet published in Spanish by the Peking Foreign Languages Press was the Constitución de la República Popular China in 1954.34 In the following year six new titles appeared, including one by Chou En-lai, the first work by a leading Chinese statesman to come from Peking in Spanish.35 Most of the publications during this year, however, were photo albums which required a minimum of text. Nine new books were printed in 1956, including one picture album and several literary works, but with a strong emphasis for the first time on political and economic writings, including the first work by Mao Tse-tung.36 The fourteen new works published in 1957 ranged in subject matter from an album on the Peking Opera to documents of the Eighth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. At least four more of Mao Tse-tung’s writings appeared, dealing in general terms with problems of agrarian and peasant policy, guerrilla warfare, and the united front.37 In 1958 the number of new titles increased to thirty. Included were political and economic writings by Chairman Mao and others. Literary works, folk tales, photo albums, and “picture stories” made up about a third of the publications for the year.38 By the end of 1958 the Foreign Languages Press had published at least sixty books and pamphlets in Spanish. During 1959 and 1960 the majority of the books published in English by the press appeared also in Spanish language editions.39
Many Latin Americans were able to read English-language translations from China which were in existence from the beginning of the decade. Although these publications were not easy to get in many parts of Latin America, they could be secured by those whose interest was deep enough. In some cases they were available by mail, and in others through friendship associations or from persons who had visited Communist countries. Some of the large Latin American cities served as propaganda distribution centers.
Several of the most important English-language periodicals published in Peking were available in some parts of Latin America from their very early issues. People’s China (later Peking Review) began publication in 1950 and was unquestionably the most important Chinese periodical circulating in Latin America. It carried numerous writings by Mao Tse-tung, Liu Shao-ch’i, and other Chinese leaders, as well as documents from Chinese Communist Party meetings on agrarian reform and other problems.
In 1956 the Chinese English-language publications available in Latin America included China Reconstructs, Women of China, and bulletins by Chinese youth and trade organizations. By 1960 the list included China’s Sports, Chinese Literature, The Chinese Trade Unions, Chinese Medical Journal, and Scientia Sinica.
The first Chinese periodical published in Spanish was China: revista ilustrada, which originally appeared in 1955 or 1956. In January 1960 China Reconstruye first appeared. Other Chinese periodicals in the Spanish language by the end of 1960 included Mujer China and Ciencia China.
Chinese Communist writings were also published during this period in Spanish and Portuguese translations by several Latin American publishing houses. Among the earliest to appear were Mao Tsetung’s La Nueva Democracia, published in Santiago de Chile in 1952, with a long poem entitled “To China” by Pablo Neruda, and Liu Shao-ch’i’s Como Ser Un Buen Comunista, published in Mexico and Guatemala in January and February 1954 respectively. Poet Nicolás Guillén and novelist Jorge Amado said in 1952 that translations of Mao’s literary guidelines, Talks at the Yenan Forum on Art and Literature, were being read and discussed in “progressive cultural circles” in Cuba and Brazil.40
The 1957 catalogue and supplement of the Ediciones Pueblos Unidos (EPU), a Communist publishing house in Uruguay which also distributes some materials published elsewhere in Latin America and around the world, listed over 125 books dealing with China. In 1958 the number of titles was over 200, and in 1960 it was over 300. Even these catalogues, however, did not include all of the writings on China that were available in Latin America during these years.
The titles on China distributed by the EPU in 1960 can be divided into two main categories: historical-political and literary. The former, accounting for about two-thirds of the books listed, included thirty-five works in Spanish by Mao Tse-tung, among them his Obras Escogidas covering the years 1926-1945, writings by Liu Shao-ch’i, Chou En-lai, Madame Sun Yat Sen, and others, Communist Party documents, and accounts of travellers to China such as Hewlett Johnson, the Dean of Canterbury.41 The latter, about one-third of the total, included Lu Hsün’s Diario de un Loco, one of the most influential Chinese novels of the first part of the 20th century, La Muchacha de Cabello Blanco, the best known dramatic work written in Communist China, as well as writings by such prominent figures as Mao Tun, Ting Ling, Kuo Mo-jo, and Chao Shu-li. Books for children, some by leading writers such as Chang T’ien-yi, were available in Spanish, English, and French.42 Translations of Chinese material sometimes appeared in the Communist and left-wing press. For example, some ninety column inches of documents from the Eighth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party appeared in La Voz de México in November 1956, and five of Mao Tse-tung’s poems were included in Combate, the organ of the Cuban Revolutionary Directorate, in mid-1959.43
Latin American literature was brought to China in part to give the Chinese people an introduction to the history and traditions of Latin America, as well as some idea of what life is like in that part of the world today. In addition, however, the Chinese hoped that the interest they showed in Latin American problems and aspirations would impress intellectual leaders in Latin America enough to get them to look upon China with greater sympathy and even seek further contacts with her. Chinese efforts to move from a sympathetic reading of Latin American literature to a call for a united front against the United States come out clearly in this comment of a Chinese literary critic in 1960: “The great struggles against imperialism and feudalism reflected in these works strike a responsive chord and stir us deeply. They make us realize more keenly than ever that we and the Latin-American peoples sustain and encourage one another in our struggle against our common enemy—U. S. imperialism.”44
Translations of Latin American writings into Chinese were limited almost entirely to “revolutionary” literary works. To the Chinese, “revolutionary” literature included those writings which reflected the life of “the people” and depicted favorably the so-called national revolutionary or national democratic movements of “oppressed peoples.”45 Some of the works introduced in China during this decade were by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century writers. These all dealt with “the people’s struggles against Spanish colonial rule and the tragedies of semi-feudal and semi-colonial society.”46 Most of the literature, however, was by contemporary writers and was intended to picture the situation in Latin America at the present time.
Since the Chinese classified many of the best writers in the past and present as “revolutionary,” some of the works translated were of great artistic merit, as well as pointed political and social commentary. It is significant that during this period very few Latin American works were translated in China which had not already been translated in the Soviet Union.47 Probably the most important work the Chinese translated first was Buclides da Cunha’s Os Sertões.
During these years books were published by authors from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela, with an emphasis on those from Brazil. The first Latin American writer to have a book appear in China was Pablo Neruda in 1951; Jorge Amado was second in 1953. The number of works from Latin America translated during the remaining years of the decade were: 1954 (2), 1955 (0), 1956 (2), 1957 (2), 1958 (8), 1959 (10), and 1960 (15).48 According to one Chinese literary critic, Pablo Neruda and Nicolás Guillén were the most familiar to Chinese readers, but publication figures would indicate that Jorge Amado was probably equally popular.49 Prior to 1959 fewer than half of the works published in book form were translated directly from the original languages. They were mostly retranslations, the majority from English and Russian, but a few from French and German. In 1959 considerably over half were translations from original language editions, as they were in the years that followed.50
Many shorter translations appeared in Chinese journals devoted partly or entirely to foreign writings. Besides carrying translations of poems, stories, and articles by Latin American writers, the journals also included reviews of Latin American writings by Chinese critics, news of literary developments in Latin America, and copies of woodcuts and other forms of art.
The most important of these journals was Translation Literature (I Wen), renamed World Literature (Shih-chieh Wen-hsüeh) in January 1959. This journal featured the whole range of Latin American “revolutionary artistic production,’’ from the poems of José Martí to selections from José Pardo Liada’s Memorias de la Sierra Maestra and woodcuts of Fidel Castro with the peasants. Whereas the cross-section of persons visiting China was most significant in 1959, the number of writers from different countries published in World Literature was greatest in 1960.51
In addition to giving guided tours of China and promoting the circulation of written materials, the Chinese tried in other ways to achieve their objectives in Latin America. Spanish-language shortwave broadcasts to Latin America began late in 1957 with seven hours a week. In 1958 the time was increased to fourteen hours a week and in 1959 to twenty-one. In 1960 the Chinese maintained twenty-one hours in Spanish and introduced ten and one-half hours a week in Portuguese. The programs of the powerful transmitters sometimes presented news of Latin Americans visiting China, on occasion including recorded speeches by prominent personalities. Some well-known Latin American writers such as Miguel Ángel Asturias were carried on cultural programs reading from their own works. Other broadcasts emphasized social and material progress allegedly being made in China. On January 20, 1959, for instance, questions were answered about the people’s communes. Some programs took on clearly racial overtones, as on July 30, 1959, when American Negro writer Shirley Graham (wife of W. E. B. DuBois) said that all the “feelings of fear and terror” instilled in her heart since infancy “melted away forever” when she heard the “serene and wise words of Chairman Mao.” In China, she observed, colored races had thrown off their exploiters.
Chinese movies seem to have first arrived in Latin America during 1952. During most of the decade they were usually shown only in private homes and at bi-national centers to small audiences. By the end of the decade, however, they sometimes had well-attended public showings, as in Bolivia during 1959 and Ecuador during 1960.52 Especially during the last few years of this period, Chinese cultural and industrial exhibits were held in Latin American cities, often planned in bi-national centers to coincide with the visits of Chinese delegations on tour. During the years 1957 to 1960 exhibits were reported in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, and Uruguay.
In China on several occasions an important Latin American literary figure was made the center of a gigantic celebration. In 1953, for example, José Martí was named one of four “Cultural Giants” on the hundredth anniversary of his birth. The Cuban Communist poet Nicolás Guillén came from Martí’s homeland to be a special guest speaker. He told the audience that Martí would have greeted the birth of Communist China as a triumph for all mankind and as an example to encourage and reinforce the Cuban people. Over 1,200 Chinese cultural figures attended the celebration on September 27. Martí even appeared on a Chinese postage stamp.53 Another celebration was held in November 1959 on the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the Brazilian writer Euclides da Cunha. A translation of his Os Sertões had been prepared, and articles on his life and shorter translations of his writings appeared in Chinese periodicals. At a mass meeting of cultural and political figures Chou Erh-fu, just returned from over six months in Latin America, gave “a stirring account of da Cunha’s life and works and expressed the Chinese people’s support for the Brazilian people’s struggle to safeguard their national independence.”54
Beginning in 1956, Latin American art exhibitions, music and dancing groups, and movies became increasingly common in China. The first Latin American play to be staged in China and performed by Chinese artists was by the Brazilian playwright Guilherme Figueiredo in July 1959.
Some Latin Americans, after returning to their own countries, chose to spread their views on China by forming and participating in the so-called bi-national friendship associations or cultural associations. These groups showed Chinese movies, distributed Chinese and pro-Chinese written materials, collected signatures for Chinese-supported causes, and carried out drives to develop trade and establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic. They planned and held cultural and industrial exhibitions on China, organized celebrations for Chinese holidays, scheduled speeches on China by those who had been there or were considered properly informed, acted as contacts between the Chinese government and many of the Latin Americans who visited China, entertained Chinese who visited Latin America, and introduced Chinese visitors to other influential citizens in their own countries.
The first association was formed in Chile late in 1952, and during 1953 centers were founded in Mexico and Brazil. From the beginning delegates to the 1952 Peking Peace Conference, such as Eli de Gortari in Mexico and Abel Chermont in Brazil, were important members of the centers in their countries. At least four of the six honorary presidents of the Chilean-Chinese Cultural Institute in early 1959 had been to China.55 The number of these establishments in 1960 has been estimated as 22, ten of them in Chile alone.56
The associations were not equally successful in every Latin American country, and they were not even formed in half of the countries during this period. In some countries their activities were restricted by law or government pressure. Institute meetings generally seem to have drawn crowds ranging from ten to several hundred persons; but sometimes they were much better attended, as in early 1960, when writer Jorge Zalamea spoke to an audience of some 2,000 in Medellín, Colombia.57 The centers were most successful in Chile, where Communist and non-Communist membership was high, and where overseas Chinese participation was unusually great. The success in Chile can be explained in large part by the prominence of Communists, Socialists, and leftists generally in the political life of the country, and by the fact that the Chinese devoted particular attention to winning the friendship of influential persons in that country.58 Since the primary purpose of the associations was the dissemination of Chinese propaganda abroad, the bi-national offices in China had almost no business beyond putting on a few elaborate shows for foreign guests who visited Peking.59
After their return home many Latin Americans gave their impressions of China in interviews, speeches, articles, and books. A few of the visitors saw through many of the misleading Chinese propaganda claims, which were at an all-time high between 1958 and 1960 during the Great Leap Forward. These individuals, however, did not write as much as the others on their return, or if they did speak out, their remarks were considered biased by the leftists who were their main audience.60 The majority of the Latin Americans who went to China hoped to find an underdeveloped country overcoming enormous obstacles in its drive for social and economic progress, and, since they saw only what the Chinese had prepared for them, this is just what they found. As Chermont de Brito wrote in Rio de Janeiro’s Jornal do Brasil (November 7, 1959):
China is in great vogue. It is fashionable to travel to China and see the places that the Chinese government has prepared for visitors.. . . Parliamentarians, writers, journalists, rush to get there and come back roaring with enthusiasm, with exaggerated eulogies for the . . . regime and its extraordinary achievements in progress and wealth.
By the end of 1960 several dozen visitors had written books about China as a result of one or more trips to that country, and, as Víctor Alba has observed, “None of them is critical in tone, nor even merely a dispassionate account.”61 Some of the books were assured a good audience when respected national figures wrote prefaces for them, as Oswaldo Aranha did in Brazil for books by Osny Duarte Pereira and Maria Martins.
The reasons for the increasing Latin American interest in China after 1949, and in particular during 1959 and 1960, are not hard to find. First, China was an exotic land which aroused the curiosity of many as soon as its existence and accessibility were widely publicized. Second, China was a predominantly peasant, underdeveloped country carrying out social and economic reforms which many Latin Americans felt should be a model or at least a stimulus for their own endeavors. Third, China’s “anti-imperialist” propaganda line, and in particular her charges that the United States was the foremost exploiter of the underdeveloped world, had great appeal to many like-thinking Latin Americans. Fourth, although many people felt antipathy to Communism, this was counterbalanced somewhat by the disposition of many intellectuals to believe almost anything good about any country like China, which had been so continuously criticized in the United States. Fifth, the circulation of Chinese propaganda became much less difficult during the late 1950s, because a number of dictatorships were replaced by governments which allowed greater political freedom. In most of the countries involved Communist parties were either legalized or allowed to function more freely. These parties and some other left-wing organizations sent out a steady stream of pro-Chinese materials with the support of the binational centers, Latin Americans who had visited China, and, beginning in 1959, the Cuban government. And sixth, pulling together and exploiting all these factors, was the moderate but generally effective Chinese cultural diplomacy—“the exchange of information, ideas, persons, and culture as a systematic and unified arm of foreign policy.” Without this “policy of propaganda and invitations,” as Víctor Alba has clearly implied, events in China would probably have been little more familiar to Latin Americans at the end of 1960 than, for example, those in India.
Just as the Chinese were making significant progress toward their objectives of the 1949-1960 period, however, changes in their own international policy, as well as events beyond their control in Latin America, set the whole process into reverse. The freedom to circulate pro-Chinese materials diminished in some countries when generals returned to political power and in other countries when democratic governments tightened their security measures against foreign infiltration. Moreover, after 1960 the failures of the Great Leap Forward and the people’s communes—experiments which had so impressed many Latin American visitors—became increasingly obvious and well known. Above all, however, as Chinese international policy became more militant, and Sino-Soviet differences more open, most aspects of cultural diplomacy reflected these changes. Guided tours, for example, became less frequent, and publications took on a more belligerent tone.
Though Chinese cultural diplomacy toward Latin America did not stop abruptly after reaching its high point in 1959 and 1960, it did decline rapidly in effectiveness. To be sure, for several years the Chinese were able to continue contacts with some Latin American moderates, while simultaneously throwing increasing support behind radical revolutionaries. This ambivalence was possible probably because the moderates failed to perceive immediately the changes in the Chinese position or felt that China was too far away to pose any serious threat to their fundamental political and social institutions.
By the middle 1960s, however, these remaining contacts had lessened. On the one hand China’s image has been severely damaged among Latin American moderates. This damage has resulted from the belligerent foreign policy line which the Chinese have adopted and, also in the past several years, from the tragic spectacle of the so-called Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. On the other hand, the Chinese have also lost much of the support which they had developed early in the decade among the more militant revolutionaries. In spite of repeated calls for violent revolution, the Chinese have generally not encouraged their Latin American followers to begin guerrilla wars, nor have they always thrown their support behind the Castroite groups already fighting in the countryside. During the first decade after the People’s Republic established itself in China, that government’s increasingly vigorous and resourceful cultural diplomacy achieved notable successes in Latin America. During the second decade the carefully cultivated prestige and influence seem to have withered.
Victor Alba, “The Chinese in Latin America,” China Quarterly, 5 (January-March 1961), 57. See also Tad Szulc, The Winds of Revolution; Latin America Today and Tomorrow (New York, 1963), 187; Robert J. Alexander, “Soviet and Communist Activities in Latin America,” Problems of Communism, X, 1 (January-February 1961), 10; José Honório Rodrigues, “Brazil and China: The Varying Fortunes of Independent Diplomacy,’’ in A. M. Halpern (ed.), Policies Toward China (New York, 1965), 471, where his comments are expanded somewhat beyond those in the generally parallel discussion in Interêsse nacional e político externa (Rio de Janeiro, 1966), 151; Hispanic American Report, XII, 12 (events of December 1959), 694; and Shen-yu Dai, in an unpublished paper entitled “Peking and Latin America, 1949-1960,” delivered at the Association for Asian Studies meeting in Chicago in March 1961.
Richard L. Walker, “The Developing Role of Cultural Diplomacy in Asia,” in George L. Anderson (ed.), Issues and Conflicts (Lawrence, 1959), 45.
Chinese Communist foreign policy passed through several fairly clear-cut phases during the 1949-1960 period. In general terms, the aggressiveness of the late 1940s and early 1950s turned increasingly, especially beginning in late 1952, toward a policy of “peaceful coexistence.” This approach flowered at the Afro-Asian Conference held in Bandung, Java, in 1955, and began to pass in late 1957. A more militant policy emerged in the years that followed.
Herbert Passin, China’s Cultural Diplomacy (New York, 1962), 22.
See excerpts from Chou’s interview with two Brazilian correspondents in Peking Review, 26 (August 26, 1958), 21.
Yen Chin, “The Characteristics of the Present Latin American National Liberation Movement,’’ Shih-chieh Chih-shih (World Knowledge), 16 (August 20, 1958), 18. These same guidelines several years later would have encompassed almost every country in Latin America.
On the continued support for the use of peaceful united fronts in most countries, see Yüan Wen, “The Basic Situation in the Latin American National Independence Movement,” Kuo-chi Wen-t’i Yen-chiu (Research on International Problems), 1 (May 1959), 10-18.
Chang Chih-ching, “Upsurge of the National-Democratic Movement in Latin America,” Hung Ch’i, 9 (May 1, 1960), English trans. in ¡Cuba Sí, Yanquis No! Support the Cuban and other Latin American People’s Just Struggle Against U. S. Imperialism (Peking, 1961), 160-163, and Spanish trans. in ¡Cuba Sí, Yanquis No! en apoyo de la justa lucha . . . (Peking, 1962), 167-169; and Commentator, “Form a Broad United Front to Defeat Imperialism,” Hung Ch’i, 10 (May 16, 1960), trans. in Peking Review, 21 (May 24, 1960), 29-32.
Trans, in Peking Review, 47 (November 22, 1960), 5.
See “Joint Communique of Li Hsien-nien and Ernesto Che Guevara,” Peking Review, 49 and 50 (December 13, 1960), 41.
In La guerra de guerrillas (Havana), undated but known to have been published in April 1960, Che Guevara wrote that although a guerrilla war could he started with a minimum of thirty to fifty men (p. 181), this could not be done in just any country (p. 13).
Passin, China’s Cultural Diplomacy, 8.
In 1961 the number fell to 300+. These and later estimates are primarily on the basis of New China News Agency (NCNA) reports of visitors to China. Complete accuracy is impossible since some visitors were undoubtedly not reported. My estimates are thus likely to be low rather than high.
Delegates to the General Conference came from Brazil (3), Chile (25), Colombia (11), Costa Eica (8), Ecuador (9), Guatemala (5), Honduras (2), Mexico (16), Nicaragua (5), Panama (3), Peru (2), and El Salvador (3).
Passin, in China’s Cultural Diplomacy, 4, estimates that 60 to 80 percent of all visiting is done on May Day and National Day (October 1).
On guided tourism see: Passin, China’s Cultural Diplomacy, Richard L. Walker, “The Developing Role,” 43-62; Walker, “Guided Tourism in China,” Problems of Communism, VI, 5 (September-October 1957), 31-36; and Walker, “Visitors to China,” ibid., IX, 1 (January-February I960), 50-55. Robert Loh, who was for some years a “model businessman” in China, during which time he entertained many foreign guests of the Chinese government, describes some of the techniques of guided tours in his Escape From Red China (New York, 1962), and his “Setting the Stage for Foreigners,” Atlantic (December 1959), 80-84.
The student was Manuel Migone, an actor at the Theater Institute of the University of Santiago de Chile, quoted in Manuel Castillo, “Un étudiant chilien boursier à Pékin quitte la Chine communiste,” Est & Ouest, XIV, 272 (February 1-15, 1962), 26.
Le Monde (January 18, 1956), as quoted in Problems of Communism, VI, 5 (September-October 1957), 36.
Lombardo’s attendance at the Conference has been fairly widely reported ; that of Lázaro Peña has not. Lombardo himself has written of Peña’s visit in his Diario de un viaje a la China nueva (Mexico City, 1950), 67, 141.
The term “politician” means one who held office at the time of his visit to China (e.g. Salvador Allende) or one who was known to the Chinese mainly for his past political activities (e.g. Lázaro Cárdenas). Thus many who have held political office, like Lombardo and Neruda, are not here considered politicians.
Robert Loh, “How the Chinese Reds Hoodwink Visiting Foreigners,” a consultation before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 86 Cong., 2 Sess. (April 21, 1960), 11.
Blas Roca has on at least two occasions admitted having gone to China in 1956: 1) in a television interview in Cuba published in Hoy (May 6, 1959), cited in Andrés Suárez, Cuba: Castroism and Communism, 1959-1966 (Cambridge, 1967), 56n; and 2) in a speech given over television in China on April 1960, during a second visit to that country, as reported by NCNA, Peking, April 27, 1960. No other important Cuban Communist is known to have visited China during 1956, and it is unlikely that Roca as party head would have passed this opportunity to address the Chinese Congress on to anyone else when he knew he would be in China himself during the year. For excerpts from the speeches of the Latin American observers at the Congress see NCNA English language releases on September 20, 22, 23, and 24, 1956.
See Peralva, O retrato (Porto Alegre, 1962), 120. At the time of this statement Peralva was writing in For a Lasting Peace, for a People’s Democracy! Several United States intelligence sources have given information similar to this. According to the Central Intelligence Agency, the Chinese began training Latin American Communists in China in 1956, emphasizing “among other subjects, the special contributions of the Chinese party in the field of clandestine work, agrarian reform and peasant affairs, guerrilla warfare, and the manipulation of the bourgeoisie and other elements in the ‘anti-imperialist struggle.’” See the testimony of General C. P. Cabell, Deputy Director of the CIA, before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (November 5, 1959), 86 Cong., 1 Sess., in Communist Threat to the United States Through the Caribbean, III, 147. Rollie E. Poppino, formerly an intelligence research specialist for the Department of State (1954-1961), has written that probably about several dozen individuals, mostly from Pacific coast countries and small Communist parties, are known to have received “intensive training in organizational techniques, ideology, and guerrilla warfare” in China between 1952 and 1962. International Communism in Latin America: A History of the Movement, 1917-1963 (New York, 1964), 175.
The names of other delegates are given in the releases of NCNA, Peking, February 18 and 19, 1959. See NCNA, Chengchow, March 4, 1959, for their meeting with Mao Tse-tung.
For the names of other delegates, and excerpts from some of their speeches in China, see NCNA, Peking, releases between September 21 and October 5, 1959.
On the visit of the acrobatic troupe to Uruguay in 1958, the Hispanic American Report, XI, 12 (events of December 1958), 695, notes that “the reception accorded the group was such that it extended its stay in Montevideo to give five extra performances.” On a more personal level, Chilean actor Manuel Migone was so impressed by the Chinese theatrical groups which visited his country in 1956 and 1959 that he applied for and received a scholarship from the Chinese government to study three years in Peking. See Castillo, “Un étudiant chilien boursier à Pékin,” 23-26.
See NCNA, Peking, November 26, 1956; and NCNA, Peking, October 4, 1956.
See Ming Chen-hua, Chung Kung Tui La-ting Mei-chou te Shen-t’ou (Penetration of Latin America by the Chinese Communists) (Taipei, 1959).
NCNA, Peking, March .20, 1959.
NCNA, Peking, December 27, 1960; NCNA, Caracas, May 3, 1960; and NCNA, Caracas, May 9, 1960.
Not all Chinese who visited Latin America during this period have been mentioned, but merely the main ones falling most clearly into the realm of cultural diplomacy. Economic and trade missions, for example, visited one or more Latin American countries almost every year beginning in 1955. As Yüan-li Wu has noted, however, in The Economy of Communist China; an Introduction (New York, 1965), 173, even such economic contacts were aimed primarily at the same political objectives as was the cultural diplomacy.
One generally reliable source has stated that the Havana bureau of the NCNA was set up in August 1960. See the Editor, “The New China News Agency,” Current Scene, IV, 7 (April 1, 1966), 4. Víctor Alba has written that it was established at the end of 1959, in “The Chinese in Latin America,” 54. I believe that it was set up in April 1959 when the first reports signed by Chinese newsmen were sent directly from Havana to Peking. This conclusion is supported by a letter (dated August 18, 1960) from the then ambassador of the Republic of China [Nationalist China] in Cuba, Liu Yu-wan, to Dr. T. P. Tsiang, then permanent representative of the Republic of China at the United Nations in which it is stated that an NCNA office was established in Havana in April 1959. I am indebted to Ambassador Liu for making a copy of this letter available to me. Additional evidence is provided by the CIA testimony cited in note 23 which says (p. 157) that an NCNA office was set up adjacent to that of the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina in “early 1959.” See also Paul D. Bethel, Cuba y Los Estados Unidos: Habla un diplomático norteamericano (Barcelona 1962) 49, 51-52.
“La China comunista en América Latina,” Este & Oeste (December 1966), 1-14. A branch was almost certainly established in Chile by the end of 1960, and perhaps one also in Mexico.
The primary source for the information in this paragraph is the Ch’üankuo Tsung Shu-mu (Chinese National Bibliography) (Peking, 1949-1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, and 1958).
Chou, Informe acerca de la labor del gobierno.
Mao, Problemas de la cooperación agrícola.
Among Mao’s works were: Informe sobre investigación verificado en Junan acerca del movimiento campesino; Acerca de la aparición de la revista “El Comunista”; Sobre la táctica de la lucha contra el imperialismo japonés. Also the standard history by Hu Chiao-mu, Treinta años del Partido Comunista de China.
Included were: Palabras del camarada Mao Tse-tung sobre “El imperialismo y todos los reaccionarios son tigres de papel”; and Lu Ting-yi, Que cien flores se abran; Que compitan cien escuelas ideológicas.
In spite of the great Chinese interest in Brazil, the Foreign Languages Press (FLP) does not seem to have published any books in Portuguese during this period. Spanish, English, and French translations from China did circulate in Brazil during the 1950s, however.
A number of Latin Americans helped prepare translations for the FLP. José Venturelli is thought to have devoted some of his time to such activities. See Karl M. Sehmitt, Communism in Mexico; A Study in Political Frustration (Austin, 1965), 216. By 1959 Luis Enrique Délano, Hermina Carvajal, and Pablo Ortiz were among those given as translators for these publications.
Survey of the China Mainland Press, Hong Kong, 342 (May 22, 1952), 17.
The book of the so-called “Red” Dean was entitled China en su nueva era creadora; some books by Latin American visitors are mentioned below.
The literary works ranged from Poetas chinas, a compilation of the poetry of ancient and modern Chinese poets, including Mao Tse-tung, to Ting Ling’s famous land reform novel Sol sôbre o Rio Sangkan, published in Rio de Janeiro in 1956 under the direction of Jorge Amado.
According to Schmitt, Communism in Mexico, 212n; and NCNA, May 7, 1959.
Wang Shou-peng, “Latin-American Literature Comes to China,” China Reconstructs, IX, 10 (October 1960), 14.
See Mao Tse-tung’s Talks at the Yenan Forwm on Art and Literature.
Wang, “Latin-American Literature Comes to China,” 15.
Compare the works mentioned below with those given in Leo Okinshevich (comp.), Latin America in Soviet Writings: A Bibliography, comp. (Baltimore, 1966), Vols. I and II.
The information on Latin American literature which follows is primarily from Ch’üan-kuo Tsung Shu-mu (Peking, 1949-1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958); Ch’üan-kuo Hsin Shu-mu (Chinese National Bibliography of New Books) (Peking, published several times monthly between 1958 and 1960); and Wang, “Latin-American Literature Comes to China.” The figures for 1960 are incomplete since publication records available for that year are incomplete.
Wang, “Latin-American Literature Comes to China,” 14.
Among the works translated during the 1949-1960 period were: Miguel Ángel Asturias, Weekend en Guatemala (1960) ; Carlos Luis Pallas, Mamita Yunai (1958, reprinted 1959); Rómulo Gallegos, Doña Bárbara (1960); Ricardo Güiraldes, Don Segundo Sombra (1960); José Mancisidor, En la rosa de los vientos (1956,1959), and El alba en las simas (1958) ; Alina Paim, A hora próxima (1958,1959); Ricardo Palma, selections from Tradiciones peruanas (1959); José Eustasio Rivera, La vorágine (1957,1959); Jacques Roumain, Gouverneurs de la rosée (1959) ; Alfredo Varela, El río oscuro (1959) ; and novels by Jacques Stephen Alexis, Ralph Boissiere, B. Traven, and others. The Chinese also translated and published collections of poems by Antônio de Castro Alves, Nicolás Guillen, Carlos Augusto León, José Martí, Pablo Neruda, and others.
The February 1957 issue of Translation Literature included eight poems by Latin Americans and two articles, Pablo Neruda, “My Life and My Poetry,” and Miguel Ángel Asturias, “The Literature of Latin America.” Other issues which gave special emphasis to Latin American writings were in 1958 (November), 1959 (February, March, and May), and 1960 (January, June, and September). No comparable cross-section of Latin American writers appeared in any issue of World Literature during the following years, though the number of contributions by and about Cubans continued high.
My conclusions, based mainly on information in the Chinese and Latin American press.
See NCNA, Peking, September 18 and 28, and December 26, 1953. Martí shared the honors with the third century B. C. Chinese poet Ch’ü Yüan, Copernicus, and Rabelais.
Peking Review, 45 (November 10, 1959), 26.
Some information on the Mexican center is found in Schmitt, Communism in Mexico, 134-136; on the formation of the Brazilian center see NCNA, Vienna, November 28, 1953. The four honorary presidents in Chile were Salvador Allende, Alejandro Lipschütz, Olga Poblete, and Héctor Mardones Restat. These and other officers are named in NCNA, Santiago, March 15, 1959.
According to a 1960 research report entitled “Communist Propaganda Activities in Latin America,” by the United States Information Agency.
NCNA, Bogotá, February 29, 1960.
For example, no other single Latin American was subject to such continual attention from the Chinese during these years as the poet Pablo Neruda, one of the few Latin Americans mentioned in this article who had visited China prior to the Communist victory in 1949. Articles and poems by Neruda, as well as commentaries on his life, writings, and activities, were published in China, as early as April 1948, in political and literary journals, newspapers, and books. He was given special recognition on his trips to China in 1951 and 1957, and on such occasions as his receipt of the Stalin Peace Prize and his fiftieth birthday.
For a description of the activities of these associations in Peking see Tung Chi-ping and Humphrey Evans, The Thought Revolution (New York, 1966), 201-203.
In Robert J. Alexander’s words: “It is possible that many who might tend to be critical have been influenced by Latin American ideas of courtesy which militate against criticism by a guest of his hosts.” See “Soviet and Communist Activities in Latin America,” 10.
Alba, “The Chinese in Latin America,” 55. Tad Szulc, South American correspondent of the New York Times, wrote in 1963 that since 1957 or 1958, “dozens of books, articles, and speeches almost uniformly praising China—or at least showing a grudging admiration for it—have been written by Latin American congressmen, intellectuals, artists, and labor- and student-union members on their return from guided tours of the Chinese mainland.” The Winds of Revolution, 187.
Author notes
The author is a graduate student in History at the University of Washington.