Given the development of cultural history and Joseph Nye's concept of soft power, it is not surprising that the US cultural offensive in Latin America during the Second World War has drawn increasing scrutiny from scholars. Darlene Sadlier's study offers a broad but detailed overview of the cultural activities of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA) headed by the multi-tasking Nelson Rockefeller. In pursuing its mission of promoting hemispheric solidarity at home, but especially in Latin America, the CIAA seemed in some ways to take on the personality of its director as it launched projects in every conceivable venue for cultural diplomacy, including film, radio, printed works and promotional activities in libraries and museums. Sadlier explores each of these avenues of activity, examining both the design and implementation of what seemed to be a nearly endless array of endeavours.
The best known of the CIAA's efforts were those in the film industry. The government agency benefited from the fact that Hollywood was in the midst of its golden age, with film-makers like David O. Selznick and Walt Disney capturing the attention of audiences around the world with their striking visual images and the star power of both human and animated actors. In particular, Disney films including Saludos Amigos (1942) and The Three Caballeros (1944) highlighted the fantastic aspects of Latin America's natural environment while also promoting the idea of values and goals shared by citizens throughout the Americas. The CIAA's relationship with the film industry involved not only promotion of the Good Neighbour ideal, but also the careful editing of Hollywood's version of the Americas. While discouraging the inclusion of negative Latin American stereotypes in US films, Washington promoted film-making that downplayed racial diversity and poverty in the region. That editing fit both the desire of Latin American states to project what they deemed positive images of their societies and Washington's desire to de-emphasise its own problems with racial discrimination and poverty. Work that strayed outside those guidelines, such as Orson Welles' It's All True, would not see the light of day.
Radio broadcasting proved to be more of a challenge. The US radio industry had nowhere near the international influence that the country's films enjoyed. Furthermore, the Germans had developed an active radio propaganda campaign in Latin America. Nevertheless, the CIAA made rapid strides in creating wartime dramas, segments of musical entertainment and news reports with a decidedly pro-Ally slant on the war. Music proved to be a particularly effective medium, with Latin American audiences showing a particular fondness for classical works and jazz. Despite the collapse of his film venture for the CIAA, Orson Welles did his part on radio; his programme Hello Americans made him one of the most recognised radio personalities in the region, perhaps because his broadcasts offered a more complex and sophisticated version of the CIAA's American solidarity message than the organisation's other propaganda efforts.
The CIAA excelled at penetrating the print media, with more than 1,000 Latin American newspapers publishing its stories and photos by 1945. The agency also produced strong results with a flashy photo magazine, En Guarda, while translated editions of Readers Digest proved to be a major success. The CIAA's reach extended even further into pamphlets, posters and still photos, as well as translations of books by both US and Latin American authors. It also worked to expand and strengthen US cultural institutes in the region, especially through the creation of local coordinating committees.
On the other hand, the agency's efforts to promote better understanding of Latin America and Latin Americans in the United States received limited funding and attention. One exception was the effort of Walter Laves, who headed the Division of Inter-American Activities that focused on the domestic project. Laves tried to mitigate the effects of racial prejudice on the trial of the young Mexican Americans in the Zoot Suit Riots case despite his superiors’ efforts to discourage him.
One of the most important questions for both CIAA bureaucrats and scholars is whether and how effectively this dizzying array of initiatives forged a common sense of identity among the people of the Americas. Despite a number of telephone and mail-in surveys, the tools at the CIAA's disposal were rather crude by today's standards of opinion polling, particularly in terms of securing representative samples of the populations which they sought to study. Equally intriguing is the question of whether the appeal of American popular culture, without overt promotion by the state, would have been sufficient to accomplish the same purpose. The author comes down firmly on the side of the agency's work. This, however, is largely based on a comparison with the Cold War policies that replaced the CIAA's programmes with hard-core anti-communist rhetoric and fearmongering, rather than a new assessment of how effectively this early version of soft power actually worked. That assessment reflects a larger issue with the book.
In examining the various initiatives of Rockefeller's agency, the author does explore how gender and race influenced the images of both the United States and Latin America that were fashioned in an effort to build a sense of common identity in the Americas, but there is not a great deal that is new or original in these observations. Not surprisingly, even the progressive propaganda of the CIAA still presented stereotypes about the exoticism of Latin America and the wholesomeness of its northern neighbour's culture, although it did diminish one stereotype by extolling the contribution of women to the war effort. The author has done a masterful job painting a richly detailed history of the CIAA, but now there is an opportunity to develop that material into a more nuanced analysis of the agency, its work and its effectiveness.
