In the growing field of Cold War Latin American history, Neither Peace Nor Freedom stands out as a major contribution. Although this is a story about ‘art and ideas’ it does not examine culture in a vacuum. Instead, Patrick Iber positions it within a political, socio-economic and organisational context. This helps explain the meaning and significance of the region's cultural battles. As Iber writes, the Cultural Cold War was ‘the expression in art and ideas of a war that was not fought with weapons but with social systems’ (p. 5). And examining the cultural manifestations of that war reveals a lot about the social systems themselves.

For Latin America, the Cultural Cold War was long – and far more complex and multisided than acknowledged. To explore it, Iber zooms in on the organisations that underpinned ‘three visions of progressive democratic socialism’ central to that conflict: the World Peace Council (WPC), the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) and the Casa de las Américas, sponsored respectively by the Soviet Union, the United States and Cuba (p. 235). In their own ways, all fought against totalitarianism in the aftermath of World War II, invoking ‘peace’ or ‘freedom’. However, as the book's title suggests, contortions over these labels achieved neither. By the early 1970s, the three visions had been discredited, primarily because of their association with the states that sustained them. As with so many other Cold War stories, this is therefore ultimately a story of failure. The conflict has nevertheless left us with some of the region's most famous works of art and literature that transcend the Cold War, even if they that cannot fully be understood without reference to it.

Neither Peace Nor Freedom will be a standard bearer for everyone working on the Cultural Cold War in Latin America. It draws on 23 archives predominantly in Mexico and the United States to weave together a readable, multidimensional cultural history. It is also a significant intervention in historiographical debates related to the Cold War more broadly. Perhaps Iber's most important contribution is the emphasis he places on the anti-communist Left. Often neglected in histories of the Cold War that opt for a simple Left–Right dichotomy, Iber persuasively demonstrates the anti-communist Left's influence in fighting Soviet influence and communism in Latin America. Indeed, he sees a much longer ‘international left-wing civil war’ as key to understanding the Cold War. Beginning in the 1920s, this conflict crystallised as a result of opposition to Stalin's leadership, Trotsky's influence and the Spanish Civil War. Particularly after the Cuban revolution, it then brought together an entangled range of people and ideas. As Iber reminds us, ‘projects of cultural hegemony … were porous rather than solid’, forcing us to question the utility of neat categorizations (p. 16).

Iber also contests the idea of a binary Cold War conflict between the United States and Latin America. To be sure, we learn that within Latin America, anti-communism did not automatically correlate with a pro-US stance (‘U.S. hegemony was too raw’, p. 90). Yet for those fighting communism in the post-war world, the United States provided the support they needed to launch a counteroffensive to the Soviet Union's cultural project. While many associated with the CCF did not necessarily know that the CIA funded their activities, Iber argues that the anti-communist Left generally came to understand they had to reach an understanding with the United States. In his words, ‘the United States [and the Soviet Union] made it possible for the internecine struggles of the Left and its intellectuals to be inscribed in a much grander tale than they would have otherwise managed’ (p. 48).

While the United States’ backing for left-wing anti-communist groups fundamentally changed the nature of ideological struggles in Latin America, Iber shows that it was not able to control them (p. 240). Association with Washington also ultimately discredited local intellectuals and artists. News that the CIA funded the CCF in 1967 destroyed the organisation's regional programmes just when they were beginning to bear fruit, owing to the animosity many felt towards working with the United States. Those associated with the pro-Soviet campaigns for ‘peace’ and ‘anti-cosmopolitanism’ were similarly undermined. By the early 1970s, even the Cuban revolution – celebrated in the 1960s – was roundly criticised. As Iber puts it, the ‘sin of Cold War intellectuals’ was ‘voluntary or quasi-voluntary allegiance to powerful empires’ (p. 234). Each ‘silenced discussion of the problems of its patron’ (p. 235).

When it comes to other questions currently dominating historiography of the Cold War in Latin America, Iber's intervention is important. He adds another voice to the growing consensus that the Cold War stretched back to the Bolshevik Revolution. While this is a study of Latin America, Neither Peace Nor Freedom is part of a new global turn in the field that examines the region's interaction with the wider world. As Iber explains, Latin America's ‘geopolitical background was different’, making it difficult to subsume into global Cold War narratives and histories of the conflict's relevance for the so-called Third/Developing World (p. 86). Yet cultural battles were intricately tied up in global events, extra-continental influences and processes – particularly when it came to European communism.

There still remains more to do when it comes to understanding Latin America's place in the world during the Cold War and the evolution of that conflict within the region. Iber has offered an excellent framework for future scholars and I look forward to seeing how the history of the Cultural Cold War in Latin America develops. In particular, there is scope for more research on what happened after the early 1970s: where did artists and intellectuals find patronage after they grew disenchanted with US-, Soviet- and Cuban-sponsored visions? As Iber tells us, these three cultural projects ‘had been shattered [by the early 1970s]. Their fragments could still be sharp and dangerous but they would assuredly be smaller’ (p. 227). As well as shards of former projects, what alternative visions came to the fore in the years that followed? How did intellectuals and artists deal with the astonishing levels of violence in the region (largely absent from this book)? The role that culture played in global solidarity campaigns against dictatorships – particularly in the Southern Cone – strikes me as a topic worthy of further study in this respect. Beyond the role of literature and Mexican muralists, it would also be good to hear more about music, counterculture and the Right's own cultural project(s). True, there are some excellent studies of these topics already but it would be interesting to see how they – and their protagonists – intersect with Iber's analysis. How widely the story of institutions and intellectuals that Iber tells percolated into everyday life and society is also intriguing. However, these are avenues for future study. For now, Iber's work is a must-read contribution that will shape the way Cold War history of the region develops.