From “Mutual Understanding” to Anti-Communist Propaganda?: The Institute of International Education and Chile (1919–1961)
De la « compréhension mutuelle » à la propagande anticommuniste ? L'Institut d'éducation internationale et le Chili (1919-1961)
Résumé
This chapter aims to analyze the reconfigurations of educational internationalism from the 1920s to the end of the 1950s as far as inter-American relations are concerned. For this purpose, the authors follow the trajectory of the Institute of International Education, a US non-governmental agency created in 1919 to promote academic exchanges. The exchanges with Chile were chosen as a case study due to the agency of this country during the interwar period in terms of cultural diplomacy and the special attention given to the country by a plurality of US actors during the Cold War. Through this case study, this chapter contributes to the historiography that has repositioned Latin America as a subject of the Cold War instead of as a passive actor of the East/West confrontation. Moreover, by considering a period from the 1920s to the late 1950s, it also proposes an uncommon narrative of the Cold War, mindful of both ruptures and continuities, with the aim of nuancing a vision of the Cold War as a complete reconfiguration in international relations in general and in inter-American relations in particular.
