Patrick Iber, Assistant Professor of History, University of Texas, El Paso; Author, Neither Peace Nor Freedom

During the Cold War, left-wing Latin American artists, writers and scholars worked as diplomats, advised rulers, opposed dictators and even led nations. Their competing visions of social democracy and their pursuit of justice, peace and freedom led them to organizations sponsored by the governments of the Cold War powers: the Soviet-backed World Peace Council, the U.S.-supported Congress for Cultural Freedom and, after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the homegrown Casa de las Américas. Neither Peace Nor Freedom delves into the entwined histories of these organizations and the aspirations and dilemmas of intellectuals who participated in them, from Diego Rivera and Pablo Neruda to Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jorge Luis Borges.