The Taller de Escritores of the University of Concepción and the Cold War

Abstract This article examines the history of the Taller de Escritores [Writers’ Workshop] of the University of Concepción, which existed from 1960-1963, against the backdrop of the Cold War, the Cuban Revolution, and the “boom” in Latin American literature. Although the workshop had a modest subvention from the Rockefeller Foundation, the article argues that we should understand it as the creation of a confluence of interests, and a terrain of potential contestation for Cold War politics, rather than a simple instrument of cultural diplomacy. The article describes the creation of the Taller as the product of the Encuentros de Escritores at Concepción, and the enthusiasm of the Chilean writer Fernando Alegría, then teaching at Berkeley. Although Writers’ Workshops have been described as deradicalizing forces in the U.S. context, and although a similar project (the Centro Mexicano de Escritores) received support from both the Rockefeller Foundation and the CIA in this period, there is no evidence of intelligence involvement here. Instead, Rockefeller understood the Taller as part of a package of university development. The writers in charge were left-wing and wanted to advance professional goals and respect writing as labor. Even after the Taller closed, the workshop form spread in Chile, including via participants with left-wing and anti-imperialist perspectives, suggesting that the form itself is not inherently deradicalizing, and that it depends on social context and the lived experiences of writers.