IN GENERAL, the cultural programs abroad of the other American Republics have antedated that of the United States. Each of the twenty-one republics of our hemisphere has such an official program---as have also the Dominion Government of Canada and the Insular Government of Puerto Rico---with variation in magnitude and scope proportional, generally, to national income. The programs of Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico present interesting points of similarity and contrast.
THE cultural program of Chile has been historically a program first and foremost of education, carried on by educators. For generations the schools of Chile have reached beyond the national frontiers. Chilean "supremacy in the culture of Latin America" attained through "the interchange of students and teachers on a large scale" was one of the arguments used by the Spanish Minister of Education and Fine Arts in 1907, in presenting to the Cortes at Madrid a plan for broadening Spain's own educational interchanges with other nations.(1)
As early as 1821, James Thompson, a Scotsman, brought to Chile the system of instruction developed by Joseph Lancaster, an Englishman---a system the introduction of which into South America previously had been urged, and encouraged financially out of his own pocket, by Bolivar. O'Higgins was a member and promoter of the Lancaster Society established in Chile by Thompson, and appointed a commission to work with him in establishing schools that flourished for some eleven years.(2) Andrés Bello, Venezuelan educator, statesman, and man of letters, had been called to Chile in 1829 to advise that country's Foreign Office and to help reorganize the system of public education. One of the resultant institutions was the University of Chile, of which Bello became head in 1842. "The University of Chile was founded largely on the model of the University of Paris. . . The law which created the University of Chile, and at the same time organized public education, was a replica in some respects of the French law."(3) In 1842 also, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, later to be President of Argentina but then a fugitive from Rosas, was appointed head of the first normal school in Chile and also in South America---an institution still flourishing, where many teachers from other Spanish-speaking countries have been trained. In spite of the then precarious state of the national budget, the Government of Chile sent Sarmiento to observe and report upon school systems in England and the United States. Deeply impressed by the public schools in the latter country, Sarmiento became a close friend of Horace Mann (another cultural consequence of Sarmiento's trip was Mrs. Mann's translation into English of his great novel, Facundo), and upon return to Chile, wrote two works on popular education and common education respectively to persuade the Chilean people of the necessity of laying especial importance on the work of "the primary and common school." Following two decades in Chile, Sarmiento, as President of Argentina, was able to put into practice in his own country his educational program.(4)
About a half-century after Bello, another brilliant educator and man of letters from the Caribbean area, the Puerto Rican Eugenio María de Hostos, who had established the first normal school of Santo Domingo and modernized the educational system of that country, also contributed largely during ten years residence, from 1889 to 1899, to the advancement of the Chilean public school, and of the University, which through his influence became the first in Hispanic America to open its doors to women.(5)
The debt Chile owed these three Hispanic American cultural ambassadors, Bello, Sarmiento, and de Hostos, always generously acknowledged, has been no less generously repaid through the years by the educational advantages Chile has given to students from all parts of Hispanic America.
German influences have also helped shape the Chilean school. In 1885 the normal schools for women imported German professors to reorganize the curriculum. In 1889 German professors were given the key positions in the Teachers Institute. In 1893 the school named for Valentin Letelier, "who was inspired and guided by the German educational system," was opened with a German faculty. In consequence of all this, the Chilean secondary school, or liceo, has been patterned on the German Gymnasium, and German influence has been a forceful element in contemporary Chilean education.(6)
Education, long recognized by the Chilean Government as one of its most important exports, is also the basis of its official cultural program. The University of Chile has trained a surprisingly large number of persons prominent in official, literary, and professional life of the other republics.(7) A recent Director of Culture in the Venezuelan Ministry of Education is not only a graduate of the University of Chile but has served on its faculty. Several of the leading lawyers of Nicaragua were educated there. When the Bolivian Government decided to found the Pedro Domingo Murillo Paz Vocational School at La Paz---an excellent institution, the best of its kind in Bolivia---it sent the eight young professors who were to establish it to Chile that they might study methods in vocational education. In September, 1944, the Government of Panama employed four Chilean professors of mathematics, four of history and geography, two of biology and chemistry, one of drawing, one of music, and one of home economics, for service in Panamanian schools. Typical of the invitations issued by Chile to students in other countries is that extended by the University's Agronomical and Veterinary School to thirty-six students of the College of Agronomy and Veterinary Science in Buenos Aires, who arrived at Santiago in January, 1945, for a tour of Chilean truck and dairy farms, agricultural schools, and similar establishments.
The Chilean Commission of Intellectual Cooperation was created in 1930, and in 1931 was reorganized "by the University of Chile, with the support of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Education."(8) Although "an autonomous institution that does not depend on the State," the Commission's headquarters are in the National University of Chile, its executive committee of five members includes a representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and one of the Ministry of Education, while the Chairman is a representative of the University. According to its Secretary-General, Dr. Francisco Walker Linares, the Commission "concerns itself with scholarship awards to Chileans for study abroad . . . , has sent Chilean books to numerous institutions in other American countries and has even formed, either directly or through its cultural institutes, libraries of Chilean authors in cities such as Buenos Aires, Caracas, La Paz has sponsored exhibitions [at home and abroad] . . . , has organized numerous cultural institutes [among them the Chilean-Argentine Cultural Institute, founded in 1934, the Chilean-Bolivian Institute, the Chilean-Brazilian, the Chilean-North American]." Since 1937 the Commission has published a quarterly bulletin of cultural news, domestic and foreign, which is distributed to the country's diplomatic missions by the Foreign Office.
Chile has drawn up a number of cultural treaties with other American Republics. All are on the pattern of the agreement on cultural interchange signed by the Chilean and Ecuadoran Foreign Ministers in the Government Palace at Quito, October 30, 1942, in the presence of the President of Ecuador, the Minister of State and members of the Diplomatic Corps. The agreement facilitates exchange of professors and students and mutual recognition of professional degrees; encourages arts and crafts exhibitions by each country in the other, and similarly, reciprocal book fairs; affirms governmental support for cultural institutes and intellectual cooperation; announces forthcoming establishment of Chilean sections in the National Library of Ecuador, and vice versa; declares the intention of each Government to further among its own people knowledge of the cultural achievements of the other.
On June 29, 1944, upon creation by the House of Deputies of the post of Cultural Relations Attaché at Chilean Embassies, La Hora, of Santiago, published the following editorial comment:
The measure [is based] on concepts of brotherhood and acquaintance among peoples, on the necessity of our establishing stronger ties with other nations, not only through commercial channels and economic interchanges but also by means of cultural interchange. As regards the Americas in particular, the present war has made evident the deep, great barriers separating the Republics of the New World . . . . The conflict has had one gainful aspect for the Americas, and that is that it has made us see the need of union . . . . In the first place, we should begin by learning more thoroughly the history that we share in common, by fostering culture and the higher products of the intellect. In the Diplomatic Service this specialized work should be in charge of outstanding representatives of the best minds of Chile.
IN 1936 the Argentine Government created its National Commission of Intellectual Cooperation. In 1941 the Commission's annual report declared that it was continuing to function efficiently "in spite of international conditions, as is shown by the fact that during the latter months of 1941 [after two years of war in Europe], the Committee of Cultural Relations of Leningrad, the Library of the University of Kiel in Germany, and the British Council have all asked for information about activities and for books." In 1941, according to this report, the Commission sent "numerous collections of Argentine books" to ten universities in the United States and to numerous national and private libraries throughout the hemisphere.(9)
During those first five years of its existence the Commission distributed 100,000 copies of its weekly bibliographical bulletin "to the principal public and private libraries of America and Europe"; and sponsored exhibitions of Argentine books at Rome, Paris, Brussels, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago de Chile, and Lima, presenting ten thousand volumes to educational institutions in these countries.(10)
In a report bringing data current to May, 1944, the Commission of Intellectual Cooperation gave account of its own extensive program of book publishing, including translation into several languages for free distribution of notable works of Argentine literature.(11)
Besides gift collections of these and other volumes to institutions in many countries, the Commission has donated to museums special collections illustrative of Argentine arts and crafts---textiles, ceramics, and the like--- and has established a bureau for interscholastic correspondence among school children of the Americas.(12)
The Division of Foreign Information (Dirección de Informaciones al Exterior) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs publishes a handsomely printed "slick paper" monthly magazine, profusely illustrated, edited in three languages for distribution abroad: Informaciones Argentinas in Spanish, Informaçoes Argentinas in Portuguese, and Argentine News in English.
The Ministry's National Commission of Intellectual Cooperation publishes the weekly Boletín Bibliográfico Argentino mentioned above, which as the title indicates, gives Argentine book news, and ten thousand copies of which are distributed gratis to libraries and other cultural centers abroad, as well as in Argentina.(13)
In 1936, the year when the Commission of Intellectual Cooperation was created, the Argentine national holiday, May 25, was commemorated at Itamaraty Palace in Rio de Janeiro by the signing on the part of the Brazilian Foreign Minister and the Argentine Ambassador of several treaties and agreements for cultural and commercial interchange. Among these was an agreement---afterward enacted into law in each country---to establish in Brazil an annual governmental Prize of the Argentine Republic, with a cash award for the best book by a Brazilian writer on some of the contemporary "economic, social, political, artistic and military activities" of Argentina, and to establish in Argentina the corresponding Prize of the United States of Brazil for a book on Brazil by an Argentine writer.(14) Six years later, on September 9, 1944, the Argentine Chamber of Deputies, by a vote of 77 to 4, made the teaching of Portuguese mandatory in all Argentine secondary schools.
The Argentine book abroad is one of the major concerns of the Commission of Intellectual Cooperation with regard to both publicity and distribution. The Argentine Government has in several ways shown its interest in having Buenos Aires become the chief publishing center of Hispanic America, a position that it does in fact hold, in spite of rivalry from Santiago de Chile and Mexico City.
According to the report cited above, Argentine publishers put out 18,000,000 volumes in 1943. In the Argentine Copyright Office (Registro Nacional de Propiedad Intelectual) 4,923 works were registered during the year. This figure does not include previously published works issued in new editions, musical and choreographical publications, nor periodical publications, which conjointly amount to some 13,500 additional items. In 1934, the year in which the copyright office first functioned, only 509 works were registered. Comparative figures for the exportation of Argentine books are startling. In 1941, the total number exported to other countries was 7,160,000; in 1942, 10,675,000; and in 1943, 12,245,000. In the last-named year Mexico was the greatest importer of Argentine books, the figure being 3,310,000 volumes; Venezuela imported in that same year 1,685,000; Colombia, 1,668,000; Uruguay, 1,555,000; Peru, 885,000; Brazil 243,000; and the United States, 91,000.
During the years of war in Europe, Argentina's official cultural relations with Spain were made stronger than ever. This fact was emphasized by Foreign Minister Ruiz Guiñazú in 1942 on the "Day of the Race"---Columbus Day, October 12---by the broadcast of a message from Buenos Aires to Spain in which he said that the emancipation of the Spanish colonies was a political but by no means an ideological fact. "Hispano-Americanism of the future must be constructive, linked up with spiritual, historic, geographic and economic reality. This reality shall be cultivated not by words but by deeds."
In April, 1943 the Argentine and Spanish Governments made a convention of intellectual cooperation, to be channelled through five principal media: interchange of publications, books, and reviews; of motion picture films; and of professors; the establishment of reciprocal student scholarships; and the encouragement of tourism. A supplementary agreement to remove restrictions on the reciprocal free entry of books and other publications was signed at Buenos Aires September 7, 1943.
On July 15, 1945, the newly appointed Argentine Minister to Switzerland told the press at Berne that "The cultural ties between Argentina and Switzerland are strongly developed. There is a Swiss-Argentine Cultural Institute at Buenos Aires where it is this year hoped to organize an exhibition of Swiss books."(15)
During 1944 and 1945, as diplomatic tension between Argentina and the other American Republics was heightened, the Argentine program of cultural relations was greatly accelerated with these countries also, especially through the efforts of visiting professors, scientists, and artists under government sponsorship; appointment of more Cultural Relations Attachés to Argentine diplomatic missions; the establishment by the National Commission of Culture (Comisión Nacional de Cultura), a dependency of the Ministry of Justice and Public Instruction, of scholarships for students from other American Republics in specialized technical fields, as well as in literature and the arts. Numerous professional groups from the other republics were invited to visit Argentina as guests of the Government; Argentine cultural representatives were sent on tour through the rest of Hispanic America; and exhibitions of Argentine culture were held in neighboring capitals.
From January 1, 1945, to July 1, 1945, the cultural relations program of the Argentine Government included: in Ecuador, seven scholarships to Ecuadoran students and professional men for study at Argentine universities, and a contract for a series of lectures in Argentina by the President of the Ecuadoran Academy of History; in Chile, two scholarships for medical dietologists and two dietitians, an Argentine Cultural Exhibit at the Palace of Fine Arts at Santiago, May 18-June 10, 1945, which the Argentine Government publicized generously by paid advertising in the Chilean press and which was attended by 45,724 visitors, and a tour of Argentina by a group of Chilean journalists; in Bolivia, presentation to the "Argentina" Public School at La Paz of plaques, notebooks and other articles with symbolic decorations, cataloging by Argentine librarians of 20,000 volumes donated by the Argentine Government to the La Paz Municipal Library, exhibition at La Paz of woodcuts and engravings from the Superior School of Fine Arts at Buenos Aires, and award of a scholarship for graduate work in veterinary science; in Mexico, a scholarship for an educator to study in Argentina, and a tour of Mexican centers of colonial art by a distinguished Argentine sculptor, an official of the Ministry of Education. The foregoing list, far from complete, is exceedingly fragmentary, and merely suggests the activities carried on by Argentina in the field of cultural relations.
The 1945 report of the National Commission of Intellectual Cooperation emphasized the intensified program of cultural interchange with "institutions, universities, cultural institutes, writers and research workers" of the other American Republics and in so far as circumstances permitted with those of Europe. The report stated:
This continued activity which had been developing for years has contributed not only to dissemination of expressions of the country's mind and spirit, but also has been an important factor of friendly relationship through which we arrive at a better acquaintance with the countries composing the community of American nations.
The work of the Commission has not been confined to its links with those organisms abroad but has consisted as well of supplying the information requested daily by both teachers and students about topics of their special interest, and of sending out a constant stream of books, reports and informational material. The effectiveness of such work as this lies precisely in the contacts established, which form a veritable network of knowledge with which it is proposed to clear up all malicious propaganda or reports that sow international dislike or distrust.(16)
The report states that sizable collections of Argentine books on economics, finance, industry, and commerce were presented in 1945 to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Czechoslovakia; works on statistics, geography, ethnography, and indigenous problems to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Colombia; with a considerable further distribution to museums, libraries, and universities in Bolivia, Colombia, Great Britain, Spain, and the United States.
"The Commission has laid especial emphasis," the report continues, "on establishing relations with foreign universities, not only for presentation of books but also for interchange of persons. To that end an important delegation of law and medical students from the University of Sucre [Bolivia] was invited to visit Argentina, and for the same purpose, at instance of that University, Dr. Alberto Salinas Valdivieso was invited to study our university organization." The report lists also a Bolivian and a Peruvian visiting professorship in Argentina during the year, official visits from a Peruvian historian and a Venezuelan writer, research at the University of California by an Argentine specialist on metabolism, and an Exhibition of the North American Book held "on the initiative of the Commission and under its auspices." Of this exhibition the report comments that "A total of two hundred volumes, selected from among the 60,000 published during the past ten years, made up a fine portrayal of graphic arts in the United States. This Exhibition, always under our auspices, was shown at the Provincial Museum of Fine Arts, at Rosario, Santa Fé, and at the National University of Córdoba, with notable effect on artists and the public." In conclusion the report announces forthcoming publication for distribution at home and abroad of a work on Argentine contributions to science.
The chief of the official Argentine mission attending the inauguration of President Alemán of Mexico, interviewed en route by the Salvadoran daily, El Nacional (February 3, 1947) declared: "The Argentine book, the Argentine magazine, and the Argentine newspaper, are as good as, if not better than, those coming to us from Europe. All these Argentine books and periodicals are distributed throughout the American continent, and thus contribute to that dissemination of culture and knowledge so necessary in this epoch of moral uncertainty."
Bulletin 228 of the Department of Culture of the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs (January 24, 1947), setting forth the duties of Cultural Attachés of Argentine Embassies, emphasizes their "highly important mission of making widely known the fundamentals of the new point of view predominant in Argentina," and, conversely, of "familiarizing themselves with tendencies and points of view of the countries where they are accredited." "The typical propositions of occidental and Christian culture," continues the Bulletin, "to which by its origin, tradition, and history our country belongs, will be greatly benefited by the work of the Cultural Attachés, exponents of the age-old heritage of ideals, beliefs, and values that has contributed most to the grandeur of mankind. To find the apt point of understanding and mutual appreciation between this culture and that belonging to other peoples will be the further task of the new diplomatic officials, for our country has ever been characterized as much by an almost mystic respect for the ways of life of other peoples, as by a jealous defense of its own."
BEFORE establishment of the Republic, Brazil's cultural program abroad was motivated largely by the desire to import to the New World the refinements and graces of the Old. Results were sometimes speedy and epochal, as when the colonial Brazilian art as such ended and modern Brazilian art began in consequence of the school of French artists brought to Rio de Janeiro in 1816, among them Taunay, Lebreton, and Debret, to teach and work in Brazil.(17)
In our own day, the Brazilian cultural program with other countries gives much more emphasis to the export of Brazilian than to the import of foreign culture, though not neglecting the latter; and while intensely Brazilian, republican, and American, it is like the Portuguese program of cultural relations abroad in that it stems largely from intense nationalistic pride in the Portuguese language and in the literature written in that language. Foreigners who can read Portuguese are few in comparison with those who read English, French, German, or Spanish; and this fact has given direction to the international cultural relations of Brazil as well as of Portugal. Both countries place high importance on the teaching of Portuguese in other countries.
In 1943, for example, the Division of Intellectual Cooperation of the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, amplifying the then seven-year-old Cultural Convention between Brazil and Argentina, established in cooperation with Argentine authorities and with the branch Institute at Rosario of the Argentine-Brazilian Cultural Institute (Instituto Argentino-Brasileiro de Cultura) free Portuguese language classes, with a Brazilian teacher, at the Normal School at Rosario. The popularity of these classes, which enrolled four hundred students, led the Brazilian Division of Intellectual Cooperation to establish also in the same year courses on Brazilian literature and the history of Brazil. Prizes awarded in the classes were distributed at the close of the school year by the Minister Graça Aranha, Chief of the Division of Intellectual Cooperation.(18)
The Brazilian cultural centers organized in other countries invariably give first importance to the teaching of Portuguese. For example, in May, 1945 the Minister of Brazil in Guatemala, after conferring with the Guatemalan Ministers of Foreign Affairs and of Education, concluded arrangements for establishing a Brazilian cultural institute, its chief function to offer classes in Portuguese without charge; the Guatemalan Ministry of Education providing the classroom, and the Commercial Attaché of the Brazilian Legation conducting the classes.(19)
The Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs through its Division of Intellectual Cooperation, and the Ministry of Education through various commissions and through the National Institute of the Book (Instituto Nacional do Livro), sponsor also the publication and distribution of Brazilian books translated into other languages as well as in the original texts and likewise assist in preparation and distribution of foreign works in Portuguese translation. In 1936, to cite one of many instances, the Commission on the Theatre, in the Ministry of Education, began publication of Portuguese versions of what an eminent group of Brazilian men of letters had chosen as the twenty greatest plays "of all times and all countries," the first volume published in the series being a translation into Portuguese, commissioned for the purpose, of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.(20) The publication program of the Ministry of Education embraces also such works as an anthology of Argentine authors (Colecão brasileira de autores argentinos) ; six volumes by Mexican authors on the history and civilization of their country, the latter a reciprocal gesture for publication by the Mexican Ministry of Education of six Brazilian works.(21) An anthology of short stories, old and new, from the United States was distributed in part by the Brazilian Government in 1946: Os Norte-Americanos Autigos e Modernos (Cía. Editore Leitura, Rio de Janeiro, 1945).
The National Institute of the Book, established in 1941, during the first four years of its existence distributed upward of 350,000 volumes to libraries and other cultural centers at home and abroad.(22)
The Treaty of Culture signed at Itamaraty Palace between Brazil and Panama on March 6, 1944, follows the line of a number of recent cultural agreements entered into by Brazil with neighbor republics. Consisting of thirteen articles, it provides for the facilitation of student and professor exchanges and the validation in either country of diplomas and degrees earned in the other. That is to say, the Treaty breaks down a number of existent formalistic and legalistic barriers to a free educational and cultural interchange between the two countries. It further provides for establishment in each capital of a permanent agency to foment and encourage cultural relations and makes provision also for the setting up in the national libraries at Rio de Janeiro and Panama City of a Panamanian and a Brazilian section, respectively.(23) A similar treaty-according to the Canadian Ambassador's remarks on signing it, the first cultural treaty of Canada with any nation-was signed on May 24, 1944 at Itamaraty.(24) It provided (1) for the exchange of governmental and botanical publications, both books and periodicals, and (2) for encouragement of and arrangements for art exhibitions, concerts, lectures, motion pictures, and radio programs, and all other cultural interchange of that nature between Brazil and Canada.
During the first six months of 1945 the Brazilian Government granted numerous scholarships to citizens of other American Republics for study in Brazil in the fields of tropical medicine, mining engineering, architecture, electrotechniques, industrial chemistry, public administration, nursing, and agronomy. A number of scholarship grants were made also to army officers of neighboring countries, and in 1944 and 1945 invitations extended by the Brazilian Government for journalists' tours of Brazil were accepted by press representatives from all sections of the Americas.
Gazeta de Noticias, a leading daily of Rio de Janeiro, summarized the benefits of the cultural relations program in an editorial that concluded:
In truth, this great movement for better mutual understanding among the cultures of the American peoples, promoted by the decided support of the Governments, has as its objective the will for a better world: an objective which, we believe, could never be attained through mere interplay of commercial interests and reciprocal material relations if these, on both sides, were not supported and upheld by that stronger and more enduring foundation that may well be called the spiritual value.(25)
Decree No. 12,343 of May 5, 1943 assigns the following responsibilities to the Division of Intellectual Cooperation of the Foreign Office: The study of questions of intellectual cooperation, especially those relating to literary, artistic, and scientific interchange between Brazil and foreign countries; representation of the Foreign Office, in the person of the Chief of the Division, on the Brazilian Commission of Intellectual Cooperation; gathering data and information relating to Brazilian culture, for publicizing it abroad; increasing the intellectual interchange with foreign cultural centers; arrangement of international acts on matters relating to cultural cooperation; preparation of explanatory material concerning the purpose of these acts, and attention to measures that would make them effective; organization of lists of Brazilian intellectuals and of Brazilian cultural associations, and of like institutes abroad that interest themselves in Brazilian affairs; organization of collections of Brazilian books for presentation to foreign universities and cultural institutes; interchange of professors and students of Brazilian universities and other teaching centers with those in foreign countries; creation and award of scholarship grants; the organization of conferences of a cultural character to be held at Itamaraty Palace; and publicity about the intellectual movement between Brazil and foreign countries.(26)
The President of Brazil, in accordance with the terms of the Convention of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, issued a decree on June 13, 1946 creating a Brazil Institute of Education, Science, and Culture, with a director and counselor to be elected for a general assembly composed of twenty delegates from the Government and from other educational, scientific, and cultural groups.
THE Mexican program of cultural relations with other countries is primarily an affirmation of Mexican personality. In art, music, literature, education, and social legislation alike the Mexican stamp is characteristic, distinctive, at every point a profoundly conscious fusion of indigenous and transoceanic elements into something new, something Mexican.
After the 1917 Revolution, the first objective of the Government's cultural program---still one of its main objectives ---was to give the masses of the Mexican people themselves an intensified awareness of their own culture and its historic implications. The emphasis was and is as much on the Indian elements as on the Hispanic.
While the Mexican intellectual has traditionally looked to Paris as the City of Light, the official international cultural program of Mexico has been carried on most extensively with the other Hispanic American Republics. While always emphasizing the national characteristics of Mexican culture, it at first stressed particularly also those things held in common as Ibero American. With the outbreak of the Second World War, the stress bore rather on what is American, held in common with the other Americas. The President's annual report to the Mexican Congress for 1922-24 included the following statement:
The Department of Publicity [Departamento de Publicidad] composed of the Sections of Publications, Press and Information, and the Photographic Studio, replace the old and deficient Section of Information and Publicity and effort will be made to endow it with the means it needs for carrying out the plans of the Executive in extending and strongly intensifying knowledge of Mexico abroad. This Department, soon to be strengthened by a printing press, has begun its work by resuming publication of the Bulletin of the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs and sending to our Consulates and Legations copious information that enables them to keep in touch with the national life and to give exact and timely answers to inquirers. Daily bulletins by mail and cable, in different languages, with the legal dispositions---among other news items---from the Government's different dependencies; maps and official publications; magazines; books by Mexican authors or books about Mexico that show political, economic or cultural progress: all these are sent the Consulates and Legations not, only for their own information but also for distribution to libraries, universities, societies, and interested individuals, as are likewise photographs and motion picture films portraying the national scene.
With regard to the important functions entrusted to this Department, I take satisfaction in pointing out the favorable change of attitude toward Mexico latterly to be noted in the foreign press---above all, in the United States which in this respect has always served as the most abundant source of world news---and the wholesome effects of the Executive's recent prohibition of the entry into the country of pictures produced abroad which persist in their baleful intent of blackening the good name of Mexico by presenting its citizens as evildoers of the worst type and the country itself as uncouth and uncivilized.(27)
The presidential report on the fiscal year 1924-25 chalked up progress in the following terms:
The Department of Publicity, encharged with furthering and giving orientation to the efforts of our consular and diplomatic services in creating abroad a just concept of our country, have been increasing by every means at their command the widespread flow of information that will take the truth about Mexico to every quarter. At the same time, through an efficient interchange of news and data, it has been possible to ascertain what are the places most in need of ample information correcting erroneous views spread in foreign countries through ignorance or malice.
By a system of concentration of official informative material, during the year covered by this report [July 1, 1923-June 30, 1924] 230,000 packages have been sent out containing books, pamphlets, newspapers, etc.
Furthermore, for the purpose of distributing them to the public, to libraries, to scientific and literary societies, universities, etc. principally in foreign countries, special publications have been printed, historical, bibliographical, and informative as regards the resources and development of Mexico with emphasis on industrial and mercantile opportunities and the laws guaranteeing their prosperity.
In order to achieve daily contact with our foreign service, 300,000 words have been cabled and two series of bulletins issued, some for special purposes and others periodical in character.
With the cooperation of the Ministry of Education and of the philanthrophic and mutual aid centers organized by Mexicans abroad, ample publicity has been initiated, among numerous fellow-citizens, principally in the United States, to keep the homeland fresh in their minds. These efforts take many diverse forms, and the results can be seen, so that they will be intensified as the condition of the Exchequer permits.
The several publications of the Ministry have been issued regularly. Among these, the Mexican Diplomatic Historic Archive ---Archivo Histórico Diplomático Mexicano---has already published fifteen important volumes. This work has been amplified, in accordance with the power vested in my office, by publication of a series of Mexican bibliographical monographs that will serve to make known abroad the importance of and the sources of research for our cultural production. Similarly, editions are being made of works that contain the most important information about our country and can therefore serve as basis for adequate acquaintance with Mexico on the part of other countries.(28)
At the present time, Mexican "cultural embassies" are almost continually on tour throughout the Americas, acquainting all peoples of the hemisphere with the Mexican way of life and with Mexican achievement in the arts and the sciences. The Mexican Government also issues and distributes around the globe periodicals, pamphlets, and books as progress reports on Mexican accomplishment. The Ministry of Education, for example, in 1944 inaugurated publication of a series of Hispanic American classics, in editions of 25,000, twenty thousand copies of each title for gratuitous distribution at home and abroad, and the remaining 5,000 for sale at a nominal sum. In 1941 the International Press Service Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs began publishing a series of cultural pamphlets. President Avila Camacho, Foreign Minister Padilla, Minister of Education (at this writing, Foreign Minister) Torres Bodet, and, from across the Rio Grande, Henry Wallace, at that time Vice President, were among the first authors represented in the series.
Contributory to this program also is the work of the Mexican Commission of Intellectual Cooperation, which, though inaugurated as an affiliate to the Commission of the same name of the League of Nations and to the Institute of Intellectual Cooperation at Paris, has functioned from the first under the Ministry of Education of Mexico. The bulletin on Comisión Mexicana de Cooperación Intelectual: Organización y Trabajo, published in Mexico City in 1937 under imprint of the Ministry of Education, states specifically that since its creation in 1931, the Mexican Commission of Intellectual Cooperation has been supported solely by funds assigned to it by the Mexican Government. The fundamental purpose of the Mexican Commission is "both national and international in character," being "to coordinate the diverse intellectual manifestations of the Mexican medium with similar activities abroad in order to obtain the utmost progress in science and art."
The scope of the Mexican Government's program of cultural relations is indicated by an examination of that part of it which deals with art. Mexico was the first American Government to send a loan exhibition of the national art on tour throughout the United States; a precedent established in 1936 with the travelling Exhibition of Contemporary Mexican Art, which included both painting and sculpture.(29) In 1941, when the Mexican people donated a public school building to the town of Chillán, Chile, whose own school had been destroyed by an earthquake, the Mexican Government sent David Alfaro Siqueiros to decorate the building with appropriate murals.(30) In a press interview at Bogotá in 1944 the Mexican Ambassador announced the gift by the Mexican Government to Colombia of a fresco to be painted by Clemente Orozco.(31) In 1945 President Avila Camacho commissioned a statue of the Mexican patriot José Maria Morelos, to be erected in a public plaza at Caracas, Venezuela.(32)
The attitude of Mexico, the Caracas daily El Heraldo had commented some time previously, "reminds our Government of the fact that culture is the only lasting bond of unity."(33)
The diversity of the "cultural embassies" sent out by the Mexican Government is shown by three that toured Central and South America simultaneously, but separately, in 1944: Gonzalo Salud Garudo, agricultural technician, visitor to experimental stations, model farms and agricultural schools;(34) General Juan F. Azcárate, aeronautical engineer, graduate of New York University, former Chief of Military Aviation in the Mexican Army, and Minister to Germany who had suffered internment at the beginning of the war; (35) and Mercedes Caraza, Mexican soprano. "Sponsored by President Avila Camacho and the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Education, Defense and the Navy," Señorita Caraza inaugurated her series of concerts in each capital with a special concert honoring the President of the country, in the name of the President of Mexico and under auspices of the Mexican Embassy.(36)
El Tiempo, a leading newspaper of Montevideo, Uruguay, reckoned up editorially the value of this aspect of the Mexican cultural program in the following terms:
The Government of the United States of Mexico . . . has decided to send to all the countries of America cultural embassies that reflect under innumerable aspects the great nation north of us. Thus, educational experts . . . painters, and plastic artists . . . poets and essayists . . actors in motion pictures and from the Mexican national theatre . . . men of science and research workers . . . all go out in every direction to the twenty sister Republics, revealing the Mexico of today . . . . The Cuban Government is taking the same attitude . . . . Dr. Grau San Martin . . . declared a week ago in Philadelphia that his international policy would be to intensify the sending out of intellectual embassies to make Cuba better known abroad . . . . America needs to know America. The desire must be made reality.(37)
In an interview given the New York Times in March, 1944, Francisco Serraño Méndez, Coordinator of Artistic Affairs for the Mexican Government, explained the project of that Government, through the Ministry of Education, of developing "a vast interchange of artists." "We hope," Señor Serraño Méndez said, "that the program will stimulate native talent as well as bring culture of an international character to our people."(38) The program for this particular project, as financed by the Mexican Government, included arrangements with Leopold Stokowski to direct the Mexican Symphony Orchestra in a series of eight concerts; with Leonid Massine to direct the Mexican National School of Dancing, including production of a native ballet; and for reciprocal appearances of Mexican and United States opera singers, ballet dancers, and actors. The program had been initiated earlier in 1944 by the French actor, Louis Jumet, with a group of plays, and the Russian pianist, George Chavchavadze, with a series of concerts.(39)
The Mexican Government is liberal in awards of scholarships to students from other American Republics and, as has been indicated, is no less liberal in distribution of books and periodicals. Among regularly issued publications sent "free upon request" are the monthly news bulletin of the Foreign Office, published in English as Mexico News and in Spanish as Noticias de México; a fortnightly bulletin of "information for abroad," also issued by the Foreign Office, Desde México; and El Maestro Mexicano, an illustrated monthly published by the Ministry of Education.
Typical of the cultural agreements that Mexico is making with other American Republics is the Mexican-Venezuelan Cultural Convention signed at the Ministry of Foreign Relations in Mexico on July 25, 1946, by the Mexican Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Chargé of the Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Convention contains the following articles:
ARTICLE I. The High Contracting Parties will favor and aid the transfer from one to the other country of duly qualified intellectuals whose travels have as their object some cultural or scientific mission.
ARTICLE II. Each High Contracting Party will consider the possibility of establishing the number of scholarships which it may judge convenient in favor of its nationals, so that they may study or perfect their studies in the educational Institutes and Organisms of specialization of the Party.
The respective travel expenses will be the affair of the Party which designates the scholarship holders referred to in the present Article.
ARTICLE III. It is understood that the advantages stipulated in the preceding Article will favor exclusively those students who have by birth the nationality of the High Contracting Parties.
ARTICLE IV. The Government of Mexico will proceed to create a section of Venezuelan books in the Library which to this end may be chosen by the Ministry of Public Education of Mexico. The Government of Venezuela will create in the National Library of Caracas an analogous special section for Mexican books.
ARTICLE V. The High Contracting Parties will favor the exchange of works of the respective national authors and will provide the necessary means to hold periodical expositions of books of both countries.
ARTICLE VI. The High Contracting Parties will stimulate the exchange of publications and documents capable of contributing to the better information of their investigators and their teachers, and each one of them will exert itself so that in its schools due attention will be given to reciprocal knowledge of history, of national heroes, and of the most representative values in the field of sciences, arts and letters.
ARTICLE VII. The High Contracting Parties will further, under the conditions which may be agreed upon in each case, the exchange of reproductions of those objects or documents which exist in their Museums and which offer special interest for one of them.
ARTICLE VIII. The High Contracting Parties will favor the exchange of informational films on the cultural, economic and social evolution of both countries, and through their Ministries of Education will distribute in their scholastic establishments those which, in their judgment, can serve in the most effective manner the better understanding of the two peoples.
The Summer School of the National University of Mexico was established in 1920 "to offer foreigners an opportunity to study the language, history, art and social conditions of Mexico." The state universities of Michigan, New Mexico, and Texas, with cooperation of the Department of State of the United States, in 1945 inaugurated a "Field School in collaboration with the School of Philosophy and Letters and the Summer School for Foreign Students of the University of Mexico."(40)
El Colegio de México, an educational foundation of international cultural significance, is carried on as a cooperative undertaking of the Mexican Government, the National University of Mexico, the Bank of Mexico, the non-profit publishing house Fondo de Cultura Económica, and La Casa de España. La Casa de España was organized as a private agency in 1938 to assist refugee Spanish Republican intellectuals. It received an annual subsidy from the Mexican Government of 300,000 pesos, and considerable funds from private sources, and with its developing influence and prestige its program of research, translation, and publication expanded steadily. Writers, educators, and scholars, both Mexican and foreign-born---the latter usually, though not always, Spanish---are given fellowships or grants-in-aid for research; professorships and lectureships are established; and works of literary and scientific merit published. The cooperating agencies are represented in the policy-making body of El Colegio de México, a yearly assembly. The director of the Colegio is Alfonso Reyes, diplomat and author who has long been recognized internationally as pre-eminent in Hispanic American letters.(41)
Democracy's ancient dream of cooperation among peoples, Reyes has said, cannot be achieved haphazardly---"Chance is our enemy"---but must be calculated and organized, not according to a rigid blueprint but in accordance with "a flexible plan . . inspired at once in historic experience, scientific realities, and also in the realities of human feeling. . . . The work of culture consists in delving and canalizing the earth for the common good. Hence culture is, in essence, cooperative coordination: bridges and tunnels, highways, means of locomotion, as well as the sharing and the distribution of economic or intellectual fruits."(42)