In the 1940s the cultural, social, and political project of the journal Cuadernos Americanos was created. Iberoamerican intellectuals aligned with anti-imperialist ideas and intellectual commitment gathered with the publication\u2019s director, Mexican economist Jes\u00fas Silva Herzog. Beginning with Cuaderno\u2019s first issues, the viability of the Mexican Revolution was deliberated, where the mistakes and distortions of the process, as well as the need for more radical measures to be undertaken, were discussed. These reflections were catalized by the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, as it presented various possible guidelines for the revival of its Mexican counterpart, or at least for it to come under more severe criticism from the anti-imperialist point of view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Keywords: anti-imperialism<\/a>, intellectual engagement<\/a>, Cuadernos Americanos<\/a>, Cuban Revolution<\/a>, Mexican Revolution<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n present and preterite<\/span><\/em>: anti-imperialist critiques of the mexican<\/span> revolution from the iberoamerican viewpoint of <\/span>american notebooks<\/span><\/em> amid the triumph of the cuban revolution in 1959 <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n In the 1940s the cultural, social, and political project of the journal Cuadernos Americanos was created. Iberoamerican intellectuals aligned with anti-imperialist ideas and intellectual commitment gathered with the publication's director, Mexican economist Jes\u00fas Silva Herzog. Beginning with Cuaderno's first issues, the viability of the Mexican Revolution was deliberated, where the mistakes and distortions of the process, as well as the need for more radical measures to be undertaken, were discussed. These reflections were catalyzed by the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, as it presented various possible guidelines for the revival of its Mexican counterpart, or at least for it to come under more severe criticism from the anti-imperialist point of view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Keywords: Cuadernos Americanos<\/em>, anti-imperialism, anti-imperialism, Mexican Revolution, Cuban Revolution, intellectual commitment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During the first half of the 20th century, traveling to Paris was a sort of initiation rite for writers from the American continent. Most of the Mexican intellectuals active in those years were in Europe at least once in their lives, some even fulfilled diplomatic tasks or attended cultural or artistic meetings. Such was the case of Alfonso Reyes, who in his respective European incursion of 1914 also passed through Spain, where he established close ties with characters such as Marcelino Men\u00e9ndez Pelayo, Jos\u00e9 Ortega y Gasset, Ram\u00f3n del Valle Incl\u00e1n and Ram\u00f3n G\u00f3mez de la Serna, especially from the contacts referred to by his great friend, the Dominican writer Pedro Henr\u00edquez Ure\u00f1a (Weinberg, 2014). Therefore, when the Spanish transterrados arrived in Mexico in the context of the Spanish Civil War, some already had contact with Mexican intellectuals such as Reyes and others took advantage of this previous ground to insert themselves in the spaces of confluence and exchange of cultural initiatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As economist Jes\u00fas Silva Herzog recalled, it was in February 1941 when Spanish writers Le\u00f3n Felipe and Juan Larrea, together with Mexican journalist Bernardo Ortiz de Montellano -who acted as liaison between the two parties- went to visit him to explain their intentions to resume publication of the magazine Pilgrim Spaina<\/em>, an outlet for the expression of the Spanish republicans, now from Mexico (Silva Herzog, 1972: 246). The following day, Silva Herzog met with them again and proposed \"the adventure of creating a new magazine of continental scope\". The name of Cuadernos Americanos<\/em> was suggested by Alfonso Reyes himself. To finance it, Silva Herzog activated the networks of his personal contacts, asking for small individual contributions, and so finally a trust contract was signed that \"would last 30 years, with the assets that existed passing later to the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)\" (Silva Herzog, 1972: 247).<\/p>\n\n\n\n An alternative version of this story is that of the trans-terrestrial Spaniard Juan Larrea, who would later become the magazine's secretary. In his narration, the idea of \"the creation of a great magazine, the most important magazine in the Spanish language that, at that moment when Europe was burning on all four sides, would be the product of the close creative collaboration of Spanish Americans and Spaniards, with a view to preparing the advent of a more universal, more human culture [...]\" (Gonz\u00e1lez Neira, 2009: 11-30), was thought of by the Spaniards themselves and not by Silva Herzog or Reyes. In addition, Larrea incorporated another variation: the request for economic support for the publication of said magazine to the government of President Manuel \u00c1vila Camacho, who governed the country between 1940 and 1946, although he did not present evidence to prove that this had been the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As researcher Liliana Weinberg points out, the \"governing board\" was the result of the confluence of different networks in its formation. It was made up of Pedro Bosch Gimpera, archeologist, historian and former rector of the University of Barcelona; Daniel Cos\u00edo Villegas, then general director of the Fondo de Cultura Econ\u00f3mica; Mario de la Cueva, university professor specializing in labor law and constitutional law, as well as the rector of unam<\/span>; Eugenio \u00cdmaz, philosopher in exile, professor at the same university and translator; Juan Larrea, writer, editor and former secretary of the National Historical Archive of Madrid; Manuel M\u00e1rquez, academic and former dean of the University of Madrid; Manuel Mart\u00ednez B\u00e1ez, specialist in public health and then president of the Academy of Medicine of Mexico; Agust\u00edn Millares Carlo, paleographer and Latinist, former professor and secretary of the University of Madrid, integrated in 1939 as academic at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Madrid; Agust\u00edn Millares Carlo, former professor and secretary of the University of Madrid, integrated in 1939 as academic at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of unam<\/span>; Bernardo Ortiz de Montellano, Mexican journalist and writer who served as a liaison with other figures linked to the Ministry of Public Education and literary magazines such as Contempor\u00e1neos<\/em> and El hijo pr\u00f3digo<\/em>; Alfonso Reyes, then president of El Colegio de M\u00e9xico, and Jes\u00fas Silva Herzog, director-manager of the new publication and also director of the National School of Economics (Weinberg, 2014).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The curious thing is that in spite of the constant insistence on the contact between the Hispanic and the American, that is to say, the \"Ibero-American\", in the end the proposal was made to emphasize the \"American\" in the title of the magazine. It seems that this has a political explanation and Liliana Weinberg details it in terms of underpinning the rapprochement and alliance between Mexico and the United States, which fit within the \"American\", but not in the \"Ibero-American\". In the context of the alliance of \"the two Americas\" against Nazism, fascism and Franco's regime1<\/a> (Weinberg, 2014), Reyes also stressed the urgency of the formation of an \"American\" culture, inasmuch as \"the knowledge of our world system is not even a mere political convenience of the moment, to reach the laudable and indispensable friendship of the Americas and the single front of culture. We are an integral and necessary part in the representation of man by man\" (Reyes, 1942: 9-10). In addition, he placed the magazine in a tradition shared with other Central and South American cultural projects of his predecessors, especially Repertorio Americano<\/em> by Costa Rican Joaqu\u00edn Garc\u00eda Monge (Weinberg, 2014).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The launch of the first issue of Cuadernos Americanos<\/em>, corresponding to January-February 1942, was celebrated with a dinner on December 29, 1941 at the Spanish-owned Prendes restaurant, located on the south corner of the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. From this first meeting onwards, an annual meeting was instituted, in which the circles of collaborators and sponsors of the magazine came together as a way of reaffirming alliances (Silva Herzog, 1972: 248).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The format of Cuadernos Americanos <\/em>was half tabloid (16 x 23 cm) and about two hundred pages on average, i.e., close to the format of a book, and had cardboard covers printed in color. Among its distinctive features were the characteristic colored \"waves\" on its cover, which referred to the Atlantic Ocean that communicated the Iberian Peninsula with the American continent. The material resources of the magazine allowed it to have large print runs since its foundation, which, between 1959 and 1961, reached, every two months, around two thousand copies and maintained a price of 15 pesos. Its main sections at that time were the following: \"Nuestro tiempo\", in which reflections were made on contemporary political, social or economic issues; \"Hombres de nuestra estirpe\", in which each issue paid biographical tribute to an Ibero-American author; \"Aventura del pensamiento\", with an essayistic vocation; \"Presencia del pasado\", in which historical reflections were presented; and \"Dimensi\u00f3n imaginaria\", dedicated to texts or reflections related to the literary world. In each of them, at different times, aspects related to the triumph of the Cuban Revolution and the consequent anti-imperialist criticism of the Mexican Revolution were discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jes\u00fas Silva Herzog, \"a man of the left\" in his own words, liked to say: \"every year that passes I am more of the left\" and sometimes complained: \"what angers me most about being called 'rojillo' is the diminutive; rojo should be said\" (Carmona, 1991: 233). His almost total blindness, to a great extent derived from the silver nitrate with which his eyes were burned as a disastrous wrong treatment for pus on his third day of life, was not an obstacle for him to occupy diverse positions and responsibilities. Silva Herzog was in charge of the direction of institutions, diplomatic representations, chairs, and was the author of a large number of books, even without having finished high school or having a university career in the traditional sense (Naufal Tuena, 2001: 173). He had little need for institutional validation, thanks to his own determination and to a circle of people who acted around him as readers aloud, transcribers and a long list of supportive friends and disciples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of Silva Herzog's first approaches to leftist thought was when the Facultad de Altos Estudios de la Universidad Nacional received him between 1920 and 1923 to study, among other classes, three years of Political Economy with the German professor Alfonso Goldschmidt (Silva Herzog, 1972: 65-66).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The German economist had been invited by Mexican philosopher Jos\u00e9 Vasconcelos -the University's rector between 1920 and 1921- to teach in Mexico. Goldschmidt had been educated at the University of Leipzig in Germany, he was among the founders of the German Communist Party and during his stay in the country he was a militant in the Mexican Communist Party. It would seem that Goldschmidt was \"the first to introduce Marxism into the Mexican academic milieu\" (De Pablo, 2018: 210). Precisely, this was what attracted Silva Herzog to his professor of Economics, since \"[...] in his lessons he expounded Marx's economic theories\", starting with Capital<\/em>, text still somewhat inaccessible in Spanish in those days, since the complete translation of the book was made by the Spanish exile Wenceslao Roces two decades later (Marx, 1946), although not without some errors (Silva Herzog, 1980: 166).2<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The disciplinary transition from literature to economics in Silva Herzog's education had an important influence in Alfonso Goldschmidt. A clear example of this influence was when the economist from Potos\u00ed began to teach political economy and sociology in the new premises of the National School of Agriculture in Chapingo in 1924 (Silva Herzog, 1972: 79). In his classes he took up several of the readings recommended by his German teacher, among them Goldschmidt himself, Charles Gide, Andr\u00e9s Molina Enr\u00edquez, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his back-and-forth between service in public administration and academia, another of the great constants in Silva Herzog's life was his interest in the transnational and the search to nurture links with people from diverse backgrounds, as he would also do in Cuadernos Americanos<\/em>. For example, when in 1928 he was appointed head of the Department of Library and Economic Archives of the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit to direct what would become Mexico's first economic library, he summoned a plethora of foreigners. Among them the Spaniards Monserrat (Monna) Teixidor and the bibliographer Francisco Gamoneda, the Peruvian economist Carlos Manuel Cox and the Bolivian writer Trist\u00e1n Marof, \"the ill-wishers called the department 'The league of nations'\" (Silva Herzog, 1972: 86).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Consistent with his curiosity for other regions of the world and Marxist thought, Silva Herzog had frequented the representation of the Soviet Union in Mexico since the mid 1920s. After having been in contact with various people close to this office, in December 1928, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Genaro Estrada, offered Silva Herzog, on behalf of President Emilio Portes Gil, the Mexican legation in Moscow (Gonz\u00e1lez Casanova, 1985: 24). After his disappointment with his experiences in the ussr<\/span> and the rupture of diplomatic relations by the Mexican government, Silva Herzog returned to Mexico in 1930.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Upon his return, the economist combined his academic work with advising the government of General L\u00e1zaro C\u00e1rdenas on oil issues in 1937. By this time, Spanish exiles were beginning to arrive in Mexico and in his intellectual development, between public service and academia, Jes\u00fas Silva Herzog began to have contact with several of them. Probably what attracted the economist was the opportunity to build a cultural and political project even bigger than those in which he had been able to participate up to that moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Along with Iberoamericanism, the other major guiding principle of Cuadernos <\/em>was that of intellectual commitment to the critique of the social and economic reality of the world. This approach was clear from the first bimonthly issue (January-February) of the magazine, which went public in January 1942. In that issue, Silva Herzog published the article \"Lo humano, problema esencial\" in which he stated that \"it cannot be denied that capitalism was a creative regime, but in the past perfect tense and not in the present\" (Silva Herzog, 1942: 11) and added that \"since the end of the last century capitalism ceased to be an instigation to progress\". In this type of affirmations, Silva Herzog's training in Marxist thought could be glimpsed; even if, in cases such as this, they were somewhat schematic fragments. The economist also showed his anti-imperialist conscience in his criticism of the Soviet Union -the country in which he represented Mexico at the end of the 1920s-: \"[...] the success of that socialist regime cannot be denied; but it has cost immense sacrifices, cruelty and inevitable errors have not been scarce and it is still far from definitive victory\" (Silva Herzog, 1942: 14).<\/p>\n\n\n\n These criticisms, both of the capitalist system and of the socialism of the Soviet Union, came at a crucial moment during World War II. As early as mid-1941, the ussr<\/span> had begun to participate on the side of the Allies, and in December the United States had done the same. This agreement placed the presumed antagonists on the same side, with a common enemy: fascism and the Axis powers. As mentioned, the suggestion of naming \"Americans\" to the Cuadernos<\/em> was a notion of rapprochement between \"the two Americas\" (the Anglo-Saxon and the Ibero-American). Silva Herzog (1942), on the other hand, took it to the terrain of Latin Americanism, over and above convergence with the North American country:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this hour in which ruin and desolation threaten to invade everything, it is necessary that a saving cry be heard whose echo crosses the seas and is repeated from mountain to mountain. This cry cannot be launched by tortured Europe, nor perhaps even by the United States because it would be muffled by the imperative voices of financiers; it must come from American throats, from our America, from \"la Am\u00e9rica Nuestra <\/em>-as Dar\u00edo said-. that had poets since the old days of Nezahualc\u00f3yotl<\/em> [...] The supreme ideal lies in the birth of the superman from man. Science and art must aspire to that unlimited purpose (Silva Herzog, 1942:12-15).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The work of Cuadernos Americanos<\/em> was thus clearly established from the first publication made by its director. The \"Revista del Nuevo Mundo\", as it was announced, had the principle of influencing the concrete reality through \"science and art\" from America (Hispanic\/Latin America), since it was the last redoubt of humanity. In addition, it assigned to the region the capacity to promote the birth of the \"superman\" and to Cuadernos <\/em>that of being the guide to carry it out. Silva Herzog's article concluded with the proposal that, in the face of capitalist failure and the errors of socialism, it was necessary to generate a new anti-imperialist alternative: \"to the pan-Americanism of the United States it was necessary to oppose Ibero-Americanism [...]\" (Naufal Tuena, 2001: 175), in order to \"update Bolivar's dream and for the first time decisively influence the drama of universal history\" (Silva Herzog, 1942: 16).<\/p>\n\n\n\n This first article brought together, in addition to two basic elements of Jes\u00fas Silva Herzog's thought such as Ibero-Americanism and intellectual commitment to reality, the approach that established that ideas were the binding force for those who participated in Cuadernos Americanos<\/em>. In short, it was an exhortation to militancy through writing for Ibero-American intellectuals, both trans- and Latin American.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An anti-imperialist connotation was added to \"Ibero-Americanism\", by posing it as an opposition to the \"Pan-Americanism of the United States\". This idea contrasted significantly with the initial consideration of Cuadernos Americanos<\/em> as a union of Latin America with the \"other\", the Anglo-Saxon, and incidentally allowed to question the notion that the \"intellectual cold war\" was exclusively a post-war phenomenon. As is evident here, even when Reyes promoted the meeting of \"the Americas\", Silva Herzog maintained his discourse close to the Latin American left at that time.3<\/a> This did not imply a rupture in the editorial board, far from it. For the economist from Potos\u00ed, cultural diplomacy meant, for him, the possibility of maintaining alliances that would allow him, among other things, to continue promoting projects, to express some of his ideas freely and to remain close to the circles of power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through collaborations, invitations, discussions, encounters and slogans, Silva Herzog structured in Cuadernos<\/em> a network of exchanges, connections, trips, friends, presentations and epistolary dialogues with a great diversity of intellectuals. Of particular relevance were the \"leftist\" Cubans, which would help to explain the great enthusiasm that the director of Cuadernos<\/em> the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of those Cuban friends was the Cuban anthropologist and historian Fernando Ortiz Fern\u00e1ndez who, due to the importance of his studies on Cuban culture, had been called by Juan Marinello \"The third discoverer of Cuba\", after Christopher Columbus and Alexander von Humboldt (Barnet, 2009: 199-203). Ortiz addressed a letter to Silva Herzog in the last days of December 1943 in which he commented on how much he had been impressed by his article on the Mexican Revolution published in the previous issue of Cuadernos Americanos<\/em>: \"The Mexican Revolution in crisis\" (Ortiz, 1981: 254). This comment was relevant because it showed the interest of the island's intellectuals in the transformation process in Mexico. Later, Mexican intellectuals would turn to the Cuban Revolution and would turn it into one of their references to criticize their country's revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Silva Herzog stated in his article that \"the crisis of the Mexican Revolution is of an extraordinary virulence, it is above all -let us say it once and a thousand times- a moral crisis with few precedents in the history of mankind\" (Silva Herzog, 1943: 50). The seriousness of this diagnosis was not only because of what it literally pointed out about the decomposition of the Mexican political system, but also because it attacked the great foundational myth of Mexican modernity, on the one hand, and the great referent of the \"successful\" revolution in Latin America, on the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Silva Herzog's negative diagnosis was not, however, a death sentence. There was still a solution and it was possible to move forward with it, as long as a new structure was given to society, in which \"the human is the essential problem, in which the enjoyment of existence is for the greatest possible number of individuals, in which science, technology and art have the purpose of achieving the good of man and his own self-improvement\". Silva Herzog called this model \"socialist democracy\", and only through it would it be possible to bring the Mexican Revolution out of its crisis, retaking its principles in full (Silva Herzog, 1943: 53).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not as a direct response to Fernando Ortiz's letter on the article \"The Mexican Revolution in Crisis\", but as a long extension of the intellectual exchange between Silva Herzog and Ortiz, there is the missive that the Mexican addressed to the Cuban at the end of March 1947. The economist reminded the anthropologist of one of the central premises of his thought, the commitment against imperialism: \"[...] it is an indeclinable duty of the clean intellectuals of Latin America to keep their peoples alert in the face of North American power\" (Silva Herzog, 1947: 257). Thus, the platform of collaborations of Cuadernos Americanos <\/em> also seemed to be a propitious space to invite people to subscribe to certain intellectual principles or, alternatively, to confirm ideological affinities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In those same years, Jes\u00fas Silva Herzog suffered from cataracts in one of his eyes. To his good fortune -even though it was temporary-, the ophthalmologist offered him not only to remove the cataract, but also to have a corneal implant to improve his vision, which had been badly affected since the economist was a small child (Gonz\u00e1lez Casanova, 1985: 34). This operation gave him a visual acuity he had never enjoyed before, so between 1947 and 1948 he planned to travel around Latin America: \"The purpose of the trip is only to get to know our countries, talk to their interesting people and give lectures\". Thus, in March 1947, he announced to Fernando Ortiz that the first stop would be Havana (Silva Herzog, 1947: 257).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Silva Herzog's visit to the Caribbean island allowed him to strengthen ties with Fernando Ortiz, as well as to get in touch with other figures of the Cuban left. One of them was Jorge Ma\u00f1ach, Jos\u00e9 Mart\u00ed's biographer, whom he met at the Cuban Pen Club. Ma\u00f1ach put him in contact with the communist writer Juan Marinello, with whom he was unable to meet, but he did initiate an epistolary exchange. Marinello had been exiled twice in Mexico, first in 1933, during the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado in Cuba; and between 1936 and 1937, which allowed him to get close to some Mexican intellectuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The year after his visit to the island, Silva Herzog invited Marinello to collaborate in his magazine, specifying the interest of the editorial line in accordance with the anti-imperialist and Ibero-American principles: \"[...] within the tone of Cuadernos<\/em> we have initiated a campaign in favor of Peace and to a certain extent against the plutocrats who at this moment govern the neighboring nation\". With the latter, Silva Herzog was probably referring to the growing anti-communism experienced during Harry Truman's presidency in the United States. But, beyond that, Silva Herzog recognized in Marinello's voice the Ibero-American potentiality that Cuadernos Americanos<\/em> sought in his collaborators to influence the reality of the continent: \"[...] your article [...] will surely reflect the opinion not only of the advanced groups of Cuba but of all the progressive men of Hispanic America\" (Silva Herzog, 1948: 191).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Almost a decade later, in 1956, the dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Public Law of the University of Havana, Ra\u00fal Roa, invited Jes\u00fas Silva Herzog to present three lectures in November of that year. From that moment on, a nourished channel of communication was opened between the two academics, probably stemming from their relationship that arose during Roa's stay in Mexico between late 1953 and mid-1955 (De la Osa, 1987: 9).<\/p>\n\n\n\n During Silva Herzog's visit to Cuba in 1956, the Cuban magazine Carteles<\/em> interviewed him. When questioned about the validity of the Mexican Revolution, he returned to his 1943 text on the revolution \"in crisis\": \"every revolution has its period of gestation, development and death. And I believe that, although our Revolution has not fulfilled all its objectives, it has already closed its cycle\". The Mexican expressed the need to renew the revolutionary referents, almost as a premonition of what the Cuban Revolution would become: \"today we need new formulas, objectives and ideas\" (Silva Herzog, 1973: 56).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The leftist thought defended by Silva Herzog, at least since that 1943 article, invited to formulate new systems and modes from the present. This approach seemed to find its ideal audience in the University of Havana in 1956, since it should be remembered that a good part of the 26th of July Movement -one of the main organizational nuclei of the Cuban Revolution- was made up of students or graduates of this same institution: one of them was the lawyer Fidel Castro. In those days when Silva Herzog was giving lectures, Castro set sail with 82 expedition members from Tuxpan, Veracruz, to Cuba. The accidental grounding and disembarkation of those expeditionaries in the midst of an ambush by Fulgencio Batista's army took place on December 2, 1956 at Coloradas Beach, in the east of the island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n\"A man of the left\" at the helm<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Jes\u00fas Silva Herzog and the American of his Cuadernos<\/em>: intellectual commitment, Ibero-Americanism and anti-imperialism<\/h2>\n\n\n\n