Educational Exchanges between Chile and the United States (1930-1973): another history of the Cold War?

Résumé En

1958: Richard Nixon, Vice-President of the United States, embarks on a goodwill tour of South America, a trip that will reveal the scale of the anti-American feeling in the region. This episode led the main actors of U.S’ diplomacy to promote on a large-scale educational exchange programs that will fall under the umbrella of International Educational. These programs aimed to be an addition to the efforts of fostering a better comprehension between the American people...and also to fight the spread of Marxism in the region.Chile was already a privileged partner in term of educational exchanges during the 1930s and 1940s. With a well organize university student population, this country will be the object of particular attention in the aftermath of the Nixon episode, achieving an important role during the first half of the 1960s and the Emphasis on Youth Program (1964). Even though, this communication will center on educational exchanges during the 1950s-1973 period, it will also include the preceding two decades. By doing this, we will put into perspective the evolutions that these exchanges will suffer in the context of the Cold War, first regarding their objectives and second, regarding the practices and actors. In this way, it becomes possible to rethink the periodization, the modalities and the consequences of the Cold War confrontation, one that is not limited to the clash between the U.S and the USSR. Our communication follows the work of Hal Brands (2010), Tanya Harmer and Alfredo Riquelme (2014), by thinking the Cold War from Latin America and distancing itself from a historiography that places the continent as a mere periphery, passive by nature, inside a struggle between East and West.Besides this focus on the Chilean and United States’ actors, we will also analyze the numbers of these educational exchanges for the 1930-1973 period. By doing this we will establish a periodization that will take into account their variations and the evolution of the concerned groups. For this purpose, we rely on sources from both countries, something that allows us to make a history « à parts égales » and to underline the agency of the Chilean actors, their own agendas and interests when it came time to participate on these educational exchanges. One of the main challenges of this work will be if we can speak, in our case study, of a “co-production”, in the sense proposed by Ludovic Tournès regarding the Americanization process in France (2011).