Foundation In 1966, the
Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) launched
Mundo Nuevo, a Latin American literary magazine that replaced
Cuadernos del Congreso por la Libertad de la Cultura.
Emir Rodríguez Monegal, a Uruguayan scholar of
Latin American literature became the editor in Paris. To protect the magazine from the CCF's bad reputation in Latin America,
Mundo Nuevo claimed to be published by ILARI (Instituto Latinoamericano de Relaciones Internacionales), an 'independent' front created in exchange for the CCF's Latin American Department. When the CCF negotiated the Ford funding following the
NYTimes' revelations of its CIA connections, Monegal wanted to stay in
Paris but, denied by the
Ford Foundation, had to move to the US to start teaching at Yale. As he explained later, "Paris [...] has the advantage of being a great city where you can still live cheaply. Latin American writers, especially during the sixties, always made their sentimental journey to Paris, and I knew that I could always find talent just outside the door. Besides, if you publish a magazine in any Latin American city, it inevitably takes on a local air. This was just what I wanted to avoid. And the French postal service enabled us to reach the entire New World."
Contribution (1966–1968) In July 1966, the first issue was published. It was a 23 cm illustrated magazine.
Mundo Nuevo published articles and interviews, prose, poetry, and essays, but also excerpts of unreleased texts. It helped launch the career of younger writers such as
Guillermo Cabrera Infante,
Severo Sarduy,
Manuel Puig but also helped then-new writers such as
Gabriel García Márquez,
Carlos Fuentes,
Mario Vargas Llosa, or
José Donoso. During 1966,
Mundo Nuevo prepublished two chapters of García Márquez's breakthrough novel
One Hundred Years of Solitude one year before the book's release; Monegal explained, "I wanted to prepare the ground for the book, which came out in 1967." In response, Monegal published in the July 1967 issue of
Mundo Nuevo "La CIA y los intelectuales" ("The CIA and the intellectuals") claiming that these rumours were false. This article, and its follow-up two months later, did not amuse Monegal's backers. Escalating disagreements with the Ford Foundation and the ILARI eventually led to Monegal's resignation in July 1968. ==References==