Books, cultural exchanges, and international relations: Brazil and the United States in a context of war (1941-1946)

Abstract

The Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (OCIAA), subordinate to the US State Department functioned between 1941 and 1946 and was responsible for implementing US economic and cultural policies in Latin American countries during the Second World War (1939-1945). The Office developed projects to foster the exchange of books among the Americas and was helped by teachers, professors, librarians, translators, artists, writers and editors. This article aims to analyze some of these projects, which resulted in the increased dissemination of US books in Brazil, although they were more expensive than European ones. I will demonstrate not only the efficiency of the OCIAA team in Brazil, despite its urgent and temporary nature, but also the publishers' plans for the book market in Latin-America after the war. The sources used for this research are documents of the American Council of Learned Societies, the OCIAA, and the American Library Association.