78. Memorandum From the Deputy Director for Policy and Plans, United States Information Agency (Sorensen) to President Kennedy1
SUBJECT
- Latin American Book Programs
Here are answers to the questions you asked me on the phone the other day regarding U.S. and Communist book programs in Latin America:
1. We are making a major effort to overcome the “book gap” in Latin America. Our principal problems are distribution and expert personnel. (We have just sent six trained book officers to the area.) Money could become a problem as our capability for effectively marketing books increases, but AID appears eager to help. This fiscal year, USIA published 55 books in Spanish and 25 in Portuguese in Latin America. In FY–63 we plan to do 130 in Spanish and 95 in Portuguese. Others—including CIA, Time and Reader’s Digest—are stepping up their book publishing activities in Latin America. Franklin Publications, Inc., [Page 203] at our request, recently surveyed the book situation there; its findings are useful.
2. Titles: Galbraith’s new book, Economic Development in Perspective (based on his India lectures) is being made available to all our libraries abroad. We will push its use in our translation-publishing programs in Latin America and other underdeveloped areas. A USIA-produced pamphlet version has already been distributed in several countries. Also in Latin America we have subsidized publication of Galbraith’s American Capitalism in Spanish and Portuguese, and his Economics and the Art of Controversy in Portuguese.
We subsidized Portuguese-language publication of Rostow’s Stages of Economic Growth in Brazil. A Mexican publisher obtained Spanish-language rights and produced the book without our help. We wanted to publish it in Argentina as well but the Mexican publisher refused to license a Buenos Aires edition.
Other USIA titles include: SPANISH—Eugene Rostow’s Planning for Freedom, Berle’s 20th Century Capitalist Revolution, Black’s Diplomacy of Economic Development, Davis, Pearch and Hatchett’s Modern Labor Economics, Smith’s Sociology of Rural Life, Bowden’s Brief History of the American Labor Movement, Morrison’s Freedom in Contemporary Society, Myers’ and Laider’s What Do You Know About Labor?, Perlman’s Theory of the Labor Movement, Philip Taft’s Structure and Government of Labor Unions, Bowden’s American Labor and the American Spirit, Hankin’s Making Democracy Work, Hanson’s Transformation: The Story of Modern Puerto Rico, Stern’s Capitalism in America; PORTUGUESE—Hirschman’s Strategy of Economic Development, Gist and Halbert’s Urban Society, Kousoulas’ Key to Economic Progress, Wright’s Capitalism, Hacker’s American Capitalism, Salvadori’s Liberal Democracy, Moulton’s Dynamic Economy, Childs and Cater’s Ethics in a Business Society, Lilienthal’s TVA: Democracy on the March, and Bell’s History of Economic Thought.
3. Several of these are useful in showing that Communism is no good for underdeveloped countries, notably the books by the Rostows, Kousoulas and Hanson. We’ve also done Mitrany’s Marx Against the Peasant in Portuguese, Cronyn’s A Primer on Communism, Baeza’s The Chains Come From Afar (on Cuba), and Baldwin’s A New Slavery in Spanish and Portuguese. Belov’s History of a Soviet Collective Farm was distributed in Latin America in English through our binational centers.
Two books now in the works are National Development: How it Works by David Cushman Coyle, and Capitalism, Communism, Socialism: A Primer by Meno Lovenstein. We are exploring the idea of getting a good Latin author to write an original book on Communism’s inadequacy for underdeveloped economies.
4. We have assisted publication of a few current books in Latin America describing U.S. welfare programs, among them Asch’s Social [Page 204] Security and Related Welfare, Vasey’s Government and Social Welfare, and Schlesinger and Hackett’s Political and Social Growth of the American People. We have commissioned a book from former Social Security Commissioner Charles Schotland on our social security system which is now at the publishers. Undoubtedly there will be others in the welfare field. Incidentally, we are pushing this theme hard in other media, particularly radio and films.
5. Distribution: Books we subsidize are usually distributed through regular commercial channels. The publishers with whom we contract distribute the books through the same networks used for their other titles. Distribution outside urban areas and between countries is severely limited by lack of swift, sure communications, by exchange barriers and by lack of credit. Some copies of each USIS-supported book are taken by our posts for presentation to key individuals and institutions. The books are also put in our USIS libraries, reading rooms and binational centers.
To increase distribution of low-priced books our new regional book officers in Mexico City, Buenos Aires and Rio are working out publishing arrangements with houses primarily concerned with periodical publication and continent-wide distribution. One such arrangement has been made in Mexico with Novaro.
6. Soviet Publications: The Soviets are publishing 1.5 million books annually in Spanish in the USSR and an additional 3.75 million in Latin America itself. They recently published two books in Portuguese in the USSR. At least one publisher in Rio is known to publish Communist books.
Soviet publications are frequently distributed through their own Embassies or local Communist parties. One hundred diplomatic pouches containing printed matter are shipped annually to Embassy Uruguay at a cost estimated at $654,000 or more than our total Latin American book budget this fiscal year. Local Communist groups own or control bookstores in many Latin American countries.
It has taken us a year to gear up an improved book program in the area after years of neglect. We expect to move ahead rapidly now, and are giving it highest priority.
- Source: Kennedy Library, President’s Office Files, Departments and Agencies Series, Box 91, USIA 1/62–6/62. No classification marking. A stamped notation indicates that it was received in the White House on April 16 at 2:04 p.m. Evelyn Lincoln sent a copy of the memorandum back to Sorensen under an April 23 covering note, in which she wrote that the President “would like for you to send a copy of the attached memo to Morales Carrion and ask him to comment on it.” (Ibid.)↩
- Sorensen signed “Tom Sorensen” above his typed signature.↩