In 1787, King Charles III of Spain ordered each of his viceroys to collect dictionaries and manuscripts in languages Indigenous to Spanish America that would be sent to Saint Petersburg for use in Catherine the Great's universal dictionary. While scholars have examined the significance of this project for linguistics and early globalization, this article analyzes it within the context of the history of scientific collecting in the eighteenth-century Spanish Empire. Focusing on the response to this royal order from the Viceroyalty of New Granada, this article examines the assembly of this collection to highlight its use as a tool of empire at the local and imperial level. Overtime, the project was continually expanded, most notably by Jos & eacute; Celestino Mutis, the naturalist in charge of New Granada's collecting initiative, who was influenced by his own personal attempts at gathering linguistic texts and a network of informants upon whom he relied. Tracing these changes, I argue that individuals in areas the Crown considered peripheral often shaped imperial orders, not only in resistance, but as a way to expand the power, presence, and prestige of the Spanish Empire. Though the collection of texts from New Granada never made it to Russia, the assembly of this project demonstrates the overlapping political and intellectual goals of collecting for the empire in this time of geopolitical competition.
Abstract This article examines the history of the Taller de Escritores [Writers’ Workshop] of the University of Concepción, which existed from 1960-1963, against the backdrop of the Cold War, the Cuban Revolution, and the “boom” in Latin American literature. Although the workshop had a modest subvention from the Rockefeller Foundation, the article argues that we should understand it as the creation of a confluence of interests, and a terrain of potential contestation for Cold War politics, rather than a simple instrument of cultural diplomacy. The article describes the creation of the Taller as the product of the Encuentros de Escritores at Concepción, and the enthusiasm of the Chilean writer Fernando Alegría, then teaching at Berkeley. Although Writers’ Workshops have been described as deradicalizing forces in the U.S. context, and although a similar project (the Centro Mexicano de Escritores) received support from both the Rockefeller Foundation and the CIA in this period, there is no evidence of intelligence involvement here. Instead, Rockefeller understood the Taller as part of a package of university development. The writers in charge were left-wing and wanted to advance professional goals and respect writing as labor. Even after the Taller closed, the workshop form spread in Chile, including via participants with left-wing and anti-imperialist perspectives, suggesting that the form itself is not inherently deradicalizing, and that it depends on social context and the lived experiences of writers.
