The Global Sixties in Latin America: A Cultural History

3 units

The Long Sixties in Latin America (1959–1973) was a period of revolutionary upheaval and the rapid spread of capitalist modernity, marked by profound cultural and political transformations. This seminar invites students to engage critically with the historical and cultural forces that defined an era of transformation and its enduring legacies in Latin America. The Cuban Revolution, the rise of student movements, and the expansion of mass media and consumer culture shaped cultural production and political, aesthetic, and intellectual debates in the region in contradictory ways: Latin Americanism clashed with the Americanization of Life; autochthonism contested mass culture; radical aesthetics denounced artistic formalism; counterculture suspected the established male intellectual elite. Through a cultural history lens, the course begins with a survey of the era's political, cultural, and social dimensions—Cold War geopolitics, decolonization, and the intersections of modernity and modernization. Students will then delve into four thematic units: 1) The Republic of Letters: Exploring the Boom, the role of literature, and transnational journals and publishing networks; 2) The Factographic Form: Investigating experimental films, the testimonio genre, and revolutionary poetry; 3) Mass Media, Modernity, and the Popular: Analyzing comics, visual culture, the nueva canción , and debates on popular culture and technology; and 4) Streets, Posters, and Theater: Studying public spaces as sites of cultural and political expression. Each unit incorporates five key dimensions in cultural analysis: form, media, institutions, materiality, and historicity. Course materials feature works by Franz Fanon, Ángel Rama, Gabriel García Márquez, José María Arguedas, Jean-Paul Sartre, Che Guevara, Santiago Álvarez, Fernando Solanas, Octavio Getino, Glauber Rocha, and contributions from the Tricontinental Alliance.