NACLA Reminiscences - An Oral History
Shapiro, Helen
This history is compiled from interviews with some of NACLA's founders and current staff. Only a small fraction of those who committed themselves to shaping NACLA 's development were...
...The growth of the solidarity movement in the last few years provides a constituency for NACLA, but it lacks the dimension that the larger movement had before, in which all aspects of U.S...
...It is different to be created within a movement, and to come to a new one whose features we don't yet know...
...Doesn't it just mean that my canned peas or my blouse will cost more?' we didn't know how to argue...
...The NACLA work provided an alternative perspective to help discussions get beyond that trap...
...Equality...
...policy towards Latin America should be established...
...All this drew in a very graphic way for our readers the sense that you don't have separate economies in the Americas, or anywhere in the world anymore, and that union strategies have to start taking that into account, just like the capitalists do...
...fighting force of half a million were in place...
...We helped get out a leaflet that was one of the first times NACLA-type research was introduced into that kind of a situation, drawing corporate links, exposing the military industrial complex...
...That was a superb vehicle for examining how the capitalist world is tied together, how changes in the U.S...
...And, no question, the Newsletter was a real grind...
...Michael: "Promo is a notorious problem for organizations...
...Helen: "What happened...
...and "food for peace" programs, right-wing religious agencies (including the Summer Institute for Linguistics), corporations, banks, the CIA...
...I saw a lot of misery and poverty, and was given any number of explanations for it...
...For example, I did a thing on Peru in 1969...
...Helen: "Did the early people in NACLA understand Marxism...
...Judy: "Bill Berkowitz, who was hired on the west coast just to do promo, brought that home to us when we were being resistant for the same misguided political reasons...
...If you did an article about some major corporation in Latin America in the '60s, everybody marveled...
...Michael: "So instead we set up a small collective infrastructure and a board of directors...
...Part of the goal was to give greater weight to neglected areas and part was recognition that people have different skills and interests which could make the work more effective and less overburdening...
...We went around the room and said, 'Do you realize the consequences of this decision if we stay in New York...
...Fred: "I remember one thing Locker said during those arguments about being more activist...
...Also, I saw the newsletter as a passing fancy, a means of communication for people interested in Latin America...
...Meanwhile Mike Locker and Steve Abrecht had left several years earlier to start the Corporate Data Exchange...
...The phones ring constantly with fact-checking requests from journalists who had never heard of NACLA before...
...It wasn't just about what was the correct way, or who was right or wrong among the Chilean Left groups, though that was certainly part of it...
...It created a huge turmoil...
...We used to stand around forever collating and stapling...
...We all carry the alienated concept from this society that we are our job, and it's hard to abandon the notion that research, for example, carries more prestige than mailroom work...
...Bob: "Still, we shouldn't lose track of the magazine itself...
...There's a more complex ideological, political debate within the organization that allowed us to integrate what happened, and to reinterpret our own trajectory in that light...
...professionalism...
...It had been a very emotional and politically intense experience and they had very strong points of view about the process...
...Steve V.: "There just didn't seem to be a way to deal with the inevitable problems, financial, administrative or political...
...Steve A.: "Changing the image of the magazine to give it as much recognition in the U.S...
...Peace Corps volunteers, exposed to the realities of U.S...
...He had written a paper on the sugar industry of the Dominican Republic which I heard about in Cleveland...
...Anyone who has done organizing knows that it too is a full time task...
...But each has to have its own structure and some form of independence...
...Steve V.: "It led NACLA in two different directions...
...has affected Chile, just read New Chile by NACLA.' I was incredibly proud of the organization...
...Judy: "I was very excited by NACLA's new direction...
...NACLA wrote about the repression, about the changes being forced on the economic structures, about the U.S...
...within a few years its new in-depth reports had doubled the subscriptions...
...Out of this ferment many organizations were born...
...It took about two to three years, and swung back and forth...
...contact with the long-term struggle in Latin America...
...It was the beginning of that kind of thinking-about university-war connections, the Institute for Defense Analysis, etc...
...It has to be done all the time, systematically-the collection of data, processing it in a way that it can be retrieved, that's lifetime work...
...I thought research and action-related work-that is, seminars, conferences, servicing other groups-were most important...
...there's space and a surplus for a poor organization like ours to survive that has never existed in most Latin American countries...
...there was just too much to do...
...Thus began a recent NACLA Report analyzing U.S...
...1966...
...Fred: This was the first of many discussions and meetings...
...Chile inspired U.S...
...I was invited to be the coordinator of a Committee on Free Elections* in 1966, and that experience in particular led me to see the very urgent need for an alternative explanation of U.S...
...In that sense it was fairly good...
...By now, all of us are much more conscious of those aspects and we've improved our skills tremendously just by taking it seriously...
...It was exhilarating, it was participatory, and it was productive, particularly since a lot of the pamphlets in those early years were geared to such specific actions...
...The Central American team, Janet Shenk and Bob Armstrong, have spoken all over the country, on radio, on television, to high schools, and in debates with State Dept...
...Was that really what you should be doing...
...It was an important new constituency, and one we could get valuable new feedback from...
...Michael: "There were personal divisions and some political differences...
...She helped sponsor a conference at Princeton of the UCM's Latin American Concerns Committee, at which it was decided that a research and publications center of U.S...
...He said, research isn't something you do for a few months a year, then you've done it...
...Mike: "In my view NACLA really had two purposes: one was Latin America specifically, but the other more general one was the political use of information...
...Helen: "In this sense, the Chilean experience marked a watershed in NACLA's history, didn't it...
...The black movement was going to be annihilated, racism was on the rampage, genocide was around the corner, repression was at the front door, and where were you...
...Michael: "There were both trends...
...There are obstacles and obviously the financial one is serious...
...In each interview, I asked why people thought NACLA had survived...
...In 1965, the U.S...
...The need for independent information, education and analysis takes on a new urgency...
...and Chilean capitalist interests...
...The other thing we wanted to do was demystify research...
...The movement had to have a research and information capacity if it was going to expand and become more relevant...
...Americo: "When I joined, a lot of people in NACLA were asking if we should be doing something on the U.S., contributing our skills and conceptions to the struggle here...
...We knew what power structures were about, but as a systematic understanding, no...
...Fred: "I think one of the occupational hazards of research is wanting to get the full story...
...emphasis on structure and education...
...Marines had invaded the Dominican Republic in 1965 with the same touted goal as in Vietnam-to save the country from communism...
...The Tupamaros were very strong in Uruguay, the MIR [Revolutionary Left Movement] was gaining strength in Chile, you started having the ERP [Popular Guerrilla Army] in Argentina...
...The people who participated in NACLA's creation shared that spirit of a very broad base-a tolerance of differences with certain unifying principles, the basic one of which could be summarized as antiimperialism, though with different interpretations...
...It was the middle of winter, cold, and we sat around trying to more rigidly define what we were doing...
...On my way back from an antiwar conference in Cleveland, I visited Michael Locker in Ann Arbor, where he was working with the Radical Education Project (REP) of SDS...
...Out of that we set up another meeting for November 6 in Chicago and invited a broad spectrum of professors, independent journalists, representatives from SNCC [Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee], SDS, U.S...
...Mike: "After Fred took off, the New York survivors, under Locker's proding, had a retreat at some island on the Sound...
...Affirmation Breeds Inspiration Steve V.: "If we didn't get positive feedback, we'd have stopped long ago...
...Helen S.: "What did that mean concretely...
...Judy: "We're experimenting with some of the same changes that are happening in other leftist organizations which come out of the ultrademocratic, super collective approach where every body ate from the same fork...
...So we had to conjure up images of a much bigger, much richer institution than we were or are...
...Popularize, popularize, popularize...
...His answer was, 'If you want to know how the U.S...
...We started discussing ways to build an awareness in the U.S., to do research on the things we'd only begun to discover in the D.R...
...Thus questions about the future are paramount, and our vision is at best speculative...
...the former ambassador to El Salvador, for example...
...Today, its subscribers number over 5,000 and an equal number are sold on bookstands and for classroom use...
...Helen: "Chile also put NACLA in the forefront of solidarity work, didn't it...
...as it had in Europe and Latin America was always a preoccupation...
...I think a lot of us had doubts about whether even a valiant attempt would be able to carry it...
...imperialism dominates everything...
...How the Left responds to Heagan and the crisis will clearly influence what happens...
...Steve A: "I'd say the level of debate has changed considerably, so that NACLA's level of expertise is going to continually have to deepen...
...Within two years it was able to increase its exposure both as a magazine and as an organization, though the loss of a California presence has been painful...
...the two thrive on a symbiotic relationship...
...Michael: "There's a wonderful story about Teotonio dos Santos...
...Helen: "After the mid'70s, NACLA started focusing more on the U.S...
...We decided that what was needed was factual data...
...The steel and auto issues looked at the global realignments of the economy which affect all workers...
...Research Although one of the keys to NACLA's survival was its insistence on its role as research/ resource contributors to the growing movement, the tension between that and pressures to play a more activist role never abated, particularly in the first decade...
...After careful examination, we think the analogy to Vietnam is appropriate and even compelling...
...The first plan was to close the New York office...
...The magazine was NACLA for me all the years when I didn't know who the people were, and that's the same for everybody...
...That pamphlet sold a thousand copies the first day...
...But even before the revolution in Nicaragua began to triumph, NACLA was already beginning to accept our historical responsibility and tradition, and the recognition that, as such, our work could be auxiliary, complementary to the struggle here...
...We have also studied labor migration...
...It was the second meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, in Washington in 1970...
...It had a short life, while a researched pamphlet could be distributed for years and also be a real money maker...
...I'm used to that...
...Burdened with an imposing misnomer, and an affirmation that research would be primary, a handful of people began to build an organization...
...society were being challenged...
...We had hired new people with greater theoretical skills and less Latin American background, some of whom joined the push for this...
...The New York office also developed contacts with visiting political writers and activists from South America...
...foreign policy, were returning to the States full of stories and new insights...
...Steve A.: "The effect was to trigger a huge ideological debate internally...
...Well I've been waitin' six months, and I'm startin' to get upset...
...and, in the words of Mike Klare...
...Michael: "Our primary concern was, how do you make people in the U.S...
...The Making of the Report By 1971, the NACLA Newsletter had become an illustrated 32-page offset magazine...
...When I got your promo I ordered everything in sight Thirty copies of "Jamaica" and forty of "Capital Flight" But I ain't heard nothin, and I'm beginnin' to get uptight...
...The role of the footnote in NACLA's history is tremendous...
...There was always a lot of talk about it, but we were all academics with research backgrounds...
...It was a very heavy decision for all of us, but I think it was the right one...
...There would be a conference and I'd push that we give a workshop on Latin America...
...Fred: "The idea came trom the Congress of Unrepresented People, a group of civil rights, anti-war and labor people who considered that U.S...
...At the beginning, for example, we didn't use the word imperialism...
...It was basically an organized party movement and people began to appreciate more the nature of different kinds of parties, of different party structures, of coalitions...
...Janet: "A number of serious questions and differences arose as to the future direction of the organization and how it should fit into a broader movement...
...But if the government couldn't really take advantage of the situation, the farther left parties such as the MIR weren't equipped either...
...How will we all respond...
...You hadn't talked to a Latin American revolutionary in three years, but you had talked to real people here, and you felt a certain insertion in a process...
...We began trying to find ways of drawing the links better between the political economic 51update . update update . update system in the U.S...
...In confrontation after confrontation, appreciation for what Mike Klare called the political use of information grew...
...I would like to express my appreciation to those who did share their thoughts with me and hope they enjoyed the process as much as I. "Comparisons between El Salvador and Vietnam are heard frequently these days...
...We couldn't go on having issues that turned yellow and crumbled into dust after three years...
...That was where politics were by then...
...Janet: "It really goes to the heart of our being something more than a magazine...
...invaded the Dominican Republic...
...Steve V.: "The whole picture was a lot more complex than any of us had accepted it was before...
...Mike: "We had to create an identity that would survive independently of an anti-war movement or an SDS or the radical Christian groups, since initially we had been viewed as an adjunct to them...
...Judy Butler came to NACLA in 1976, juggling her commitments for a few years to continue Chile solidarity work...
...Every month that thing had to come out...
...The ISLA Clipping Service, which got started in 1971, was our answer to another problem-the one about providing the news systematically in one place so that people could get at it if they needed it...
...Originally there was very little division of labor apart from maintaining the subscription list on the west coast and printing and mailing the Newsletter on the east coast...
...45update . update . update . update first in Colombia, then in Brazil, was another member of the committee...
...It generated a lot of discussion through the LASA meeting over whether or not we should have done it, what exactly was at issue...
...Vietnam was not an exception, the D.R...
...working class was privileged because it directly reaped the benefits of third world exploitation...
...Work on the U.S...
...Once again there are many pressures on us to do more than we can do, whether it's speaKing engagements, or assisting on other books, helping the press, feeling new pressure to get our library in better order...
...And a whole world opened up...
...I was involved in a debate with Robert White...
...As in Vietnam, people in Africa and Latin America too were beginning to challenge their oppressed status...
...I was even on a radio debate with some fierce anti-communist types once...
...We had to reveal it and get people actively involved in trying to change it...
...We have come across so much information...
...Janet: "What I'm most proud of is how we have handled our crucial 53 The consolidation in one office, or perhaps reconsolidation is a better word, was at least three years in the making...
...Americo: "NACLA develops as part of the movement, thus NACLA's victories are those of the movement...
...understand the economic and military institutions, the government apparatus, the religious apparatus, etc., that perpetuate exploitation in Latin America and the third world...
...Without actually seeing it in those terms, NACLA's new work was helping to draw the atoms closer together just at a time when the need for that was beginning to be felt...
...In short, NACLA has been one of the few reliable places to turn...
...That was when we formally reaffirmed that we were committed to the collective idea (equal salaries, shared work responsibilities, consensus decision-making...
...For a certain period, we became too isolated from a lot of solidarity events...
...Americo Badillo, one of the newer Naclistas, who had both theoretical skills and an interest in Latin American work, participated actively in those discussions...
...Fred: "Our primary audience has always been in the United States, but we've gotten consistent appreciation for our work from Latin America, and that has been important to us...
...officials...
...The weight of it made it clear that we couldn't function the old way...
...Janet: "No, I think it was that at one point many people could write about certain situations in Latin America pretty vividly...
...It was also about what we should be saying in the publication about that, what study and research we should do...
...and Canadian university Christian movements, Cornell's CUSLAR [Committee on U.S.-Latin American Relations], returned Peace Corps volunteers, and others...
...an abundance of luck...
...People were thinking revolution was around the corner and so was repression...
...A few months later NACLA West closed, leaving as its legacy the Data Center, ISLA [Information Service on Latin America], both spin-offs started by Fred Goff, and Fred himself, whose commitments both to California and to the Data Center were powerful...
...Without being able to resolve political differences or discuss our long term direction on a day-to-day basis, we were losing the ability to maintain NACLA as an organization of co-equal offices...
...He looked a little surprised, but then he said,'How many PhD's do you have working there?' " Janet Shenk, who came to NACLA in 1975, after working in Ecuador for three years, added an important perspective to understanding this myth of proportions...
...and its complements in Latin America...
...Once again, Latin America is prominent in the headlines...
...From there, as the small steps worked, we took larger ones...
...fitting its tactics to the pre-existing class structure, and letting that dynamic work toward the mutual ends of both U.S...
...What led to that shift in emphasis...
...policy was not in the best interests of the American people...
...The possibility of repression is also serious...
...economy affect workers in Latin America and vice versa...
...On the other hand, the New York staff was stable and shared a vision of the future of the organization...
...Fifteen years ago NACLA was created in response to a remarkably similar need...
...The structure of U.S...
...I don't want to say NACLA patented the idea, it was an idea whose time had come...
...focus had reached the point where NACLA was debating whether its Latin American commitment was beNACLA Report 54update . update update . update coming a constraint instead of a natural vehicle...
...It was a hard choice for them to make...
...They knew what Marxism was all about, for example, because they had met Marxists in Latin America, though they didn't fully agree with it...
...The civil rights movement had split over the question of non-violence as peaceful marches were met with police dogs and billy clubs...
...Was that just the consequence of external events...
...In part, we weren't interested in trigger-words that would put people off, but it also reflects our theoretical development at the time...
...Michael: "We were both interested in the economic relationships between Latin America and the U.S., and agreed that we needed an institution to do this kind of work, so, ipso facto, the idea of founding an organization...
...Michael: "The struggles that were going on in these countries made us begin to realize it's not enough to just focus on U.S...
...NACLA's independence was pushed to the limits...
...And finally, since we were now committed to longer, more comprehensive studies, we could no longer produce ten a year...
...The resources for finding it out are here in the form of annual reports, minutes of meetings, foundation grants, State Dept...
...There are connections to be made that don't always appear on the surface, at least not clearly...
...When I was at NACLA, people didn't want to do it, I think because it had a commercial side to it...
...For the outcome of both the elections and the role of the committee, see Horowitz...
...The emphasis on deeper research, together with a desire to be read not just by an academic audience made the NACLA Report something of a hybrid, neither a timely magazine nor a stuffy journal...
...The team of 70 "independent unofficial observers" were ostensibly to oversee the elections and thereby help moderate possible fraud and coercion...
...People in the United States were taken by 50 what was going on during the Allende period because the Unidad Popular had been elected, and they believed in that a lot more than they could in any other form of social change, so it was a useful example by which to educate people about change in Latin America...
...Janet: "One of the reasons we were taken so seriously in Latin America was that in the U.S...
...pieces-the role of labor bureaucracies, of AIFLD, etc...
...Some of the debates we shouldn't have gotten into since we got bogged down, but they were important...
...For example, we all face the immediate threat of repression, including the expansion of CIA powers in domestic affairs...
...A working committee drew up a general outline of research for a publication monitoring current Latin American news, organizing for action...
...My background is in advertising-copywriting and design-rather than research, so I got really into trying to make the NACLA Report more accessible, both in its appearance and the writing...
...Steve V.: "Chile caused everyone to rethink the way the world works...
...Mike: "For me it was extraordinary...
...Central America NACLA has produced seven Reports on the region in the last three years, two of them now in their third printing...
...Any movement for social change has to have an intelligence factor...
...But as NACLA's contact with the growing Latin American movements became stronger, excerpts from their publications also were reprinted in the Report...
...domination continued to be a frequent theme-arms sales and military training, A.I.D...
...Certainly the consolidation in one office made that more possible.' S.eptlOct 1981 myriad and often complex issues that had arisen...
...Resources were divided equally...
...That's with regard to the nuts and bolts of daily work...
...We thought we knew a lot about corporate research, but we only knew a little...
...There were about 2,000 people there, and a small group, including some from NACLA, stormed the podium...
...First on the agenda was a facelift for the Report itself...
...The old tensions between activism and research, between one area of research and another are bound to come up again for us, which will surely produce new debates...
...Steve V.: "Yes, and that became another part of the internal debate...
...But it did last...
...So the impetus wasn't just coming from the U.S., it was also coming 48 from Latin America...
...NACLA people spent most of their time up there talking to people in the buildings and trying to figure out a more immediate way we could use our research ability...
...But there's no structural reinforcement of that and we're always open to dealing with it at the subjective level...
...Michael: "We had an immediate infusion of people back from Chile who knew many people who had been killed...
...imperialism, what's all this about...
...became very tantalizing because, for instance after the apparel issue, you could say, my god, I talked to a worker...
...I mean there were Who Rules Columbias for just about every major campus in America and a lot of struggles arose as a result...
...I was in Helsinki recently and people asked what was happening in NACLA...
...Fred: "From time to time people tried it, but NACLA by its nature was so consuming it didn't really leave a lot of space...
...Fred: "I grew up in Colombia, where my parents were Presbyterian missionaries...
...It was not an essentially military movement, that you either accepted or you didn't, in ideological terms...
...In DeSept/Oct 1981 cember 1972, Allende came to speak at the UN...
...Another element that we began to take seriously was promotion...
...Consequently, along with demystifying research, NACLA also had a contrary emphasis of developing expertise on the Left...
...That's important to say somewhere...
...using those resources to produce a product...
...Partly we came to terms with the fact that people tended to save their Reports...
...But once Steve and Liz Farnsworth from the west coast had done their issues on Chile, I had done my thing on Ecuador, etc., and we couldn't keep traveling, both for financial reasons and because the repression limited our access, we lost track of how to do good research except based on materials in this country...
...It allowed us to set ourselves up as a research and publication organization in the aid of a broad movement...
...Steve A.: "Very much...
...Michael: "In those first meetings there were all these ideas about what NACLA was to be-a coordinating arm so people could keep in contact, a publishing arm, a solidarity group, a counter-Peace Corps, congresses, conferences, magazines-millions of ideas but absolutely no way of executing them...
...There was a lot of criticism about the government not moving fast enough, not moving in certain directions...
...Staff people were working like crazy to put out Subliminal Warfare, which showed the interrelation between the Pentagon, corporations and Latin American studies associations around the country...
...After the coup, people who had seen Chile as a model for Latin America were forced to reconsider a lot of things...
...For Fred, the seeds of that idea had always existed...
...Originally I planned on going there to set something up, then go to California to set up something similar...
...Fundraising, while still viewed as an awkward and eminently avoidable task, has become more systematic...
...Over its life span it has reflected all the experimentation, changes in direction and organizational crises, but it has appeared regularly, surviving all attempts to abandon it for other pursuits...
...He felt that if you don't have a deadline, regularity, you'll never come out...
...At home, after a silent postMcCarthy decade, the country was coming alive...
...policy, whose interests it expressed...
...Fred: "They would be co-equal...
...NACLA has taken on the task of digging that out and putting it in perspective, of documenting it...
...de Castro and Gerassi, eds., Latin American Radicalism (Vintage: 1969...
...We looked at the phenomenon of runaway shops, for example...
...The trend growing in SDS was more theoretical, more structural...
...But Fred thought the Newsletter was important...
...Fred: "It split off in February 1977 as another step beyond research vs...
...So once again it forced a painful redefinition...
...You can spend your whole life at it and never get out parts of the story that would let other people fill in the pieces...
...Everyone was asking, what do you mean by U.S...
...Now I don't like Somoza, and I hate Pinochet And you know I support them Sandinistas all the way But if I was Fidel Castro, I bet you wouldn't treat me this way Well, I just can't wait to read the latest by Burbach and Flynn Because all that agribusiness, you know I think that it's a sin But I'm gettin' beyond the border, you don't know what a state I'm in Well, now you've heard about my problem, and you know about my distress Yes, you've heard about my problem, and you know about my distress Oh, and by the way, did I ever send you my change of address...
...In terms of organizational discussions or political input there are no divisions...
...Even the attempts on the part of individuals to separate NACLA work from outside political commitments was often frustrated...
...We knew that a lot of people would look to NACLA for an orientation about that, and how do you give that without coming down on one side or another of what were very rigid ideological positions...
...In honor of its transformation, it also got a new name-Latin America & Empire Report-though it was 49update . update . update . update years before people finally broke the habit of referring to it as "the newsletter...
...solidarity in a NACLA Reportupdate . update update . update larger way than any other event in Latin America had, particularly in support of the Chilean resistance...
...The church in general had a more moralist understanding, but those we were working with understood the other position...
...Perhaps most important, the organization has carefully evolved a division of tasks within the collective, dividing the work more consciously between research, editorial and promotion, and administration...
...It lasted even as the "movement" itself subsided and as group after group folded...
...It was the only time I didn't get a consistent answer...
...Also, we never foresaw all the coordination problems...
...XV, No...
...The Dialectic of Focus Throughout this period, the emphasis on a U.S...
...In November of that year, 1978, NACLA East moved into a big new loft space and dug in for the long haul...
...As NACLA founder Fred Goff put it, "We were witnessing the collapse of the political facade that had been built up and accepted for many years...
...Bob: "I think this is the beginning of potentially the most influential period in NACLA's history, because events in Latin America are of transcendental significance...
...The process was not a good one, we admitted after years...
...Or is it about getting it in the hands of as many new people as you possibly NACLA Reportupdate update . update update can...
...But together with changes taking place within the United States, and even within NACLA itself, further reorientations in the Report began to appear...
...I don't think anybody in the whole city saw me...
...Helen: "Why 'congress...
...Was it NACLA's responsibility to be taking a position as an organization...
...The library buzzes with students who have been directed to its bulging files and periodical shelves...
...strategy in the region ["Central America-No Road Back," Vol...
...So we began examining some of those links that put the whole picture together in a coherent way...
...We were wrong, revolution obviously wasn't at hand, but we weren't atypical...
...Helen: "Can you talk more about how you defined the work...
...So obvious, but what an eyeopener!' Fred: "Many of the years I was in the organization we were scrambling, spinning our wheels...
...It's the one Marge Piercy writes about in Vida-she was working with NACLA around that time...
...But it wasn't sustainable...
...Now What Do We Do...
...These people felt very strongly about devoting tremendous resources towards Chile...
...It's not something you can put on a shelf for a while so you NACLAReportupdate . update , update * update can do something else, then come back and expect the gains to be still sitting there...
...records, congressional hearings, Pentagon reports, articles...
...Fred: "It soon became evident that we could spend most of our time debating what policies we would back, how broad a base it should have, what groups to include-it got too unwieldy for such a large and dispersed group...
...There wasn't much in between...
...the NACLA Report is reverentially regarded as a model...
...was not an exception...
...Helen Shapiro, currently a NACLA associate and Yale graduate student in economics, was on staff between 1977 and 1980...
...There was a system operating here...
...It was fun...
...Only a small fraction of those who committed themselves to shaping NACLA 's development were interviewed-just to calculate the number of people who have contributed their energies in the New York or California offices would be a research project in itself...
...It wasn't anti-theory, but a good theoretically-based analysis wasn't convincing without hard information to bring it to people's sense of reality...
...the dedication of committed political people...
...The decision on 46 the name North American Congress on Latin America came out of Chicago...
...There's a real tendency to obliterate these internal dynamics by saying U.S...
...And of course the administration of an office...
...Michael: "How sophisticated were we...
...It spurred some of the best work by the west coast on the U.S...
...And certainly we have to mention the tours that we've been able to lead to Nicaragua as another example of a new role we've begun to play...
...And what about all the other stuff I didn't get...
...Helen: "In those early days, people who thought Vietnam was important usually saw it in moral rather than political terms...
...In the end, I think we all realiz ed that the structure was untenable...
...The Future Helen: "What does the next period hold for NACLA-what possibilities, what obstacles, what worries...
...Mike Klare, who had been working on the Viet Report Magazine, joined in 1967, partly because NACLA had resources that could help him uncover university connections with the war machine...
...Richard Shaull, who had also been a Presbyterian missionary, *The Committee on Free Elections was organized and figureheaded by socialist Norman Thomas and others...
...The recent death of Jane Rothenberg, who worked in the New York office for five years, had affected all of NACLA very deeply...
...But it took a crisis in the organization in 1970 to set these plans in motion...
...impact-articles such as 'Facing the Blockade,' which came out before the coup, and some of the issues like the D.R...
...We still haven't worked out the tension between collectivity and efficiency...
...Carter's human rights policy was examined in detail...
...We are beginning to appreciate that division of labor doesn't have to equal hierarchy and inequality...
...Everywhere I go I meet extremely loyal readers, by virtue of the fact that the magazine has come out regularly for 15 years and has offered the only source of information in which they could have any kind of confidence...
...The organization is not a string of successes but a series of negotiations based on new situations requiring new definitions...
...That task was made easier by two NACLA Westers-Roger Burbach and Pat Flynn-staunch Californians both, who came to New York for the first year...
...Instead of a miscellany of articles, each issue often had a single running theme...
...He was right, but the debate went on for years...
...Steve V...
...action-in this case a division between providing resources and a service to people vs...
...Helen: "While we have clearly established that NACLA doesn't just respond in a knee-jerk fashion to events in Latin America, everyone I've interviewed agrees that the dynamism of events in Latin America does often rejuvenate the organization and gives us a renewed sense of purpose...
...Our areas of work and understanding were very atomized...
...Janet: "It started with the closing of the west coast office...
...update . update . update . update Activism vs...
...I went because I realized that inforNACLA Reportupdate . update . update . update mation on sugar existed in the business library and nowhere else...
...The U.S...
...The obvious solution was to cut back to six and put more resources into professional production...
...The United States had first committed military advisers and equipment to the South Vietnamese government...
...After the collapse of the anti-war movement, many of us went back to the drawing board...
...The crisis came to a head at a time when NACLA East was at a low point...
...But we were convinced we had to maintain it because a lot of Latin Americans came through here, the church relations, the centralization of the institutions we were studying, etc...
...NACLA w.as one.Its founding document stated: SeptlOct 1981 We therefore propose the founding of an independent research and study organization to encourage, produce and distribute information designed to identify and explain those elements and relationships of forces in the United States and Latin America which inhibit and frustrate urgently needed profound social and economic change...
...There had been a strong anti-working class component to the movement of the '60s, partly because 'hardhats' were beating us over the head with American flags...
...The lines of definition were drawn so sharp that either you were a pig or a friend...
...55update . update . update . update even though we were the most prepared to do so, given our past work on the reality there...
...It was a real turning point because it forced the remaining people in New York to be selfconscious about their responsibilities to the organization...
...One woman who must be mentioned in any history of NACLA is Margaret Flory, one of the big backers of the University Christian Movement (UCM...
...We feel this is the type of research which can be used in demythologizing Americans' present understanding of Latin America and can lead to significant action...
...operations...
...I wanted to know what were the social relations within Peruvian society which led to this new type of populist military government, and to be able to explain why it was legitimate for them to nationalize...
...It was sort of an ideological position...
...People there know on a day-to-day level that the American presence has a tremendous effect on their lives-unlike Americans, who are often surprised by it...
...Michael: "Originally, the Newsletter per se wasn't the first priority at all...
...For those three years and the three previous, all members of both offices would have marathon annual meetings on one of the coasts to deal with theupdate 9 update . update . update decisions, how we react to low points...
...What effects has Central America had on our work...
...The emphasis on Latin America and publishing the Newsletter helped perpetuate NACLA, to maintain it as an independent institution...
...Consolidation Once the dust had settled from the moves and the traumas, NACLA began the process of consolidation in earnest...
...More Changes The military coup in Chile was preceded by one in Uruguay the previous year, and followed by one in Argentina in 1976, each in countries where the revolutionary organizations were strong and mass movements were highly mobilized...
...The keynote speaker had been one of Kennedy's top advisers on Latin America, Richard Goodwin...
...Michael: "People were forcing you to declare yourself...
...With both the growth of NACLA and more ability to travel, we were able to respond to the sharper events in Latin America better and faster and it was crucial that we do so...
...SeptlOct 1981 That work was not new...
...As a regional war in Central America becomes a greater and greater likelihood, increasing numbers of people become concerned and involved...
...Studies of the apparel and electronics industries concentrated on issues of wages, working conditions and how aid to dictatorships helps make those conditions for workers attractive to U.S...
...By 1966, half of what would become a U.S...
...Official "White Papers" and other attempts at disinformation pour daily from the State Department, the Pentagon and the White House press office...
...Many of us knew intuitively that there was something wrong in that, but when people at events challenged us by saying, 'Why should I be for Puerto Rican independence or an end to the Philippine dictatorship...
...In NACLA East we became even more conscious that we didn't know enough about how economies function or how political formations function...
...It was only in the early '70s that people seriously got into studying Marxism...
...Sitting in your office, churning out a newsletter...
...But it could also be criticized for the same reason...
...That continued in the Left for years afterwards, with some arguing that the U.S...
...This was one of them...
...Many had been with NACLA a long time...
...The demonstration at the New York Hilton against the Foreign Policy Association, when Johnson's Secretary of State Dean Rusk got an award, was a similar case...
...People in NACLA helped to organize that movement, providing it with material, speakers, raising money for arp ad in the New York Times, putting out special issues, working within the solidarity groups, etc...
...Fred: "From the beginning I did not want to stay in New York...
...Survival Beyond Expectation Mike: "In the earlier period I never thought it would last, or had pretensions for it to last...
...We all still earn the same subsistence wage, and all Naclistas may join staff if they choose, without regard to tenure or part time/full time, both of which are an advance over old practices...
...And NACLA's going in that direction...
...It was no less a painful process for the California office...
...Every attempt was a disaster...
...Unlike the west coast office, it was in bad financial shape, it was understaffed, and people were tired...
...It forced people into more introspection, into trying to define themselves...
...The problem is that they don't have the documentation to prove it...
...investors...
...And, even as foundation money has become harder to get, sales of NACLA Reports and books have risen impressively...
...In the two offices a natural division of geographic focus began to take shape...
...Issues were sharply drawn and the repercussions on NACLA were tremendous...
...Again, Margaret Flory was instrumental, giving the group office space and getting NACLA its first funding...
...That made us start doing 'country studies'-an analysis of the internal social conditions...
...There is a threeperson steering committee which has no major decision-making power, but rather serves to troubleshoot and organize discussions around major issues...
...A lot of trade union caucuses, the more progressive union groups, and even some rank-andfile workers began to respond to our work...
...Cho.: I've got the mail room blues, and I've got 'em all the time I've got the mail room blues, and I've got 'em all the time I've been workin' in the mail room and I ain't got a dime @Bob Norman, 1981 Bob Norman, former editor of Sing Out!, the folk song magazine, is a musician and free lance journalist when he isn't engaged in prolonged popular war with changes in NACLA's subscription list...
...Should NACLA focus even more on the U.S...
...resistance to dogmatism...
...Chile is a good case of the U.S...
...Michael: "We left to form CDE because there was a lot of demand for that kind of service at NACLA and we wanted to become specialized enough to provide it...
...What about NACLA's constituency...
...Bob: "We've spoken to groups and with people we never had access to before...
...Helen: "Yet by mid 1981, all but two issues of the last 12 focused on the Latin American side of the equation...
...Also, we had access to some wonderful photography which needed better paper to be printed effectively...
...The idea, then, was not just to be a committee or council of a few people, but to have a large network of groups and individuals that would do education and action work...
...that was always very important in NACLA's conception...
...But everybody said yes...
...They finally disrupted the speech badly enough that it couldn't continue...
...So it's not a question that Nicaragua happens, so we go to Nicaragua, Mail Room Blues by Bob Norman Chorus: I've got the mail room blues, and I've got 'em all the time I've got the mail room blues, and I've got 'em all the time I've been workin' in the mail room and I ain't got a dime Well I got a letter in the mail room yesterday Yes I got a letter in the mail room yesterday Well I got a letter, and here's what the letter did say: How come you didn't send my new issue yet...
...Steve Volk, then a volunteer, and currently the longest-tenured staffer, remembers his first NACLA action...
...When there was an active movement in the '60s, NACLA's direction was not discussed in isolation from that...
...Also it was a Left in power, and under very particular circumstances...
...Judy: "We also decided it was time to stop looking like we were cranked out on a clandestine press in somebody's basement...
...Fred Goff, a key force in NACLA's founding, recalled how his own experiences led to the creation of NACLA...
...But of course we soon began to find that people didn't have enough time to both produce the materials and be actively involved at the grass roots level...
...Many of the publications NACLA relied on were smashed, the ability to travel and communicate was curtailed and it was cut off from much of its previous readership...
...SeptiOct 1981 The Newsletter In February 1967, the first eightpage NACLA Newsletter was published, a compilation of reprinted articles, contributions and original pieces...
...It doesn't require a million dollar think tank or PhD's in business to find out who's doing military research on campus, which corporations are involved in which countries, or which individuals in the Administration have ties to corporate banking or whatever and are perpetuating these interests, consciously or unconsciously...
...It rebuilt its staff, though not to the level necessary before...
...That was it, those were the two main meetings to set up NACLA...
...In the last five years it's been a period of institutionalization promo, longterm fundraising, research planning...
...During those years of heightened mobilization in the late '60s, NACLA contributed its particular skills, frequently to situations that had nothing to do with Latin America...
...But in the end they decided that two offices was no longer a viable reality and that the organization should consolidate in New York...
...I saw him in Chile just before the coup and he asked what kind of building NACLA had, how big it was...
...Some got involved in workplace organizing, others in community struggles or solidarity work and others in theoretical study...
...Helen: "When and why was the Data Center formed as a separate entity from NACLA...
...role in these transformations, and about who benefitted...
...I said we only rented part of a floor, and shared desks...
...What we decided we could do with our limited money was publish a newsletter, hold seminars for other groups that needed our services, attend conferences, do some original research, maintain correspondence with people in Latin America and help them with specific requests...
...From that meeting, people at NACLA, myself included, formed what became the Union of Radical Latin Americanists, which in turn later became the core of Latin American Perspectives...
...So we set up two, duplicating files and everything...
...freedom of exploration...
...How do you cut through the veil that obscures these relationships...
...It had an enormous multiplier effect...
...The anti-war movement was gathering steam, and within it chapters of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) were springing up on the nation's campuses...
...That was one of the thrusts behind the 1970 RMG [Research Methodology Guide]-trying to get local groups set up who could do research on institutions in their own communities...
...Over the next fifteen years it would see two name changes, various changes in format and content, and the reduction from ten issues a year to six...
...Mike: "Another form of affirmation is that there are groups in other continents that have modeled themselves after NACLA-the Pacific Asia Resource Center in Tokyo, groups in England, Australia, groups doing Middle East work, Africa News in Durham, North Carolina...
...Steve V.: "Although I still wasn't back from Chile, there was an event that I've always thought of as one of NACLA's high points...
...Was what you had done for the last three or four years relevant to that new stage...
...Long phone calls were out of the question and letters were too cumbersome...
...Now you have to present a more coherent, complex argument...
...SeptlOct 1981 Helen: "How did the two offices define their relationship to each other...
...Steve V.: "It was a hard time for intellectuals, but NACLA was finally able to get over the guilt-tripping and find the guts to say, this is our task...
...Fred: "During the occupation of Columbia University in 1968, we virtually closed down for a few days...
...yet "free" elections there in 1966 were a farce...
...Michael: "For a couple of years there were large divisions in the organization that we didn't know how to bridge in a productive way...
...NACLA West began focusing much of its work and contacts on Mexico and Central America, the high point of which was Susanne Jonas' and David Tobis' book on Guatemala in 1974, while NACLA East was particularly influenced by the Puerto Rican movement which had a tremendous presence in New York in the early '70s under the leadership of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party...
...It looked like they were going to follow in the footsteps of the Cuban revolution...
...Fred: "What was needed and what we could contribute was in-depth, behind-the-scenes analysis, and that was confirmed by the response we got...
...It was a very famous speech, and he held a press conference afterwards...
...He said, 'Is there some noble purpose in putting all this energy into researching and writing the report for yourselves...
...When I went to the business library at the University of Michigan, it was never for a course...
...We wanted other people to come in and help with it, use it, and we wanted it to go beyond just Latin America...
...Out of that came the pamphlet, Who Rules Columbia...
...Or perhaps use other third world countries to illustrate some of the questions we were asking...
...Are you willing to live with that and commit yourself to it...
...Responsibility for the Newsletter would alternate, and each office would have editorial autonomy within guidelines to be set out in annual meetings...
...In 1970, NACLA's circulation was still only 1,500 regular subscribers...
...Steve Abrecht, who joined NACLA in 1972, recalls another reason for that pervasive view: "At that same time the guerrilla movement in Latin America was very much on the upswing...
...The other obstacle to better journalism was when we got 52 heavy into political economy and began to inject a lot of theoretical Marxist concepts, which came out very heavy-handed...
...but we opt for collectivity when there's doubt...
...About that same period, a number of people who had been in New York trekked west to open an office in the Bay Area...
...So we began a much more conscious study of political economy and this in turn inspired more carefully thought out country studies...
...Later we did 'Dying for Work,' which examined the same thing with regard to exports and production abroad of hazardous materials...
...I don't mean to imply that we've evolved socialism in one office...
...Consider NACLA's work on Columbia University, on Nixon, etc...
...Some Giant Steps Beginning in 1977, a series of internal changes were introduced that would mark a real maturing of the organization...
...Actually, last January I was on television in Washington at precisely the moment the hostages arrived back from Iran, right when they were walking down the steps of the plane...
Vol. 15 • September 1981 • No. 5
