It was not until the late sixties that Latin American literature began to
make a significant mark on the U.S. cultural scene. Given the aggres-
sive support of Latin American authors by Casa de las Américas and the
rising popularity of modern Latin American fiction in Europe at the
time, champions of Hispanic and Brazilian culture, grouped around the
Center for Inter-American Relations in New York, decided it was time
for this country to catch up.

The center was established in 1967 by David Rockefeller, then presi-
dent of the Chase Manhattan Bank. Aware that earlier attempts to intro-
duce Latin American letters had had only a limited impact, he wanted
the organization to be a vehicle for a closer and continuing rapport with
the United States' southern neighbors. To this end the center's literature
program strove to gain a reputation among mainstream critics and pub-
lishers for Latin American writers. Over a period of fifteen years the
center worked as a clearinghouse for Latin writing. It subsidized transla-
tions, stirred up enthusiasm for novelists and poets among publishers
and reviewers from prominent New York publications and provided an
outlet where Latin American culture could be discussed.

Unlike poets, who incorporated into their work European avant-garde
ideas during the twenties and thirties, Latin American novelists, with
some exceptions, were slower in assimilating modernism. When they
finally did, however, they radically changed the course of Ibero-Ameri-
can letters. In the early sixties South America witnessed an outburst of

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