A complicated mission: The United States and Spanish students during the Johnson administration

Abstract

This paper examines how the Johnson administration implemented new public diplomacy programmes aimed at projecting a positive image of the USA among Spanish university students as part of the cultural Cold War. In other words, the following pages are an analysis of the exchange diplomacy and the ideological action which the superpower deployed in Spain in order to gain influence over young people. However, the American ideal spread by these programmes did not manage to improve the image of US policies which students considered illegitimate and lacking in moral authority since the country was seen to be a ‘mainstay of the Franco regime’. Between 1963 and 1969, the art of public diplomacy did not succeed in counteracting the damage done to American credibility caused by collaborating with an ally which was too politically compromising. This deligitimisation was an example of the gradual weakening of bipolar restraint strategies as a guarantee of stability faced with the future succession of Franco.

Notes

Oscar J. Martin Garcia is a JAE Postdoctoral Fellow at the International Studies Department, Centre of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Centre for Scientific Research, CSIC, Madrid, Spain.

1 The main study on the military pacts and the US's main objectives in Spain during the second half of the twentieth century is Ángel Viñas's En las garras del águila. Los pactos con Estados Unidos, de Francisco Franco a Felipe González (Barcelona: Crítica, 2003).

2 ‘US Policy Assessment’, 9-5-1968. National Archives and Record Administration (NARA). Record Group of the Department of State (RG) 59. CFP, 1967–1969. Political and Defence. Box 2493.

3 With the exception of certain works such as Lorenzo Delgado, ‘“After Franco, What?” La diplomacia pública de Estados Unidos y la preparación del post-franquismo,’ in Claves internacionales en la transición española, eds. Óscar Martín and Manuel Ortiz (Madrid: Los Libros de la Catarata, 2010) and Francisco Rodríguez, ¿Antídoto contra el antiamericanismo? American Studies en España, 1945–1969 (Valencia: Universitat de Valencia, 2010).

4 Jean Grugel, ‘Contextualizing democratization. The changing significance of transnational factors and non-state actors’, in Democracy Without Borders: Transnationalisation and Conditionality in New Democracies ed. Jean Grugel (Florence, KY, Routledge, 1999), 3.

5 An introduction to the cooperation between the government and private groups in matters of cultural foreign policy in Scott Lucas, ‘Negotiating Freedom’, in The US Government, Citizen Groups and the Cold War. The State-Private Network ed. Helen Laville and Hugh Wilford (London: Routledge, 2006), 3–12.

6 The theory on the changing nature of power in Joseph Nye, ‘Soft Power’, Foreign Policy, 80, (1990): 153–171; and by the same author, Bound to lead: the changing nature of American power (New York: Basic Books, 1990). The debate on the concept of public and cultural diplomacy in Jessica Gienow Hecht, Mark Donfried, ‘The Model of Cultural Diplomacy. Power, Distance, and the Promise of Civil Society’, in Searching for a Cultural Diplomacy, eds. Jessica Gienow-Hecht, Mark Donfried (New York, Berghahn Books, 2010), 13–29 and Richard Arndt, The First Resort of Kings: American Cultural Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century (Washington: Potomac Books, 2005), ix–xxi.

7 In 1962, various different studies undertaken by the United States Information Agency (USIA) revealed how the image of the Kennedy administration had plummeted abroad, an adverse trend which became more marked under Johnson's presidency. Mark Haefele, ‘John F. Kennedy, USIA and World Public Opinion,’ Diplomatic History, 25, no. 1, (2001): 64–65; Nicholas Cull, The Cold War and the United States Information Agency (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 285. The socio-economic changes of the ‘golden age’ of the 1960s in Tony Judt, Postwar. A History of Europe since 1945 (London: William Heinemann, 2005), 390–400 and Arthur Marwick, The Sixties. Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, 1958–1974 (Oxford: OUP, 1998), 36.

8 The differences at the heart of the ‘free world’ in Thomas Schwartz, Lyndon Johnson and Europe: In the Shadow of Vietnam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 9–10. The consequences of the student revolts on American foreign policy in Martin Klimke, The other Alliance. Student Protest in West Germany and the United States in the Global Sixties (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 192–193.

9 ‘Inspection Report USIS-Spain’, 29-5-1959. (NARA), Record Group of the US Information Agency (RG306), Inspection Reports and Related Records, 1954–62, Box 8 and ‘Operations Plan for Spain’, 6-11-1959. NARA, RG59, Bureau of European Affairs (BEA), Country Director for Spain and Portugal, Spain 1956–66, Box 5. Pablo León, Sospechosos habituales. El cine norteamericano, Estados Unidos y la España franquista, 1939–1960 (Madrid: CSIC, 2010), 430; Lorenzo Delgado, Viento de poniente. El programa Fulbright en España (Madrid: Comisión Fulbright, 2009), 55–68; Rosa Pardo, ‘Las relaciones hispano-norteamericanas durante la presidencia de L. B. Johnson: 1964–1968,’ Studia Histórica, Historia Contemporánea, 22, (2004), 138–139.

10 ‘Memorandum’, 14-4-1961 and ‘Frank Ortiz to William Walker’, 21-4-1965. NARA, RG. 59, BEA, Country Director for Spain and Portugal 1956–1966, Box 5 and 2.

11 In recent years, a growing number of studies have established a close relationship between the social unrest of the 1960s, the weakening of the Franco regime and the post-Franco political change in Spain. See, among others, Rafael Quirosa-Cheyrouze ed., La sociedad española en la transición. Los movimientos sociales en el proceso democratizador (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2011) and Óscar Martín García, A tientas con la democracia (Madrid: Los Libros de la Catarata, 2008).

12 ‘USIS Country Plan for Spain- FY 1961’, 25-6-1960. NARA, RG306, Office of Research. Foreign Services Dispatches, 1954–65, Box 4.

13 A good number of studies have shown that the Franco regime lost control of the universities in the 1960s. During this period Spanish campuses became a constant focus of unrest, disturbances, and protest against the dictatorship led by the communists. See, for example, Elena Hernández, Miguel Ángel Ruiz, and Marc Baldó, Estudiantes contra Franco (1939–1975). Oposición política y movilización juvenil (Madrid: La Esfera de los Libros, 2007), 23; Eduardo González, Rebelión en las aulas. Movilización y protesta estudiantil en la España contemporánea, 1865–2008 (Madrid: Alianza, 2009), 260–262; Elena Hernández, ‘Estudiantes en la universidad española (1956–1975): Cambio generacional y movilización antifranquista,’ in El franquismo y la transición en España. Desmitificación y reconstrucción de la memoria de una época, ed. Damián González (Madrid: Los Libros de la Catarata, 2008), 56–58.

14 ‘US Policy Assessment’, 30-6-1967. NARA, RG59, CFP, 1967–1969, Political and Defence, Box 2493; ‘Country Plan for Spain’, 3-12-1964. NARA, RG59, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (BECA), 1955–66, Box 31; ‘Inspection Report USIS Spain’, 29-5-1959. NARA, RG306, Inspection Reports and Related Records, 1954–62, Spain, Box 8.

15 Lately, some worthy studies have appeared on the US position during the final period of the Franco regime and the democratic transition. However, these works make scant reference to the effects of the loss of prestige of the American model caused by it being identified with the dictatorship. See, for example, Encarnación Lemus, Estados Unidos y la Transición española. Entre la Revolución de los Claveles y la Marcha Verde (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2011) and Charles Powell, El amigo americano. España y Estados Unidos. De la dictadura a la democracia (Madrid: Galaxia Gutenberg, 2011).

16 Laurence Whitehead, ‘The International Politics of Democratization from Portugal (1974) to Iraq (2003),’ in The International Politics of Democratization. Comparative Perspectives ed. Nuno Texeira (London, Routledge, 2008) 8–15; Helen Graham and Alejandro Quiroga, ‘After the fear was over? What came after dictatorships in Spain, Greece and Portugal,’ in The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History ed. Dan Stone (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012), 502–525.

17 A similar argument is used for the Portuguese case in Mario del Pero, ‘Which Chile, Allende? Henry Kissinger and the Portuguese Revolution’, Cold War History, 11, no. 4 (2011): 647.

18 ‘The White House. Memorandum for the Secretary of State’, 1963. NARA, RG59, CFP, Box 3254 and ‘Some General Observations on United States Policy Towards Spain’, 25-6-1965. NARA, RG.59, BEA. Country Director for Spain and Portugal, 1956–1966, Box 2.

19 This type of approach was closely related to the influence which the modernisation theory had on American foreign policy during the 1960s. See Nils Gilman, Mandarins of the Future. Modernization Theory in Cold War America (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); David Ekbladh, The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order, (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2009) and Michael E. Latham, Modernization as Ideology. American Social Science and Nation Building in the Kennedy Era, (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000).

20 Francisco Rodríguez, ¿Antídoto contra el antiamericanismo? American Studies en España, 1945–1969 (Valencia: Universitat de Valencia, 2010), 35.

21 ‘Country Plan for Spain’, 3-12-1964. NARA, RG59, BECA, 1955–66, Box 31; ‘Country Plan for Spain’, 30-09-1965, NARA, RG306, Exhibits Division, Records Concerning Exhibits in Foreign Countries, 1955–67, Box 29; ‘Emphasis on Youth. Embassy's Youth Program’, 30-6-1964. CFP, 1964–1966, Culture and Information, Box 402.

22 Marc Frey, ‘Tools of Empire: Persuasion and the United State's Modernizing Mission in Southeast Asia,’ Diplomatic History 27, (2003): 543–548. ‘Country Assessment Report, USIS Spain 1961’, 15-2-1962. NARA, RG306, Office of Research, Foreign Services Dispatches, 1954–65, Box 4.

23 ‘Discussions with Christian Democrat Leaders in Barcelona’, 6-7-1966 and ‘Student Reaction to B52 Crash’, 5-3-1966. NARA, RG59, CFP, 1964–1966, Political and Defence, Box 2663; ‘From American Embassy to Secretary of State’, 21-2-1967, NARA, RG59, CFP, 1967–1969, Political and Defence, Box 2489; Jöel Kotek, ‘Youth Organizations as a Battlefield in the Cold War,’ in The Cultural Cold War in Western Europe, 1945–1960, eds. Giles Scott-Smith and Hans Krabbendam (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2003), 168–169 and Karen M. Paget, ‘From Cooperation to Covert Action: The United States Government and Students, 1940–1952,’ in The US Government, Citizens Groups and the Cold War: The State-Private Network, eds. Helen Laville and Hugh Wilford (London: Routledge, 2006), 66–81.

24 On right-wing anti-Americanism in Spain, see Daniel Fernández, ‘La erosión del antiamericanismo conservador durante el franquismo,’ Ayer, 75, (2009): 189–221.

25 Paul A. Kramer, ‘Is the World Our Campus? International Students and US Global Power in the Long Twentieth Century,’ Diplomatic History, 33, no. 5 (2009): 776.

26 Giles Scott-Smith, Networks of Empire. The US State Department's Foreign Leader Program in the Netherlands, France and Britain, 1950–70 (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2008) 418; Antonio de Lima, ‘The role of International educational exchanges in public diplomacy’, Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 3, no. 3 (2007): 240.

27 Delgado, Viento de poniente, 60–68.

28 ‘Country Plan for Spain’, 4-1-1963, NARA, RG59, BECA, 1955–66, Box 31 and ‘Emphasis on Youth: Pilot University Student Hostel Project’, 14-10-1963. NARA, RG59, CFP, Box 3248. See also, for example, Jonathan Zimmerman, Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century (Cambridge: MA, 2006), 33–45 and Oliver Schmidt, ‘No Innocents Abroad: The Salzburg Impetus and American Studies in Europe,’ in Here, There and Everywhere: The Foreign Politics of American Popular Culture, ed. Reinhold Wagenleitner and Elaine Tyler (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2000), 64.

29 ‘Education and Cultural Exchanges: Country Program Plans and Priorities for FY 66 and 67’, 24-6-1965 and ‘Educational and Cultural Exchange: Submission of FY 1964 Proposed Educational Exchange Program’, 12-4-1962. NARA. RG59. BECA, 1955–66, Box 9.

30 In this respect, it is interesting to read the memoirs of Ambler Moss, the American consul in Barcelona between 1964 and 1966, Barres i estrelles. Mem'ories d'un ambaixador nord-americ'a a Catalunya (Barcelona: Símbol, 2006).

31 ‘Country Plan for Spain’, 3-12-1964, NARA, RG59, BECA, 1955–66, Box 31; ‘Justification for the Present Educational and Cultural Exchange Program in Spain’, 23-10-1965, NARA, RG. 59, BEA, Country Director for Spain and Portugal, 1956–1966, Box 2; Lorenzo Delgado, ‘¿El ‘amigo americano’? España y Estados Unidos durante el franquismo,’ Studia Histórica, Historia Contemporánea, 21 (2003): 264.

32 ‘Programming of PL 480 Funds for Madrid Student Center’, 26-11-1965, NARA, RG. 59, BEA, Country Director for Spain and Portugal, 1956–1966, Box 9.

33 ‘Embassy Madrid to Department of State’, 30-9-1966, NARA, RG59, CFP, 1964–1966, Culture and Information, Box 402.

34 ‘Vietnam Talk’, 23-6-1966. NARA, RG.59, BEA, Country Director for Spain and Portugal, 1956–1966, Box 9 and ‘Spain's University Students: Their Views on Domestic and International Issues’, May 1965. NARA, RG306, Office of Reasearch, Reports, 1964–74, Box 25; Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2000), 48–54.

35 ‘Annual Assessment Report for Spain’, 27-12-1965, NARA, RG306, Exhibits Division, Records Concerning Exhibits in Foreign Countries, 1955–67, Box 29; ‘Emphasis on Youth’, 23-3-1964, NARA. RG59, CFP, 1964–1966, Culture and Information, Box 402. Also see Nicholas Cull, The Cold War and the United States Information Agency. American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 286.

36 Several of these intellectuals regularly participated in activities organised by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the intellectual alliance funded by the CIA in order to counteract communism during the cultural Cold War. See Giles Scott-Smith, The Politics of Apolitical Culture. The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA and post-war American hegemony, Manchester, Routledge, 2007. For the Spanish case, see Fabiola de Santisteban, ‘El desembarco de la Fundación Ford en España,’ Ayer, 75 (2009): 160.

37 ‘From American Embassy to Secretary of State’, 21-2-1967, NARA, RG59, CFP, 1967–1969. Political and Defence. Box 2489 and ‘Emphasis on Youth. Student Discussion Group Initiated’, 4-5-1964, NARA, RG59, CFP, 1964–1966, Culture and Information, Box 402.

38 ‘Annual Assessment Report for Spain’, 27-12-1965, NARA, RG306, Exhibits Division, Records Concerning Exhibits in Foreign Countries, 1955–67, Box 29.

39 ‘Opus Dei's views of the university crisis as expressed by the editors of Diagonal’, 22-12-1965, NARA, RG59, CFP, 1964–1966, Culture and Information, Box 372 and ‘Theatre Week at the University of Valladolid’, 31-3-1965, NARA, RG59, CFP, 1964–1966, Culture and Information, Box 372.

40 ‘Student Unrest’, 28-9-1968, NARA, RG59, CFP, 1967–1969, Political and Defence, Box 2489.

41 ‘Unrest in the University of Barcelona. A Professor's Views’, 17-2-1967, NARA, RG59, CFP, 1967–1969, Culture and Information, Box 355 and ‘USIA: Country Plan for Spain’, 1-4-1963, NARA, RG 59, BECA, 1955–1966, Box 31. On the ideological crusade against communism, see Kenneth Osgood, Total Cold War. Eisenhower's Secret propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad (Lawrence: University of Arkansas Press, 2006), 287–304.

42 Pablo León, ‘Los canales de difusión del mensaje norteamericano en España, 1945–1960’, Ayer, 75 (2009): 142–143.

43 ‘Annual Assessment Report for Spain’, 27-12-1965, NARA, RG306, Exhibits Division, Records Concerning Exhibits in Foreign Countries, 1955–67, Box 29.

44 ‘Theatre Week at the University of Valladolid’, 31-3-1965 and ‘Incident at Salamanca During Cultural Program’, 5-3-1968, NARA, RG59, CFP, 1964–1966, Culture and Information, Box 372 and 328.

45 León, ‘Los canales de difusión’, 149–152.

46 ‘USIA: Country Program for Spain’, 14-3-1964, NARA, RG59, BECA, 1955–1966, Box 31.

47 ‘Country Plan for Spain’, 3-12-1964, NARA, RG59, BECA, 1955–66, Box31; ‘Evaluation of Binational Centers’, 28-3-1963, NARA, RG306, Office of Research, Foreign Services Dispatches, 1954–65, Box 4. On the creation of binational centres, see León, ‘Los canales de difusión’, 152–156 and Sospechosos habituales, 430.

48 ‘US Policy Assessment’, 30-6-1967, NARA, RG59, CFP, 1967–1969, Political and Defence, Box 2493.

49 On university exchange programmes, see John E. Bowman, ‘Educating American Undergraduates Abroad: The Development of Study Abroad Programs by American Colleges and Universities’ (Occasional Papers, Council on International Education Exchange, 24, 1987): 33–45.

50 Osgood, 214–216 and 234–252.

51 ‘US Policy Assessment’, 30-6-1967, NARA, RG59, CFP, 1967–1969, Political and Defence, Box 2493 and ‘Student Unrest’, 28-9-1968, NARA, RG59, CFP, 1967–1969, Political and Defence, Box 2489. Such negative associations were widespread throughout many sectors of Spanish society during the last few years of the Franco regime and during the democratic transition. Rosa Pardo, ‘La política norteamericana,’ Ayer, 49 (2003):41–43; Antonio Niño, ‘50 años de relaciones entre España y Estados Unidos,’ Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea, 25 (2003): 14 and Carlos Alonso, ‘Miradas torcidas. Percepciones mutuas entre España y Estados Unidos’ (Working Paper, Real Instituto Elcano, 22, 2003), 6.

52 ‘Substantive Comment on Post Performance and Reporting’, NARA, RG59, BEA, Country Director for Spain and Portugal, 1956–1966, Box 2 y ‘Embassy Madrid to Department of State’, 30-9-1966, NARA, RG59, CFP, 1964–1966, Culture and Information, Box 402.

53 ‘Student Unrest’, 28-9-1968, NARA, RG59, CFP, 1967–1969, Political and Defence, Box 2489.

54 ‘Student Unrest’, 28-9-1968, NARA, RG59, CFP, 1967–1969, Political and Defence, Box 2489.

55 Antonio Varsori, ‘Crisis and stabilization in Southern Europe during the 1970s: Western strategies, European instruments,’ Journal of European Integration History, 15 (2009): 7–13.

56 Mario del Pero, ‘The Limits of Détente. The United States and the Crisis of the Portuguese Regime,’ in The Making of Détente. Eastern and Western Europe in the Cold War, 1965–1975 eds. Wilfred Loth and George Soutou (London: Routledge, 2008), 221–240; Jeremi Suri, Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Dètente (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2003), 11–23.

57 ‘US Policy Assessment’, 30-6-1967, NARA, RG59, CFP, 1967–1969, Political and Defence, Box 2493 and ‘Impact of Youth and the US National Interest; Mission Youth Program’, 1-4-1970, NARA, RG59, Political and Defence, 1970–1973, Box 2597.

58 Delgado, ‘After Franco, What?’, 118–125.