LATIN-AMERICAN COUNTRY FILES, 1930-1985

Primarily documents the IADF's involvement with various Latin-American countries. Subjects covered include documentation of human and civil rights violations within each country, subsequent protests, and publicity. Also includes files on prominent individuals with whom Grant corresponded as well as documentation of social and economic conditions and political and cultural life. Includes some items from earlier dates which Grant chose to file by country. Document types include correspondence, reports, press releases, publications and clippings.

Sub-series are Latin-American Country Files, 1930-1979 and Latin-American Country Files, 1970-1985. The bulk of the second sub-series dates from 1980 to 1985. Latin-American Country Files, 1930-1979 (11 cubic feet), which covers the most intense period of IADF activity, is by far the more important of the two sub-series. Countries documented in this sub-series include Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

The Argentina files (1.2 cubic feet) document Anti-Semitism and other human rights abuses under the Perón regime in the 1950s and the military dictatorship of 1961-1963. Important correspondents include members of the Frondizi presidential family, politician and IADF member Ernesto Sammartino, and journalists Juan Antonio Solari and Silvano Santander. Of particular interest is the María Elena Sent case, a child custody case which came to Grant's attention. Mrs. Sent's correspondence includes detailed descriptions of the political situation in Argentina.

The Bolivia files (.2 cubic feet) include documentation of unlawful arrests and imprisonments and women's activism. Prominent correspondents include Presidents Víctor Paz Estenssoro, Hernán Siles Suazo, General Hugo Banzer Suárez; and women activists Dr. Rosa Lema Dolz de Lluch and María Teresa Valverde. Of particular interest is documentation of the case of Delfina Burgoa, the mother of author Ramiro Reynago Burgoa, whose books were banned by the Banzer government. Not a political activist herself, she disappeared in 1972 with no charges or trial. Also of interest is the case of Mary Elizabeth Harding (1972), a former nun accused of guerilla activities. The Brazil files (.25 cubic feet) include documentation of human rights abuses, particularly torture of prisoners during the period 1968-1972. Correspondents include Grant's friend and IADF member Patricia Bildner and artists Olga Mary Pedrosa, Misabel Pedrosa Xavier, and Carlos Lacerda.

A large part of the Chile files (1 cubic foot) consist of articles and reports pertaining to the 1973 military coup. Important correspondents include Christian Democratic president Eduardo Frei and IADF conference delegates Luis Bossay and Radomiro Tomic. Of particular interest is documentation of the case of Jaime Castillo Velasco, a lawyer who was forced into exile by the military regime; the case of María de Tapia Espinoza, whose husband disappeared after witnessing a shooting in 1973; and the arrests of the Siloists, a religious group, in 1974. The Colombia files (.4 cubic feet) include reports on the dictatorial regime of Mariano Ospina Pérez (1948-1949); reports on religious persecution by the Evangelical Confederation of Colombia (1952-1960) and documentation of political opposition by the newspaper El Tiempo (1951-1956). Important correspondents include Germán Arciniegas, journalist, academic and IADF member; Colombian presidents Eduardo Santos (1938-1942) and Carlos Lleras Restrepo; and woman activist Tina de Otero. The Costa Rican files (.7 cubic feet) include a large amount of correspondence between Grant's close friend and leader in the IADF José Figueres, President of Costa Rica from 1948-1949; 1953-1958 and 1970-1974. Other important correspondents include Figueres' wife Karen Olsen de Figueres, and Costa Rican presidents Daniel Oduber, Francisco Orlich, and Luis Alberto Monge. Subjects documented in these files include the Nicaraguan crisis (1954-1955) and anti-Castro movements in Costa Rica (1970-1976).

The Cuba files (1.6 cubic feet) include documentation of the political situation both before and after the 1959 revolution. Important correspondents include Aureliano Sánchez Arango, politician and exile activist; and Mirta Cerra, artist. Of particular interest is documentation of the case of Huber Matos, one of the leaders of the revolution whom Castro accused of treason and imprisoned for 20 years. A large part of the file consists of planillas (forms) from a survey of Cuban political prisoners conducted by Grant from 1965 to 1967. The Dominican Republic files (.25 cubic feet) include documentation of persecution under the regime of dictator Rafael Trujillo. Of particular interest are the cases of Tancredo Martínez, an activist who was shot while in exile in Mexico; and Gerald Murphy, the pilot who was murdered to hide his role in the kidnapping of activist and IADF member Jesús de Galíndez. Also includes documentation of Grant's trip to Santo Domingo in 1962.

The Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, and Mexico files are all small and of lesser importance. Correspondents provided Grant with information about the political situation in each country. Of interest is correspondence with Ecuadoran artist Boanerges Mideros; Haitian political exile Camille L'hérisson, Honduran president Ramón Villeda Morales, and Mexican pianist Esperanza Pulido. Also of interest is documentation of the case of Mauricio Borgonova, a Salvadorian foreign minister who was kidnaped by left-wing terrorists in 1977. The Mexican files contain a large amount of material on the Inter-American Regional Organization of Workers (O.R.I.T.), including correspondence with Secretary General Arturo Jáuregui.

The Nicaragua files (.8 cubic feet) include documentation of protests against the Somoza dictatorship (1952-1959); and material relating to the IADF's campaign for democracy in Nicaragua (1978-1979). Important correspondents include journalist and politician Pedro Joaquín Chamorro; his wife and later president Violeta Chamorro; and Sandinista priest, poet and activist Ernesto Cardenal. The Paraguay files (.5 cubic feet) include documentation of human rights violations, political opposition, and protests against the Stroessner dictatorship, including reports and lists of political prisoners. Of particular interest are reports on the Aché Indians, including Richard Arens' Genocide in Paraguay. Important correspondents include human rights activists Carmen Casco de Lara Castro and Fr. Ramón Talavera.

The Peru files (1 cubic foot) contain a wide variety of information about Aprismo, the political philosophy of the APRA party, including correspondence and information about Aprismo founder Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, with whom Grant became close during his five-year exile in the Colombian embassy in Lima. Other important correspondents include president Fernando Belaunde Terry, diplomat and politician Andrés Townsend, and artist Julia Codesido. The Puerto Rico files (.2 cubic feet) are chiefly notable for the correspondence with Grant's friend, Governor Luis Muñoz Marín.

The largest group of files in this series is Venezuela (1.6 cubic feet). These files contain a great deal of information about Acción Democrática (AD), the political party founded by Rómulo Betancourt, and about the Movimiento Electoral del Pueblo, which broke away from AD. The most important correspondent is Venezuelan president and IADF founder and key member Rómulo Betancourt. Other important correspondents include presidents Rómulo Gallegos, Raúl Leoni, Carlos Andrés Pérez, and Jaime Lusinchi from Acción Democrática; president and founder of the Christian Democratic party (COPEI) Rafael Caldera; Jóvito Villalba, leader of the Republican Democratic Union (URD) party ; and AD activists Gonzalo Barrios, Luis Augusto Dubuc, César Rondón Lovera, and Augusto Malavé Villalba. Of particular interest are the cases of Alberto Carnevali, an AD activist who was imprisoned under the dictatorship of Marco Pérez Jiménez; and Eduardo Machado, a Communist who was imprisoned under the Leoni administration. The series most notably documents IADF participation in efforts to publicize human rights violations and help exiles during the dictatorship of Pérez Jiménez.

The second sub-series, Latin-American Country Files, 1970-1985(4 cubic feet), primarily dates from 1980 to1985, when the IADF was operating chiefly as an information bank. Sub-series document human rights and political and social conditions in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Curacao, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Important correspondents include Bolivian President Walter Guevara Arce, Chilean President Eduardo Frei, Germán Arciniegas, Karen Olsen de Figureres, presidents Daniel Oduber and Luis Alberto Monge of Costa Rica, Venezuelan presidents Rómulo Betancourt, Luis Herrera Campins, and Carlos Andrés Pérez.

Of particular interest are human rights violations under the military dictatorship in Argentina in the 1970s, such as the case of Angela Auad de Genovés, who disappeared while attending a party at which were relatives of political prisoners. Also of interest is the case of Douglas Jones, an American living in Bolivia who was openly critical of the oil companies and was persecuted. The Chile file documents opposition to the military regime of Augusto Pinochet, including the case of Orlando Letelier, an official in the Allende administration who was killed in a terrorist attack in the United States in 1976. Of interest in the El Salvador files is material about Grant's trip to observe the elections in 1982. Of interest in the Paraguay files is the case of Joelito Filártigo, a teenager who was kidnaped, tortured, and killed in an attempt to extract information about his father.

The series includes two indexes. The main index is an item-level index to the first sub-series of the LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRY FILES (excluding Chile and some Cuba and Nicaragua material). Arranged by folder heading, the index is an item-by-item description of the contents of each folder, including names, dates and brief descriptions, or in some cases, excerpts from the contents. Items are classified as either letters or documents and are given numbers based on the original order of each folder. The Paraguay section of the index contains an additional index of political prisoners, divided between men and women, and then alphabetically by name. This index gives names, dates incarcerated, and keys the name to numbered lists of political prisoners in the Paraguay section. The second index is of correspondence up to 1959. This index is arranged by country, with individuals listed when there is no reference to a particular country. Most cards are for the Dominican Republic and Peru, and in some cases duplicate the material in the longer index. Found with these cards was a description of how the index was made.

Oversize items stored separately include four broadsides and an article.

See also: newspaper box 86.