ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to contribute to the history of Hispanic cultural mediators as participants in the networks of international modernity during the first half of the twentieth century. Two international writers’ meetings that were held in Buenos Aires in September 1936 are presented: the XIV International PEN Clubs Congress and the VII Conversation of the League of Nations Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, organized by the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation (IICI). A study of the official publications from both institutions is carried out to then focus on the specific interventions by delegates Victoria Ocampo (at the PEN Clubs Meeting) and Pedro Enríquez Ureña (at the entretien). To add to the former, the key issues from Francisco Romero, Eduardo Mallea, Carlos Reyles and Alcides Arguedas’s speeches are mentioned, mainly the political commitment that writers should assume and bonds between the European culture and the American cultures, as well as the insertion of writers in the publishing world. The chapter states that, by the mid 1930s, the PEN International and Intellectual Cooperation intellectual networks interacted with the publishing networks of international reach that were present in Latin America: Ercilla and Sur, and later Losada.
