Objective/Context:

This article analyzes several factors that in the first half of the 1960s helped establish the link between Vivian Trías, the outstanding Uruguayan intellectual and politician, who defined himself as a Latin-Americanist and tercerista, and who would get explicitly distant from the communist world and the StB, the Czechoslovak secret service subordinated to the interests of the KGB.

Methodology:

The analysis is mainly based on sources from the Czechoslovak intelligence archive which are supplemented with texts published by Trías.

Originality:

Analyzing the specific case of Uruguayan tercerismo, represented by Trías, this research study presents a new look on the challenges brought by the Cuban-Soviet approach within the non-communist Latin-American left. Furthermore, it gives a new value to the role played by the communist secret services in the Latin-American Cold War.

Conclusions:

While before 1961, terceristas saw in the Soviet Union a way of imperialism, Castro’s declaration on the Marxist-Leninist nature of the Cuban Revolution helped to redefine this view. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) started to be seen by some sectors of the tercerismo, Trías included, as a power that could defend the third world peoples against the US aggression. Although the Soviet-Cuban relationship was marked by great tensions, the Czechoslovaks were an important ally of the Castro government, and the StB operated as a mediator between the Soviets and the ideologically heterogeneous actors, who, in turn, showed some sympathy for the Cuban Revolution. Under these circumstances, the fact that Trías had been recruited by the StB as its agent in 1964 turned out to be a great coincidence of mutual interests aimed at curbing the influence of the US on Latin America.

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