Cold War Pan-American Operations: Oil, Coffee, and '3,500 Years of Colombian Art'

Abstract

The exhibition '3,500 Years of Colombian Art', sponsored by the Inter national Petroleum Company, under the control of the Rockefeller family, coincided with a state visit of the Colombian president Alberto Lleras Camargo to the United States in 1960, at a moment of reconfiguration of strategic regional policies that responded to heightened Cold War anxieties. The show helped forward several agendas by promoting goodwill between the parties involved: International Petroleum sought confirmation of its holdings in the Andean nation, while Colombians used the exhibition as a platform to forward their national interests, which included support for their country's main product, coffee. The image of a nation tied to its pre-Columbian heritage, but receptive to processes of modernization, echoed Lleras's call for measures of development and reform of the region promoted as the Operación Panamericana.