370 J.-A. PEMBERTON
Co-operation at Santiago in Chile. This conference took place from the
January 6 to 12, 1939.^72
Fourteen states of the Americas were represented at the second
American conference of the national committees, the inaugural meet-
ing of which was held at the Salón de sesiones de la Cámera de repre-
sentantes at the Capitiolo Nacional. The Cuban prime minister, Carlos
Saladraigas, opened the conference.^73
In his speech at the inaugural meeting, Saladraigas stated that it was
with a touch of ‘emotion’ that he tried ‘in vain to hide’ that he wanted
to speak of the work of the IIIC. He underlined his appreciation of
the fact that amidst the IIIC’s ‘profound preoccupations,’ it had found
the time to consider on repeated occasions cultural life in continental
Americas; he then went on to affirm the ‘solidarity in the order of ideas
and of spiritual values’ of the people of the Americas.^74 In the midst of a
series of resolutions, the conference expressed its great appreciation for
the ‘fruitful and humanitarian labour in favour of connections between
cultures whatever be their origin’ undertaken by the Sociedad de las
Naciones and ‘all its sympathy’ for the IIIC in light of its closure.^75
The conference’s first plenary session, which was held at the Salón
de sesiones de la Academia de ciencias, heard that it now fell to the
Americas to carry on the work of Intellectual Cooperation in solidarity
with the democratic governments which were now combating the totali-
tarian onslaught against civilisation in Europe.^76
Francisco Walker Linares, a member of the Chilean delegation to the
conference, made the same point in observing that the ‘various nations
of free America’ have come to this meeting as ‘crusaders for intellectual
independence...[and]...in order to defend the rights of human thought’.
(^72) ‘Resolutions adoptées par la C.I.C.I. à sa séance du 16 juillet,’ La Coopération Intellectuelle
Bulletin, nos. 91–92 (1938): 442–44. See also Comision Cubana de Cooperatión, Intelectual,
Segunda Conferencia Americana de Comisiones Nacionales de Cooperación Intelectual (15– 22
noviembre 1941): Actas y Documentas (Habana: Ucar, Garcia y Cia, 1942), xi.
(^73) Comision Cubana de Cooperatión, Intelectual, Segunda conferencia americana de
Comisiónes Nacionales de Cooperación Intelectual, xiii, 1. Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia,
Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Panama,
Peru, the Dominican Republic, the United States of America, Uruguay and Venezuela were
all represented in Havana.
(^74) Ibid., 3–4.
(^75) Ibid., 66–7.
(^76) Ibid., 33.