Cold War in Latin America: the Camelot Project (1964-1965) and the political and academic reactions of the Chilean Left wing

NAVARRO, JUAN JOSÉ

Comparative Sociology

Brill Publishers

Lugar: Leiden; Año: 2009

This paper explores the reactions of the Chilean left wing. The sources had been the Minutes of the Congress of the Special Investigative Commission´s report of the Camelot Project, and the left press, some of them official organs of the political parties.             The Camelot Project emerged as a project for social research orientated to measuring, predicting and controlling internal conflicts within peripheral countries.  This project constituted only an example of the research varieties in the Cold War context, aiming to make a contribution towards the struggle against social insurrection.  Perhaps this case was the most ambitious and coarse example of the interrelation between social science and politics, in which the academic intervention would have indeed in a massive loss of the autonomy of the scientific activity. Camelot Project appeared within the Special Operations Research Office (SORO) in the American University, and was requested by the United States Defense Department to be applied in Chile within the next four years.