The BBC Brazilian section and the Latin American service: entertainment, propaganda and cosmopolitan intellectuals in the mid-20th century

2022 marks both the centenary of the Brazilian modernist movement, launched at São Paulo Art Week (February 1922), and the foundation of the British Broadcasting Company (October 1922). In 1938, the BBC created the Latin American Service, which broadcast news-bulletins, entertainment programmes (including music and dramas), and anti-fascist propaganda to the region, countering the influence of Italian and German stations that had been transmitting content in Portuguese and Spanish since the mid-1930s.

This panel will discuss the transatlantic networks of Brazilian and Iberian intellectuals commissioned by the Service to broadcast in Portuguese and Spanish to Latin America during WW2 and its aftermath. It will focus on three emblematic intellectuals: Antônio Callado, Francis Hallawell and Arturo Barea.

It will also feature the participation of students from the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies (SPLAS), KCL, presenting to the public for the firt time the translation of a recently discovered radio drama script broadcast by the Corporation to Brazil in 1943.

Panel

• Dr Daniel Mandur Thomaz (King's College London)
• Dr Vinicius De Carvalho (King's College London)
• Dr Eva Nieto Mcavoy (Cardiff University)