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The José Luis Massera Archive (1915-2000) is a unique collection due to the variety and quantity of materials related to the career of one of the most prominent intellectual, a mathematician, in the history of Uruguay and Latin America in the second half of the 20th century. It consists of six donations from his closest relatives, colleagues and friends, including various types of documents and physical media. In addition to documenting the personal trajectory of this outstanding scientist and militant of the Uruguayan left, the collection provides an account of a series of processes and events that are fundamental to understand the complex interweaving between culture and politics in five decades of global history. Among these are, first of all, the vicissitudes of the intellectual relations between Latin America and the United States, when the latter applied "good neighbour” policies, and encouraged Latin American scholars, including Massera, to access top-level academic centers such as Stanford, Princeton, and New York University, where at the same time, prominent scientists emigrated from Europe thrived. Letters, reports, and manuscripts capture the official dealings and personal relationships of the time, including correspondence with the Rockefeller Foundation (which financed many of these academic exchanges) and the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, which under Albert Einstein's presidency, adopted a dissenting position regarding the arms race that the great world powers had started at the time.

This archive also illustrates the confrontation between these powers, known to us as the Cold War, and its repercussions in Latin America, including the growing political radicalization and social polarization in the years that followed the Cuban Revolution. These processes are evident, for example, in the decision of this outstanding scientist to dedicate almost full time to the militancy in the Uruguayan Communist Party, his subsequent imprisonment in times of authoritarian governments in the Southern Cone, and the vast response campaign of the international human rights movement, an organization consolidated in the 1970s based on the actions of actors as diverse as the UN, Amnesty International, different governments in Europe and America, and groups of Latin American exiles. All these events are reflected in hundreds of letters, circulars, reports and newspaper clippings by prominent political and cultural figures, as well as other more personal letters from family and friends.

The complexities of the transitions to democracy in the Southern Cone, including the ideological revision of broad sectors of the left and the efforts to rebuild education systems decimated by authoritarian experiences, are additional historical processes that are strongly and clearly evidenced by this documentary collection. The dozens of photographs, travel diaries and other documents from the formative years of José Luis Massera in the bosom of a wealthy family in one of the most cosmopolitan cities of Latin America at the beginning of the last century, also provide an idea of the importance and value of this archive for understanding the most diverse aspects of the social and political history of the subcontinent over almost six decades.