In the Shadow of Mao by Bruno Bosteels

Mao seemed to have resolved, from the Great Leap Forward on but especially in the first stage of the Cultural Revolution, one of the problems that worried me and many others, the problem of the relation between the world of letters and the popular masses. - Beatriz Sarlo, La izquierda en la Argentina

The history of Maoism in Argentina still constitutes an obscure chapter in the collective archive of the 1960s and 1970s. This whole era in fact continues to offer a confusing spectacle of revolutionary effervescence. Critical studies on the role of intellectuals in those two decades are relatively scarce. Thus, not long ago, Nicolás Casullo could still wonder: "Why do the '60s and '70s not have any register in the bulk of our critical writing? "44 It is true that today, aside from collective volumes such as Cultura y política en los años '60 (Culture and Politics in the 60s), we have at our disposal two classic studies, Silvia Sigal's Intelectuales y poder en Argentina (Intellectuals and Power in Argentina) and Oscar Terán's Nuestros años sesentas (Our Sixties). However, as far as I know, there is no comparable document about the 1970s, even less concerning the intellectual role that the thought of Mao Zedong played during that period.