American Cold War propaganda in Franco's Spain : the Spanish edition of the Reader's Digest, 1952-1962

This work analyzes the role of the Spanish edition of the Reader's Digest as an instrument of American Cold War propaganda during the 1952-1962 period, when Spain was under the rule of Francisco Franco's dictatorship. The United States supported its economic and military expansion in Western Europe after World War II through the official propaganda produced by its information agencies such as the C.I.A. and the U.S.I.A. and through the socialization values carried by the American media. The Reader's Digest, as the most widely read magazine in the world, played a major role in this scheme. The propagandistic nature of the messages conveyed by the magazine is described by a comparative analysis between the Digest content and the suggestions made in a report commissioned by the U.S.I.A. in 1953. The focus of the analysis is the promotion of anti-Communist and pro-Capitalist values as the main ideological components of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War.