Carleton Beals (November 13, 1893 – April 4, 1979) was an American journalist, writer, historian, and political activist with a special interest in Latin America.[1] A major journalistic coup for him was his interview with the Nicaraguan rebel Augusto Sandino in February 1928.[2] In the 1920s he was part of the cosmopolitan group of intellectuals, artists, and journalists in Mexico City. He remained an active, prolific, and politically engaged leftist journalist and is the subject of a scholarly biography.[3]
The family moved from Kansas when Beals was age three, and he attended school in Pasadena, California. After graduating from high school in 1911, he worked a variety of jobs while attending the University of California, Berkeley where he studied engineering and mining. He won the Bonnheim Essay Prize and the Bryce History Essay Prize.[8] After graduating in 1916,[9]cum laude,[8] he attended Columbia University on a graduate scholarship, earning a master's degree in 1917.[5]
Careeredit
[Beals] is now the best informed and the most awkward living writer on Latin America. (Time, April 25, 1938)
Unable to find work as a writer, Beals took a job with Standard Oil Company, but it did not suit him. In 1918, he spent a brief period of time in jail as a World War Idraft evader. Upon release, he decided to go see the world, and with what little money he had, Beals and his wife Lillian drove to Mexico.[11] There, he founded the English Preparatory Institute in 1919, taught at the American High School during 1919 to 1920, and was on the personal staff of President Carranza (1920).[9] They left Mexico in 1921 for Europe where Beals studied at the University of Madrid, and then the University of Rome. Back in Mexico, he became a correspondent for The Nation, separated from his wife, and became romantically involved with photographer Tina Modotti's sister, Mercedes.[11]
I have done most of my writing in Spain, Italy, Mexico and Peru, and in this country, chiefly in New York, later in Guilford, Connecticut, since 1957 in Killingworth. (C. Beals)
1933, The Crime of Cuba, with photographs by Walker Evans
1934, Fire on the Andes
1934, Black River
1935, Rifle Rule in Cuba
1935, The Story of Huey P. Long
1936, The Stones Awake: A Novel of Mexico
1936, Prologue to Cuban Freedom
1937, America South
1937, The New Genre of Roberto de la Selva
1937, The Drug Eaters of the High Andes
1938, Glass Houses, Ten Years of Free-Lancing
1939, American Earth; the Biography of a Nation
1939, The Coming Struggle for Latin America
1940, Pan America
1943, Dawn over the Amazon
1948, Lands of the Dawning Morrow: The Awakening from Rio Grande to Cape Horn
1949, The Long Land: Chile
1953, First Men of America
1953, Stephen F. Austin, Father of Texas
1955, Our Yankee Heritage: New England's Contribution to American Civilazation
1956, Adventure of the Western Sea, illustrated by Jacob Landau
1956, Taste of Glory; a Novel
1957, John Eliot, the Man Who Loved the Indians (July 31, 1604 – May 20, 1690)
1958, House in Mexico
1960, Cuba's Revolution: The First Year
1960, Brass-Knuckle Crusade; the Great Know-Nothing Conspiracy, 1820–1860
1961, Nomads and Empire Builders; Native Peoples and Cultures of South America
1962, Cyclone Carry, the Story of Carry Nation
1963, Latin America: World in Revolution
1963, Eagles of the Andes: South American Struggles for Independence
1965, War Within a War; the Confederacy Against Itself
1967, Land of the Mayas; Yesterday and Today
1968, The Great Revolt and Its Leaders: The History of Popular American Uprisings in the 1890s
1969, The Case of Leon Trotsky [Lev Davydovič Trockij]: Report of Hearings On the Charges Made Against Him in the Moscow Trails
1970, Stories Told by the Aztecs Before the Spaniards Came
1970, The Nature of Revolution
1970, Great Guerrilla Warriors
1970, Colonial Rhode Island
1973, The Incredible Incas: Yesterday and Today
Referencesedit
^Hilton, Ronald (March 23, 2002). "Carleton Beals". stanford.edu. Retrieved 2009-02-02.
^John A. Britton, "Carleton Beals" in Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture vol. 1, p. 315. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons 1996.
^John A. Britton. Carleton Beals: A Radical Journalist in Latin America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press 1987
^Edwards, Janice R. "Tales from River's End – Passport to Adventure Carry A. Nation, The Facts, Brazoria County and the San Bernard River". sanbernardriver.com. Archived from the original on 2007-08-03. Retrieved 2009-02-02.
^ abcdApplegate, Edd (September 1996). Literary Journalism: A Biographical Dictionary of Writers and Editors. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 20–22. ISBN 0-313-29949-8. carleton beals kansas.
^"NameCarleton Beals". corax.org. July 25, 2005. Retrieved 2009-02-02.
^Hendrickson, Katie. "Ralph Beals". EMuseum. Minnesota State University, Mankato. Archived from the original on 2010-05-28. Retrieved 2009-08-10.
^ ab"Kansas Center for the Book". lib.ks.us. Archived from the original on October 16, 2008. Retrieved 2009-02-02.
^ ab"Beals, Carleton," in Historians of Latin America in the United States, 1965: Biobibliographies of 680 Specialists. Ed. Howard F. Cline. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1966, 8.
^ abc"Stone-Thrower". time.com. April 25, 1938. Archived from the original on August 26, 2010. Retrieved 2009-02-02.
^ abHooks, Margaret (2000-09-20). Tina Modotti: Radical Photographer. Da Capo Press. pp. 115–116. ISBN 0-306-80981-8.
^Black, George (December 1987). "Carleton Beals: a radical journalist in Latin America. (book reviews)". The Nation. findarticles.com. Retrieved 2009-02-02. [dead link]
^"Our Century: The Twenties". The Nation. December 23, 1999. Archived from the original on March 11, 2007.
^ abGosse, Van (1993). Where the Boys are: Cuba, Cold War America and the Making of a New Left. Verso. p. 18. ISBN 0-86091-690-1.
^"Beals, Carleton (1893–1979)". Vol. July 1935, July 1938, August 1943, and August 1944. harpers.org. Retrieved 2009-02-02. {{cite magazine}}: Cite magazine requires |magazine= (help)
^Callcott, Wilfrid Hardy (February 1932). "Review: Mexican Maze, with Illustrations by Diego Rivera by Carleton Beals". The Hispanic American Historical Review. 12 (1): 73–75. doi:10.2307/2506438. JSTOR 2506438.
External linksedit
Beals' portrait
Beals' articles:
"The Scottsboro Puppet Show", The Nation, 1936
"The Black Shirt Revolution, The Nation, 1922
Beals' testimony, Fair Play for Cuba Committee, 1960
"The Fewer Outsiders the Better," article by Beals critical of the American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky