Copyright by Gregory Krauss 2007 - The University of Texas at Austin
Copyright by Gregory Krauss 2007 - The University of Texas at Austin
Copyright by Gregory Krauss 2007 - The University of Texas at Austin
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anti-American leftist extreme. Visa refusals, he wrote, played into the hands <strong>of</strong><br />
Communist governments, giving them the opportunity to label the U.S. as<br />
“reactionary.” 23 Denying a visa was also a missed chance to favorably influence an<br />
extremist’s political views. As part <strong>of</strong> his efforts to reform U.S. visa policy, Lister<br />
prepared several airgrams for ARA embassies in the early to mid-1960s encouraging<br />
posts to be open to granting visas to some political extremists. 24 Additionally, during<br />
a three-year period in the mid-1960s, he intervened personally in approxim<strong>at</strong>ely 100<br />
visa cases. 25<br />
Lister took special care to intervene in cases regarding high-pr<strong>of</strong>ile L<strong>at</strong>in<br />
American intellectuals. In February 1966, Lister intervened to assist Pablo Neruda, a<br />
Chilean poet but also a Socialist politician, in obtaining a visa to <strong>at</strong>tend an<br />
intern<strong>at</strong>ional writer’s conference in New York City. 26 In 1971, he helped assure th<strong>at</strong><br />
leftist Colombian novelist Gabriel García Marquez had no difficulties obtaining a visa<br />
to receive an honorary degree <strong>at</strong> Columbia <strong>University</strong>. 27 In Marquez’s case, Lister<br />
flew to Kennedy airport in New York to greet Marquez and his wife personally, assist<br />
them through customs, and bring them to their hotel. 28<br />
Lister apparently helped to convince the Department to craft a visa policy to<br />
his liking. “After considerable difficulty and hard plugging it has been possible to<br />
develop a very liberal and politically sophistic<strong>at</strong>ed visa policy for L<strong>at</strong>in America,”<br />
Lister wrote in 1967. 29 Lister observed th<strong>at</strong> the U.S.’s reformed visa policy was<br />
noticed <strong>by</strong> Communist governments, which began issuing public st<strong>at</strong>ements “warning<br />
35