Geopolitics and Revolution in Africa. Cuba under the Global Gaze of the Cold War, 1962-1965

Abstract

The Cuban experience in the context of the Cold War has deserved special attention due to its geopolitical context where it emerged, in the shadow of the United States. The present work, although based on the existence of the bipolar conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, proposes building and recovering the agency capacity of countries like Cuba that, in theory, would lack the capacity to formulate national objectives in global frameworks. The existence of the Non-Aligned Movement and the dynamics of decolonization in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa would offer the Cuban revolutionary leadership the opportunity to transcend the Latin American framework by seeking to integrate it into a tricontinental space of revolutionary struggle. The article proposes the concept “postcolonial” when referring to the countries of what is now called “Global South,” as well as Cold War without further ado, to the “Global Cold War” considering that the historical period referred to is global in itself. where global dynamics are observed in international relations between the actors and geographical spaces referred to. There is evidence that this interest has been manifest since 1959, before the missile crisis of October 1962, when the Cuban alignment with the USSR became evident, that is, before the appearance of the Marxist doctrinal corpus that would define this type of policies. as “proletarian internationalism.” At the same time, one of the promoters of this project, along with Fidel Castro, Commander Ernesto Guevara, will begin his eclipse within the Cuban revolutionary elite, in part due to the contradictions inherent in Cuba's relationship with the USSR.