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Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington and Africa, 1959-1976, by Piero Gleijeses. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002. $34.95; paper, $24.95. Pp. xix, 552.
An estimated 30,000 Cubans (of whom 200 died) supported African liberation movements in their struggles against U. S., European and white South African neo-imperialism. Piero Gleijeses, professor of American foreign policy at The Johns Hopkins University, has produced a monumental study of Cuba's early military role in Africa, which effectively ends, for Englishlanguage readers, a profound silence on this topic.
The silence is especially puzzling because many Cubans remember President Nelson Mandela's 1991 visit to Havana, during which he declared his peoples' "great sense of debt that is owed the people of Cuba. What other country," he challenged, "can point to a record of greater selflessness than Cuba has displayed in its relations with Africa?" While implying his answer is "no country," Gleijeses credits the silence to revolutionary modesty. "We thought," one of the heroes told him, "it would be more dignified if the people we had helped" took the lead in honoring those who had helped them. He also suggests that such modesty protected intelligence that the United States could have used to justify another invasion or that might "offend friendly African nations."
In any case, Gleijeses believes the collapse of the socialist world persuaded Cuban authorities to "reconsider their silence" and eventually allow him access to their archives. But he gives the most credit to the veterans of Cuba's African wars for making his book possible. "Had the Cuban government maintained the wall of silence," he concludes, "the foot soldiers would never have spoken. But as the government softened its position, many stepped forward. They were proud of their past and they wanted it recorded." We also are grateful to them and to the author for that.
What Gleijeses calls Cuba's "African adventure" began...