Blowback - S2 Bonus 9 - "The Most Beautiful Cause"

Episode Date: November 8, 2021

A rundown of the Cuban revolution's foreign policy in Africa with guest, Cuban diplomat Oscar Oramas-Oliva. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In June 1990, the South African leader and revolutionary Nelson Mandela visited Miami during a tour of the United States. I'm quoting here from a journal article. Four months after being released from prison, Nelson Mandela made a tour of eight American cities and was given a nearly universal and enthusiastic heroes welcome in all of them, except Miami. The Cuban-American-controlled Miami City Commission rescinded the resolution that it had prepared in honor of Mandela and refused to grant him any kind of welcome. Why would this be?

Colonel Gaddafi, Fidel Castro, support our struggle to the hilt. They do not support it only in rhetoric. They are placing resources at our disposal. for us to win the spotlight. Mandela had praised Castro unequivocally and unambiguously a week before on TV. Nelson Mandela came to Miami, and just before he arrived, Cuban-American political leaders really demanded that he speak badly of Castro

or that they would not welcome him into the community. The city of Miami had already passed a resolution, and they took it back. And as a result, Nelson Mandela was snubbed, and people from all over the country and some from outside the country began to say, well, what's going on in Miami? This actually led to dueling demonstrations and street fighting when Mandela visited the Miami Beach Convention Center to give a speech while he spoke outside. Crowds in support of Mandela traded chance and sometimes blows against crowds who had nothing but bad things to say. It did break down largely on racial lines with black Floridians on one side and Cuban Floridians as well as some Jewish Floridians on the other. Again, quoting, some Cuban Americans called live Spanish language radio programs to say things such as, quote, Mandela go home. And quote, out with Mandela. We have enough communists here.

End quote, some press reports mention even less politically correct reactions. Many people call Mandela a terrorist. One man said Mandela, quote, did not learn anything in the past 27 years, that is, while he was imprisoned in apartheid South Africa. And some argued that apartheid was a lesser evil compared to the plight of black-ruled countries. The first demand is an apology for the snub of Nelson Mandela. We are hopeful that political leaders and business leaders will have the courage and the wisdom to apologize for snubbing Mandela. Welcome to Speak about this luxury

Sign. Speak about this last sign. Welcome to Blowback. I'm Brendan James, and this is bonus episode 9. And in this episode, we're going to talk a bit about one of the most neglected aspects of the Cuban Revolution, at least neglected in popular history in the West, for reasons you can probably guess by now. This is a topic that explains some of the news items you heard in that cold open. I'm talking about Cuban foreign policy,

specifically its humanitarian and military interventions in Africa. And in this show, we'll discuss the basics of Cuba's campaigns to support independence movements. on that continent against the combined forces of the United States and its allies, including apartheid South Africa. And I am honored to be able to discuss some of this with our guest, Cuban diplomat, Oscar Ramos Oliva, who served, among many other positions as Cuba's ambassador to Angola during the first years of the Cuban intervention there in the 1970s. And I will be dropping in moments of my conversation with Oscar throughout the discussion as the episode goes on. So just a word about sources. In this episode, I am drawing primarily from the work of scholar

Piero Glehesas, specifically his book's Conflicting Missions, the book Visions of Freedom, and the Cuban Drumbeat. I also reference several articles in the volume, Cuba and Africa, 1959 to 1994, edited by Julia Bonacci, Adrian Delmas, and Callie Aguirriatus. Apology, if I'm butchering any names there. I can also suggest a BBC documentary that wasn't bad called Cuba-Africa Revolution. It's got a lot of interesting interviews, some of which I clip a bit in this episode. So if you're interested in more detail, by the end of the show, I can recommend all those sources. So as you may recall from our main season, the revolution in Cuba more or less coincided with an explosion of political change across the continent of Africa in 1960, where dozens of countries on that continent either gained independence from their former European colonizers

or began armed struggles to achieve that kind of independence. And we've seen how the victory of both the Cuban rebels and of the African independence leaders, such as Democratic Republic of the Congo's Patrice Lamumba, created between those two movements a political and diplomatic collaboration based on the centuries of ties between Cuba, once a prominent slave state, and the peoples of Africa, not to mention African Americans in the United States. This sense of solidarity and newfound possibility after these victories resulted not only in meetings and visits between Cuban leaders and those of the African states, but also between

Fidel Castro and Malcolm X when Fidel visited Harlem in 1960, in which he also met Lumumba and other leaders in Africa. Kuomah and Khruma of Ghana, Nasser of Egypt, etc. But soon Belgium, the former colonial overlord of the Congo, began to reverse its position on accepting independence and started to seize back parts of the state, which began a spiral of violence in the new Republic of the Congo. Lumumba actually appealed to Nikita Khrushchev after failing to convince the United States to back him up. He wanted Khrushchev to send Soviet troops to drive out the Belgians. This, of course, marked Lumumba Down as an unambiguous enemy of the United States. Past the Cold War rhetoric, of course, you would also recognize that the Congo was one of the

richest countries in the world in all kinds of resources, from diamonds to cobalt to oil. And it remains so to this day, by the way. So soon the CIA found a very willing partner, Army Chief of Staff, and a hardcore anti-communist at that. Mobutu says a who essentially led a military coup to topple Lumumba's government over the course of the next year. All of this culminated in the assassination of Lumumba in 1961, days before John F. Kennedy took office. And over the next several years, the United States and regional allies fought tooth and nail to crush, particularly the progressive and left-wing movements and governments on the African continent more broadly, all the time hoping to install or assist pliant customers such as Mobutu,

who eventually took power after Lumumba fell and the country was renamed Zaire. The U.S. was also an ally of apartheid South Africa and assisted that government in putting down guerrilla movements that were fighting to overturn the racial caste system in place in that country, also helped them hunt down Mandela. So the struggle in Africa was just as acute as we've discussed. in Latin America. In fact, here is Che Guevara giving a speech connecting the moves against Lumumba to those against Cuba. The UN at that time had been deployed into the Republic of the Congo to quote, peacekeep. And it was essentially turned into a tool of Mobutu to overthrow his rival.

Che pointed out that it was the same type of international authority that the United States wanted to deploy in Cuba. Congo, was assassinated Lumumba. And that were the Nations Unida that pretended those North Americans that were to inspectional our territory.

Those same nations United. Cuba, though it had its own problems at home and certainly abroad, did not shrink from supporting revolutionary and progressive allies in Africa from the 60s onward.

There was aid, doctors, technical advisors. They were sent to places like Algeria, to the Congo, to Guinea-Bissau, and many more. And sometimes it went beyond this humanitarian aid to straight-up military support. For example, as Pierre Oglahasis writes, in 1961, Cuba brought weapons to Algeria, which was fighting its own war of independence from France. And the Cubans took back home with them Algerian refugees and orphans from the war. Then a couple years later, after Algeria had won its independence, it was then facing

a threat from neighboring Morocco. Cuba, again, sent not only weapons, but also a small contingent of troops to back Algiers up. In 1964, Che Guevara himself went to the Congo, in the hopes of helping guerrillas there overturn the pro-American government and start a chain reaction of revolutions throughout the continent, stemming from the center of it. This effort, however, failed. There was the will, of course, but the means and the strategy had not materialized, and Che left the following year in 1965. He would, of course, go on to attempt a similar strategy of sparking revolution in Bolivia, where he would meet his end. So this mixture of humanitarian and military support was a key part of the first decade of Cuban policy following the revolution's

success in 1959. And it was not just caused. or symbolic, to quote the first president of Guinea-Bissau, which was fighting against Portugal at the time, quote, we were able to fight and triumph because other countries helped us. There is one nation that, in addition to material, political, and diplomatic support, even sent its children to fight by our side to shed their blood in our land. It is the heroic people of Cuba, the Cuba of Fido Castro. And this feeling was likewise, as the armed struggle in Guinea-Bissau, led by Emu Kharwal, had been singled out by Che Guevara as ripe for success.

So let's pause a moment here to consider this picture. Cuba, in the 60s, particularly following the missile crisis after 62, pursued a far more adventurous, revolutionary policy in its own region in Latin America, trying to support guerrillas and revolutionaries in that region to overturn the corrupt pro-American governments. You see this stated in the Tri-Continental Conference in 1966. The Cubans would criticize quite publicly the Soviet Union and China for their dogmatisms and was trying to really form itself as its own leader of third world socialism. nationalism. Needless to say, this cut against the strategy and the philosophy of the local

old-school communist parties of Latin America, let alone the desired strategy of Moscow. China, while sounding more like Cuba in rhetoric, did not support Cuba as much as the Soviet Union did. These are, that's a discussion for another day. But the point is that in the 1960s, in general, this was a period where Fidel Castro and Cuba was a bit of a bad boy in the communist bloc. Cuba was heavily supported by the Soviet Union, no doubt, but its ruling party often criticized the Moscow allied parties in Latin America and sometimes Moscow itself as lacking in its desire and deed to spread revolution. This streak, however, receded by the end of the 1960s in Latin America. Guerrilla-style tactics in Cuba's neighborhood did not produce any

victories along the lines of its own revolution. And not only that, but domestic policies were seen by many to have been too haphazard, too improvisational, and resulted in waste and unnecessary economic hardship. So Cuba then in the late 60s warmed up greatly to the USSR again, an increased collaboration with the Soviet advisors, started to pursue more similar economic policies, and Cuba dialed back its aggressive stance in Latin America after the failure. of the revolution to catch on, basically. However, as Piero Glajas notes, Cuba's interest in kindling the fire of revolution did not go out.

It was simply redirected, chiefly in Africa. Quote, Latin America was where their freedom of movement was most circumscribed. Castro was, as the CIA observed, quote, canny enough to keep his risks low in the United States backyard. In Africa, Cuba incurred fewer risks. Whereas in Latin America, Havana challenged legal governments and flouted international law. In Africa, it confronted colonial powers and defended established states, these new independent states. Above all, in Africa, there was much less risk of a head-on collision with the United States.

With that in mind, we see Cuba up the ante in the middle of the 1970s. in Angola. Angola in 1974 was the last remaining colony of Portugal, the right-wing colonial regime, fighting for independence. You had a guerrilla movement, just as you had in these other places. But in this case, you had three factions. There was Unita, largely in the south, which was run by one-time Maoist turned anti-communist Jonas Savimbi.

Then you had the FNLA in the north. another sort of run-of-the-mill nationalist guerrilla movement. Both of these groups, Unita and the FNLA, were supported by the United States, and particularly in the case of Unita, apartheid South Africa. So Vimbi identified with Western values, Christianity, et cetera. And that was in stark contrast to the third and most successful group in the mix here, the MPLA. The MPLA was openly Marxist, anti-imperialist, anti-apartheid, etc. So Washington and Pretoria, that was the seat of government in South Africa. They were backing the anti-communist groups in Angola, as Oscar will tell us in just a moment. Mobutu in Zaire, what was previously known as the Republic of the Congo, was also involved

in supporting the FNLA. Cuba, of course, would do the exact opposite and make friends with the MPLA. Oscar, thank you so much for joining us. Why don't we start with the MPLA? What was the MPLA in Angola and why did the United States in South Africa want to destroy it, prevent it from becoming the main party or main government in Angola? My perception is that the United States and the racist regime in Pletorian consider the MPLA to be a massist. movement closely linked to the Soviet Union. I thought it was a danger to their geostrategic interest in the region and Africa as a whole. What would some of those interests be? The Angolan oil, the diamonds, the United States did not want to lose it. And on the other hand, I think that President Mobutu of Sayyir also had a lot of influence in that process

since he and his godson and president of the National Liberation Front of Angola, holding Roberto, were fighting to Saiz's power in Luanda for economic, political, and security relations. A very strong coalition of some Western countries and others was formed to prevent in that context the MPLA from coming to power. So these groups, although they were rivals, did collectively win Angolan independence. Portugal was forced to agree to it, and in November of 1975, there would be elections to decide, you know, of the three main players here, who would be taking over the government of an independent Angola. Again, you had the three groups, the socialist MPLA, led by Augustino Netto, the FNLA, and Unita.

All of them, however, were scrambling to position themselves as the real power in the capital, Luanda. And this led essentially to a civil war. again, the hand of the United States and its allies desperately trying to pull the strings. Recall here that the U.S. especially had recently been bruised in Vietnam in the mid-70s. But what about the supposed equal and opposite reaction in the Cold War? What about the Soviet Union? Well, for a long time, the historical explanation here was that the USSR was the equal and opposite hand, juicing the situation behind Cuba and the left-wing MPLA.

But in fact, Netto, the leader of the MPLA, had reached out to the Soviets for the same kind of militant support that the other factions were getting in his country from the U.S. and Mobutu and South Africa. But the Soviets, quite unlike their presentation as the never-tiring hand of world communism on planet Earth, actually wanted to abide by the November election date. They were really cautious and they did not want to juice the situation. Here is one-time State Department deputy and future Enron board member Frank Wisner from the BBC documentary on this stuff. My assumptions then were that the involvement of the Cubans was Russian-driven. It took me years later to reach a different conclusion that the Cubans played to bring the Russians in in support. That news reached Washington in the summer of 75. and I remember it was greeted with considerable concern.

This is the first time foreign military forces had been introduced under the continent of Africa since the colonial period back at the turn of the century. First time, we felt at that point that it was necessary to face this Cuban issue head on, square on. What he's talking about there facing the Cubans head on in Africa is the fact that Cuba, seeing this crisis, sent tens of thousands of troops to aid Netto and his MPLA against their anti-communist enemies. The Soviets were, frankly, surprised. They did not punish or chide the Cubans, however. The campaign of the Cubans, this small island nation across the world, moved the USSR to adjust its own strategy and provide more focus and support for Angola. For those who can get the gist of the Spanish here, this is Fidel in his own words, explaining the reason Cuba embattled as it was, was giving such a remarkable commitment in not only money and material, but lives, lives of Cuban soldiers, to Angola.

It was not to take over and extract resources, he says, but to deliver on a revolutionary and international duty. We are we used to think that when a country has something is because it's because they're looking or petroleum, or copper, or diamete, or any recourse natural. No. We don't look us any interest material, and the imperialists, it's logical,

that not they don't understand. Because they're going for criteria exclusively chauvinist, nationalists, we're doing an elemental, when we're internationalists when we help us to the people of Angola.

In American history, Cuba is often cast as a Soviet colony. How does the situation where Cuba intervened in Angola challenge this idea? I remember that when I was ambassador to the United Nations in 1984, before, some senior U.S. official said that Cuba was a proxy of the Soviet Union that shown enormous ignorance on Cuba and its leadership. We have always been motivated by the fact that our security and Independence is also linked to the independence of other countries, especially on their developing countries, from colonial and neo-colonial domination. We have many points in which we coincide with the Soviet Union in international matters, but others did not.

and therefore, of course, we were trying to persuade them of the correctness of our visions. In fact, even though Africa was a long ways away from the quote-unquote backyard of the United States, where Cuba was less inclined to get in trouble, Cuba did not avoid punishment from the United States in the campaign to aid Angola. Quote, President Jimmy Carter in the 70s was willing to normalize relations with. Havana and lift the embargo if the Cubans buckled. In December 1977, two U.S. congressmen hammered home this message in a long meeting with Castro, but Castro refused to budge, end quote. Not only that, but also in the late 70s, Cuba came to the aid of another country, Ethiopia. But in Angola, the Cuban support for the MPLA turned the tide, particularly with the barrages of

terrifying Soviet rockets nicknamed Stalin's organs. And eventually, Netto became Angola's first president, the era of Portuguese colonial rule now in the past. Fidel sent Netto a box of cigars and soon came to Angola to visit and toured Africa for a month after that. But the United States did not recognize the government, and South Africa kept slipping material and training to Jonas Savimbi. Noticing this unfinished business, particularly with South Africa, Netto asked the Cuban troops to stay in the country for the foreseeable future. Netto's death in 1979 coincided darkly with the incoming regime of Ronald Reagan.

We've already discussed a bit about Reagan's Cuba policy and his Latin American policy, and that attitude surely carried over into the Cuban-Angolan alliance. And so there would be a major sequel to the intercontinental conflict in the South of Africa. And here we need to bring up Namibia. Namibia is a country that straddles Angola and South Africa. It had once been a German colony in which the Germans carried out a genocide in the early 20th century. They later handed it over to South Africa, which until the 70s, basically, basically still de facto ruled Namibia. And Namibia, in fact, was where South Africa had based

their troops against Angola. But one knock-on effect of when Angola really secured its independence and defeated the South African offensive in the 70s was that Namibia's own armed movement, known as Swapo, was now gaining traction against the apartheid regime. So now you have this sort of porous war involving Angola, Namibia, the MPLA, Swapo, and still, Jonas Savimbi, who was still getting South Africa's support and was trying to crush the threat of Swapo in Namibia and hopefully drive up all the way to be installed as leader of Angola, as was originally the plan. Savimbi was sent by the South Africans to charm President Ronald Reagan, and Reagan loved him and gave him a bunch of Stinger missiles. The American policy here was,

most of all, Cuba out of Angola. Of course, on the Cuban and Angolan side, you would hear the response that Cuban troops are only there because if they pulled out, both Namibia and very possibly Angola would be subjugated by the apartheid regime. So this is now a war, again a sequel, if you will, going on in the 80s. By 1987, after fruitless negotiations, the MPLA, which was now advised by the Soviets, not the Cubans, the MPLA got whipped at a battle at the Lomba River by the South Africans. And at this point, Fido Castro stepped in with his... commanders to take over and offer a new military vision from the Soviet advisors.

More troops, anti-aircraft. They felt, I guess, that they had to listen to the Soviets when it came to military advice until the Lomba River fiasco and the initiative of Fidel Castro coming forward and saying, Soviets don't know how to fight in African wars. We do. And it's important to note that at this point, Brezhnev is gone. Gorbachev is the leader of the USSR and had set the socialist bloc as a whole on a conciliatory path with the United States. Not even in the Khrushchev peaceful coexistence style, you know, still keeping pressure on in the developing world, but really withdrawing. And as some Soviet critics would say, surrendering. Cuba, on the other hand, was far more willing and able than Gorbachev to come to the rescue in the conflict still going on in this part of Africa.

A key moment, some would say a turning point, was at the southern area of Angola, the town of Cuido Quineval, which, if taken by the South Africans and their allies, the rest of this war would very possibly be a route. The apartheid state could drive right up north, into the rest of the country. But here, the Cuban forces helped keep Quido Canevali. And here is Magnus Malon in an interview years later. He was South Africa's defense minister at the time. The whole effort was conducted by Fidel Castro,

by telephone from Havana. He was a commanding officer. How you can do a thing like that? I wouldn't know. I mean, it's impossible. It gave us a problem from ours. side because we didn't know him. We didn't know his way of thinking what type of personality he was because that's the thing you know. You've got to know in war. You've got to know the chap

on the other side as well as you know yourself. You must know his strong points and his weaker points. That's how you're successful. Otherwise you know. During this whole time there was rigorous negotiation in Luanda, the capital of Angola between the Angolans, the South Africans, the Cubans, the Americans were there too. And it was one of Cuba's point men in Africa, Jorge Risket, a real character, a big burly guy with a big beard and a booming voice. He sort of held court in these negotiations and would fill the room with cigar smoke to the visible discomfort of the American statesman present. And the basic point in these deliberations was that as South Africa lost more and more of its military edge, like was evident,

at Cuidoquineval. Eventually, they're actually losing the conflict. And that meant there was increasingly more leverage that the Angolan's and the Cubans had to demand that the fighting could stop. What was the price? If you get the South Africans out of Angola and out of Namibia, let both of these places create their own governments, form their own destinies. And at the time, trying to whip up support, Fidel said that this may not only result in South Africa losing Namibia. And not only losing their goals in Angola, but also their own system at home of apartheid of white rule in South Africa itself. Thousands of Cubans lost their lives fighting in Angola, and around 160 it's reported in Ethiopia. What was felt at home among the Cuban people about these casualties?

How was this fight understood by Cubans? The people of Cuba know what solidarity it means. First, the head of the Cuban Liberation Army against Spanish colonialism was Maximo Gomez. Then Ernesto Che Guevara played an outstanding role in the fight against dictatorship of Fulgainz. and later against the aggression of the United States against Cuba. The Englishman, Henry Reeve, fought against the Spanish colonial joke and for the freedom of Cuba,

as did also others, citizens from Poland to many Latin American countries. In very difficult moment of our life, the peoples of Africa, the peoples of Africa, have offered solidarity to the Cubans, as is the case with the systematic condemnation of the longest blockading history which the United States government has arbitrarily imposed on Cuba. On those examples, since 1959, the Cuban people consciously assume that home land is humanity as our national hero, Giuse Marty, set. After a lot of years and a lot of bloodshed, not only did it come to pass, as Fidel said, that the South Africans lost their cause in Namibia, which finally won its own independence

and in Angola. But indeed, they lost their own system of white rule. at home. And Cuba had supported, as it had in almost 20 other cases of African liberation movements, Cuba had supported the anti-apartheid struggle, specifically the African National Congress. That's why Nelson Mandela, when released from prison, would go on to praise Fidel Castro to visit Cuba, to invite Castro to South Africa, to declare him a dear friend. The Cuban troops, thousands of whom died in Angola, those that survived would leave Africa on the deadline, established by the peace talks in the early 90s. And of course, the struggle in this area to develop, to escape foreign domination, did not stop.

But neither did the humanitarian aid offered by Cuba, the projects in housing or in medicine, and the relationship that had been forged in the 70s and the 80s between this island and the Caribbean and these countries in Africa. Those things did not stop either. And that is why you heard at the top of the show about the time that Miami told Nelson Mandela to go home. That was Nelson Mandela, visiting President Fidel Castro in Cuba, thanking him for his support. When are you coming? When are you coming? I haven't visited my South African.

I haven't visited my South African homeland. I want it. I love it as a homeland. I'd like to thank Oscar Arama Saliva for giving us his time. It was, again, a true honor to be able to speak with him. And I'm just going to play us out here on one more clip from an interview with Chaz Freeman. So there's a longtime U.S. diplomat on the African Affairs desk at the time of the stuff in this episode. And suffice to say that as far as U.S. diplomats go, as far as lifetime think tank members go, Freeman has said things about China, Israel, and here about Cuba, that basically torpedoed his

candidacy to lead the National Intelligence Council during the Obama administration. And there's just a remark here that stood out to me in these days right now of yet more demonization of Cuba. This is Freeman discussing a path not taken, a chance after this conflict in Africa for the United States to perhaps reassess and approach Cuba. By forcing the South Africans to trade the independence of Namibia for the Cuban withdrawal, that in the end justified everything to Castro that he could think of himself as having been the father of Namibian independence, and the end, the man who ended colonialism in Africa. Cuba, in fact, demonstrated a level of responsibility

in its behavior and maturity and its judgment that arguably should have been recognized by the United States as an important gesture deserving some response. But the politics of this in the United States, that is, the politics of relations with Cuba, are poisonous in the extreme. So in the end, Cuba, which acted responsibly and should have been acknowledged for doing so,

got no such acknowledgement. Thank you.