Assata Is Welcome Here

Chapter Five examines Cuba’s provision of formal political asylum to political dissidents from the United States. Focusing on black radical activists such as Robert F. Williams, Eldridge Cleaver, Assata Shakur, Nehanda Abiodun, William Lee Brent, Charlie Hill, and Huey Newton, and organizations such as the Black Panther Party and the Republic of New Afrika, the chapter explores the role that political exile and asylum has played within the larger relationship between the Cuban Revolution and the African American freedom struggle, and the impact of this engagement upon U.S.-Cuba relations amid the Cold War and the War on Terror. While some U.S. black activists looked to the Cuban Revolution as a hemispheric beacon of hope, Cuba in turn looked to U.S. black activists as allies in its geopolitical struggle with Washington, viewing the African American freedom struggle as its best hope for a radical ally in its northern neighbor.

Joven Cuba inside the Colossus

Chapter Four explores the origins of the Antonio Maceo Brigade, an organization composed of Cuban American students and intellectuals who broke with the anticommunism of their parent’s generation to seek reconciliation with the Cuban government, the reunification of the Cuban diaspora, and the normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations. Shaped by experiences in the Civil Rights and anti–Vietnam War movements, these émigré youth rejected the anti-Castro rhetoric of Cuban exile communities, provoking a campaign of intimidation and terrorism by rightwing Cuban American hardliners. Members of the Brigade traveled to Cuba to reunite with family, learn about the Cuban Revolution’s social achievements, and perform volunteer labor. In the brief warming of diplomatic relations encouraged by the Jimmy Carter administration, visits to Cuba by progressive Cuban Americans helped catalyze a shift in the Cuban government’s relations with the Cuban diaspora, initiating an unprecedented space for Cuban American leftwing politics.

Revolution in the Air

Chapter Three explores Cuba’s image within the U.S. radical imaginary through the surge of airplane hijackings that occurred from the U.S. to Cuba between 1968 and 1973. Seeking political asylum, sanctuary from criminal charges, contact with Third World revolutionary movements, and apolitical adventure, Americans who hijacked airplanes to Cuba often framed air piracy as an act of political protest. Cuban immigration officials were not always convinced, however, viewing many hijackers as criminals, not revolutionaries. Making ninety attempts to reach Cuba in commandeered aircraft, American air pirates ultimately forced the U.S. and Cuban governments into unprecedented high-level negotiations despite the nations’ lack of diplomatic relations. Viewing hijacking as a liability, the Cuban government moved to counter its outlaw mystique in the American popular imagination, with the two governments signing a bilateral agreement to curb hijacking in 1973.

Missiles, in Human Form

Chapter Two examines efforts by the FBI, CIA, local law enforcement, and U.S. politicians to portray travel to Cuba by American dissidents as a threat to U.S. national security. Alleging covert Cuban involvement in left-wing political bombings, espionage, street demonstrations, and growing interest in socialism among the American public, U.S. officials claimed that Cuba’s support for American radicals posed an internal security threat. Lurid media coverage focused on the Venceremos Brigade and Black Panther Party, which were accused of violating the U.S. travel ban to Cuba to receive training in guerrilla warfare from Fidel Castro’s government. The imagined perils of contact between Cuba’s revolutionaries and American radicals, however, lay in their ideological, not military, potentials. In 1976, the FBI summed up a decade of investigations, concluding that the communist nation had been the single greatest foreign influence on domestic radicalism during the 1960s.

Introduction

Beginning with Stokely Carmichael’s appearance at the Organization of Latin American Solidarity conference in Havana in 1967, the Introduction traces the relationship between the Cuban Revolution and the multi-ethnic American Left, and the impact of this engagement upon U.S.-Cuba relations within the context of the Cold War, decolonization, and Third World nationalism. Focusing on the 1960s era, when America was engulfed in the social upheaval of Civil Rights and the Vietnam War, and concluding in the early 1990s, the Introduction argues that Cuba became the primary Third World influence on the U.S. Left for more than three decades. The Introduction briefly presents the book’s primary case studies, which include the formation of the Venceremos Brigade, the FBI’s surveillance of pro-Cuba activists, the airplane hijacking surge of 1968-1973, Cuban American leftwing activism, and Cuba’s provision of political asylum to U.S. activists.

Epilogue

The Epilogue concludes the book by examining the long arc of Cuba’s place with the American radical imagination, from the 1960s to the present day. It argues that while the achievements of the island’s revolution have been incomplete, imperfect, and often contradictory, particularly with regard to question of individual liberty, race, and sexuality, Cuba’s significant social achievements nevertheless make it an enduring and critically important episode within the history of efforts to remake the world according to socialist principles of equality, one whose history remains relevant today. By summarizing the Cuban Revolution’s triumphs and shortcomings, together with the responses of U.S. social justice activists, the section provides a foundation from which to speculate upon the possible future of Cuba’s relationship to U.S. social justice movements and the American Left.

Venceremos Means “We Will Win”

Chapter One illuminates Cuba’s influence on the American Left at the height of the sixties era by examining the history of the Venceremos Brigade, an anti-imperialist Cuba solidarity organization formed in the United States in 1969. Initiated by New Left antiwar and civil rights activists from Students for a Democratic Society and incorporating a broad spectrum of social movements, including women’s liberation, veterans of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Black Panther Party, and elements of Puerto Rican, Chicana/o, and Asian American movements, the Venceremos Brigade sent several thousand U.S. leftwing activists to Cuba during the next decade as volunteer laborers. Working in agricultural and construction projects on the island to support Cuban socialism and publicizing the nation’s achievements in universal education and healthcare, the Venceremos Brigade built a grassroots counterpoint to the Washington consensus of antagonism toward the Cuba.