Moscow and the Angolan Crisis, 1974-1976: a New

COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT BULLETIN 5 Havana’s Policy in Africa, 1959-76: New Evidence from Cuban Archives by Piero Gleijeses1 cal ploys of a client state—that prevails Frequently the edited lines contained in the United States. Yet it has attracted the remarks of a foreign leader criticiz- The dearth of documents and his- virtually no attention. It is a significant ing his own political allies; thus, to ex- torical context has hampered rigorous lacuna. As a Cuban official told me, plain why half a page had been sani- analysis of Cuba’s intervention in “Cuba’s intervention in Angola cannot tized [Doc. 5], Risquet wrote, “the con- Angola in 1975. Despite the interest be understood without looking at our versation that followed was about in- 2 scholars have shown in the episode, the past.” ternal MPLA matters that [Angolan lack of Cuban documents and the closed Whereas those who publish in the President Agostinho] Neto discussed nature of Cuban society have prevented Bulletin generally use archives that have with [Cuban official Díaz] Argüelles. It them from being able to accurately de- been opened, the Cuban archives I have would be unethical to make them pub- scribe Cuba’s actions. I have gone to used are still closed. This requires, then, lic.”3 In the case of three intelligence Havana six times, for a total of six an explanation of my modus operandi. documents, the sanitized paragraphs months, since 1993 to research Cuban There was no established declassi- would have revealed sources. In other policy toward Africa, and I have gained fication process in Cuba when I began cases the lines (or words) sanitized in- access to the archives of the Central my research. Mindful of the fact that cluded comments about African or Committee of the Communist Party of the documents I cited would not be Asian countries that, the censors be- Cuba (CC CPC), the Instituto de readily accessible to my readers, I de- lieved, would unnecessarily complicate Historia de Cuba, the Centro de cided that I would never use a document Cuba’s foreign relations. Información de la Defensa de las unless I was given a photocopy of the I have also interviewed 63 Cuban Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias, and original. I badgered Cuban officials protagonists, many of them repeatedly the Ministerio para la Inversión relentlessly, arguing that in the United and in relaxed settings. While inter- Extranjera y la Colaboración Econ- States their word has no credibility, that views without documents would be of ómica. Armed with documents from their testimonies are only valid if sup- little use, interviews with documents these closed and never before used ar- ported by documents, and that while one can be extremely helpful. Furthermore, chives, supplemented with interviews, document would suffice to criticize many of the interviewees gave me let- a close reading of the press, and U.S. Cuba, five would be necessary to say ters and journals from their own per- documents, I can shed new light on the anything positive. Jorge Risquet, a sonal collections, and they alerted me Angola affair. member of the Central Committee, un- to documents in the government ar- The new documents clarify the derstood. I owe a great debt to his in- chives, which made it possible to be evolution of Cuba’s involvement in telligence and sensitivity. We have very specific in my requests to Risquet. Angola and answer the critical question come a long way since the day in 1994 The Cuban authorities were well aware of whether the Cubans sent troops be- when I asked him for all the reports of my freewheeling interviews and to fore or after the South African interven- written by the Chief of the Cuban Mili- the best of my knowledge they did noth- tion. They also address the vexing ques- tary Mission in Angola between August ing to hinder me. Currently I am tion of Havana’s motivation, particu- and October 1975 only to be told, “You complementing my research in Cuba larly whether or not it was acting as a aren’t writing his biography. One will with research in the United States, Eu- Soviet proxy. They document Cuba’s be enough.” Two years later, I received rope (particularly Moscow, Berlin, and longstanding relationship with the all the others. The Cubans established Lisbon), and, of course, Africa. Popular Movement for the Liberation a procedure of which I could only ap- Cuba’s pre-1975 Africa policy can of Angola (MPLA), and they place the prove: any document they expected to be divided into three major phases: pre- Angolan crisis in the broad context of be declassified they allowed me to read 1964, when the focus was Algeria; Cuban policy toward Africa. From in its entirety, whether in Risquet’s of- 1964-66, when Cuba’s attention was 1959 to 1974 the Cubans intervened in fice or in the archives themselves. Then suddenly riveted by sub-Saharan Af- Algeria, Congo Leopoldville, Congo the waiting would begin. It could take rica—a heady time characterized by Brazzaville and Guinea-Bissau. More less than a hour or more than a year. As Che Guevara’s three-month trip through Cubans fought in Africa during these I write, there are several hundred pages the continent and the dispatch of Cu- years than in Latin America, and Cu- of documents that I have been allowed ban columns to Zaire and Congo ban policy was far more successful in to read but have not yet been given. Brazzaville; and post-1966, a period of the former than in the latter. The story About 80 of the more than 3,000 growing maturity, highlighted by the of these fifteen years challenges the pages of documents that I have received long and successful Cuban involvement image of Cuban foreign policy—cyni- were sanitized after I had read them. in Guinea-Bissau (1966-74). Before 6 COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT BULLETIN discussing Cuba’s role in Angola in Guinea as well, but what matters is that request of that country’s government, 1975-76, I will briefly touch on each of a powerful guerrilla movement has which lived “in fear” of an attack by these phases. taken hold in the Congo.”6 (To avoid the Congo’s mercenaries; the column Cuban leaders saw similarities be- confusion, Congo Leopoldville will be could also, perhaps, assist Che in the tween the Algerian revolution against referred to in this essay as the Congo, Congo. “It constituted . a reserve French rule and their own struggle and its neighbor as Congo Brazzaville.) force for Che’s column, which it would against both Cuban dictator Fulgencio To save the Congolese regime, the join if necessary, at the right time.”12 Batista and the United States. In De- Johnson Administration raised an army Overall, 400 Cuban volunteers were in cember 1961, a Cuban ship unloaded a of more than 1,000 white mercenaries Central Africa in the summer of 1965. cargo of weapons at Casablanca for the in a major covert operation that was ob- But Central Africa was not ready Algerian rebels. It returned to Havana vious to all but the U.S. press and pro- for revolution. By the time the Cubans with 76 wounded Algerian fighters and voked a wave of revulsion even among arrived in the Congo, the rebels’ 20 children from refugee camps.4 African leaders friendly to the United strength had been broken. The story of The aid continued after Algeria States.7 The Cubans saw the conflict as Che’s column is not one of great battles, gained its independence. In May 1963, more than an African problem: “Our but of 120 people thrust into an impos- a 55-person Cuban medical mission ar- view was that the situation in the Congo sible situation, in a totally alien world, rived in Algeria. And, as would be the was a problem that concerned all man- who retained their humanity until the case for all the missions that followed kind,” Che Guevara wrote.8 end. Their experience is recorded in (until 1978), the aid was free. “It was In December 1964, Guevara went several documents: the manuscript that like a beggar offering his help, but we to Africa on a three-month trip that sig- Che wrote in the Cuban embassy in Dar- knew that the Algerian people needed nalled Cuba’s growing interest in the es-Salaam (and which, he said, would it even more than we did, and that they region. In February 1965 he was in Dar- not be published “for a long time”13); deserved it,” said the then-Minister of es-Salaam, Tanzania, which was then, the journal of his right-hand-man, Public Health, José Ramón Machado as the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Víctor Dreke; and the diaries of several Ventura.5 And in October 1963, when pointed out, “a haven for exiles from of his men. Guevara could only pre- Algeria was threatened by Morocco, the the rest of Africa . plotting the over- side over the agony of the rebellion until Cubans rushed a special force of 686 throw of African governments, both the rebels’ collapse left him no choice men with heavy weapons to the Algeri- black and white.”9 After a general but to withdraw in November 1965. ans’ aid, even though Morocco had just meeting with the liberation movements In Congo Brazzaville, meanwhile, signed a contract to buy one million tons [see Doc. 2], Che met separately with Risquet’s column saved the host gov- of Cuban sugar for $184 million, a con- each, and three times with the Congo- ernment from a military coup in June siderable amount of hard currency at a lese rebel leaders Laurent Kabila and 1966 through bluster and diplomacy, time when the United States was trying Gaston Soumialot.10 without having to shed blood.14 Then to cripple Cuba’s economy.

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