Cuba and the Latin American Left: 1959 – present

Abstract

This article is an analysis of the emergence and evolution of Cuba’s formal and informal networks and foreign policy instruments to support and influence the guerrilla movements in Latin America and the Caribbean. In the first section I sketch the function and significance of the ‘Departamento América’, the liaison apparatus with the Latin American and Caribbeaninsurgency between the 1960s and 1975; afterwards it (also) represented ‘the Party’ in Cuba’s diplomacy. I make a distinction between the 1960s (the decade of revolutionary fervour) and the 1970s-80s (when Cuba ruptured its diplomatic isolation imposed by the United States and tried to unify insurgent movements in umbrella organisations). After the implosion of the Soviet system a third ‘Special Period’ began, of austerity and drastic changes in its foreign policy. It continued in the twenty-first century, based on soft power and peace facilitating.