Remembering Angola - Cuban Internationalism, Transnational Spaces, and the Politics of Memories.

Abstract

This dissertation places Cuban internationalism, specifically its military mission in Angola, as an entry point to explore Cuban culture, the larger context of transnational memories, historicity, and racial politics. Taking a phenomenological approach, this study uses the memories of those involved in the intervention as a departure point to examine the meanings people ascribe to their sense of national identity and historical placement. This extraordinary exchange between two emerging nation-states created a transnational space where national identity was contested, reevaluated, and transformed. The personal memories of the Cuban veterans are inextricably tied to the social and historical disjunctures in contemporary Cuban society, including colonialism, apartheid, the end of the Cold War, the ongoing economic crisis since the fall of the Soviet Bloc, and other social themes on the island. The significance and ramifications of their experiences abroad is still being debated, and in some cases, erased by opposing global ideologies. My research documents the individual memories of rank and file soldiers whose experiences have largely been ignored. The memories of these men are nuanced, contradictory, and do not always correspond with the national narrative, particularly concerning race. I argue that their stories about national and racial difference regarding the Angolan “other” are an extension of cuentos de negros, a long-held derogatory manner of referencing blackness in general, but applied to an international context. I further demonstrate how their recollections as internationalists are mediated and challenged by larger ideological forces, a generational divide, and a changing Cuban self-image crisis brought upon by the Special Period. I suggest that the memories of ordinary soldiers and of Angolans who grew up in Cuba are particularly vulnerable to global trends that do not historically legitimize their experiences. Vital to the methodology used to gather the information for the dissertation is a discussion of the particular Cuban milieu during the time I conducted research, as well as the inclusion of my own struggles with the limits of ethnography, the transformative nature of field work, and with how to best present another person’s life on paper.