Cuban Anti-Communism in Cold War Latin America, 1960-1990

FAIN: FT-265043-19

Michelle Chi Chase
Pace University (New York, NY 10038-1502)

A book-length study about Cuban anti-communist exiles and the Cold War, 1960-1990.

This project will provide the first comprehensive history of the anti-communist movement that emerged in the wake of Cuba’s 1959 revolution. The project argues that Cuban anti-communism was never restricted to merely opposing Fidel Castro; instead, it was a global political movement with far-reaching consequences. From 1960 to 1990, Cuban anti-communist militants became involved in a series of conflicts throughout Latin America and beyond, applying the military and political experience they developed opposing Castro to help defeat revolutionary and national liberation movements from Puerto Rico to Nicaragua to the Congo. This project will consequently reframe standard assumptions of Cuban counter-revolutionary “failure,” showing that militant exiles’ greatest victories occurred elsewhere in the developing and decolonizing world. This story thus sheds new light on the Cold War in the global south by highlighting widespread Cuban influence on the Right, not only the Left.