Democratizing the Past: Cubans Remember the Angolan Civil War

FAIN: RZ-292665-23

CUNY Research Foundation, Bernard Baruch College (New York, NY 10010-5585)
Katrin Hansing (Project Director: November 2022 to present)
Maria de los Ángeles Torres (Co Project Director: September 2023 to present)

Research and writing of a co-authored book revealing the stories of Cubans who fought in the Angolan Civil War. (36 months)

“All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.” -- Viet Thanh Nguyen. From 1975 to 1991, over 450,000 Cubans participated in a civil war in Angola that became one of the many arenas of the Cold War. The Cuban state-constructed narrative about the war tells a story of heroism and sacrifice to pay back the debt of slavery and help end apartheid in South Africa. But how do the Cubans, who participated in the war, many of whom today live in the United States, remember their experiences and make sense of what they witnessed? Our manuscript will explore these memories. It will be based on archival research and 75 oral history interviews, including ten in-depth case studies. Given the dominance of the Cuban government’s ideological, heroic and racialized narratives about the war, these grassroots testimonies gathered in Cuba and in the diaspora (mainly South Florida) will offer a more nuanced and complex understanding of the war experiences.