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Red Star Over Cuba:
Cuban Exile Activism in Cold War Latin America
Join the Center for Latin American Studies for a talk with Michelle Chase, Associate Professor of History at Pace University
This talk shows how Cuban exiles demoralized by the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco began working feverishly to counteract growing sympathy with the Cuban Revolution throughout Latin America. Financed but not entirely controlled by the CIA, exile activists waged mass publicity campaigns throughout the 1960s that countered the Cuban Revolution’s “official” story. Exiles argued that, far from liberating and uplifting the country, the revolution had violated basic human rights and betrayed its original ideals of social justice. And they warned that “fidelismo” was merely Soviet imperialism in disguise, not an autonomous expression of Latin American radical nationalism.
Cuban exiles developed a broad arsenal in this campaign and led street protests, mass vigils, and public hunger strikes. In so doing, exiles established links with like-minded groups and individuals, laying the groundwork for a loose network of anti-communist activists across Latin America and beyond. Complementing the more common scholarly focus on Cuba’s attempt to “export” its revolution to the region, this talk shows that anti-communist Cuban exiles too helped transform the revolution into a regional, and even a global, historical event. These episodes give us greater insight into the global Cold War by recovering the south-south connections among anti-communist and conservative, not merely leftist actors.
