Race and the Cuban Revolution: The impact of Cuba's intervention in Angola

Cuba's intervention in the Civil War raging in the southwest African country of Angola in November 1975 decisively altered the outcome in favor of the Marxist-led Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). More importantly, it precipitated official attention to the issue of race inside Cuba. Until the Angolan mission, Cuba had treated domestic racial issues with ambivalence, seldom acknowledging their relevance as meaningful issues despite the island's multiracial population. Following its intervention in Angola, the government embarked on an intense official campaign to reemphasize Cuba as a country that although geographically located in the Latin American/Caribbean region, nevertheless embraced a joint identity as an African nation.;Therefore, events in Angola served as the catalyst for a elite-controlled racial project to create a collective image for all Cubans and address certain issues that had been previously neglected by the revolutionary government such as racial representation in the institutional power structure. While this project's outcome failed to realize any dramatic changes as black Cubans continued to be underrepresented in the main political institutions, and the society retained a marked preference for European over African aesthetics, it nonetheless solidified a place for race as a legitimate issue. The Cuban authorities could no longer pretend race did not exist, even if its meaning in a changing revolutionary order has yet to be resolved.