América Latina: ¿clase media de las naciones?

AmericanhateIs hereand the Havanna Yacht CLub wouldn't even admit President Batista, who was considered a muliatto. Now racism is severe1ypunished. with fines and jail sentences. It hasn't I,disappeared 'altogether, but we do have lots of mixed marriages now." The correspondent for the American newspaper noted that at the Hotel Havan:a Libre mixed marriages were muehin evidente among thé young Ouban cauples "honeymooning on the upper floors". 14 Nor díd there seem: to him to be any district of Havana or any enterprise or school wher,e darker O! lighter Cubans predominated disproportionately. .on ba:1ance therefore there 15 a good record on the side of Castro with regard to the issue' ofrace. But such a good record does not make Cuba's intervention in ..Angola or Southern Africa a case of Pan. Africanism. Muc(I more .relevant would be the question of who made the decision to int'ervene, what is the actual structureofpolitical power in Cuba ,as between black and white, and what was the composition of the 'actual men who were sent to flight· in the Angolan civil war. Ift-he United States were to senO. an army consisting entirely of black Americansto partidpate in a conflkt in Zaire, that wouldnot make the black American intervention a case 'of Pan-Africanism. Qne would have to investigate the race af those who made the decision to send those black Americans, the structure within such decisions were made, and whether 6r not the motives fo! theintervention were inspired by a solidarity based on shared African ancestry. It is still an 'Open question whether the Cuban intervention qualifies as a kind oE Pan. African venture, just as it is sti1l a point of debate whether interve– ning in 1976 proved commitment to liberation more than intervening before the coup in Portugal in April 1974 would have been. Afterall, (:uball intervention before A'pril 1974 would have been a dif'ect chao llenge to Portuguese imperialism itself. No such intervention occurred. . As for the arguments that Cuba's intervention in Angula was a case 'OE responding to the legitimat.e govemment of the country, that surely would be to beg the question. Afterall, none of the factions yet could !:>e deemed to be the legitimate government oE the country. Th:e fact J;hat MPLA con_trolled the capital city was not an adequate as~ertion of legitimacy - any more than theprevious Portuguese con– trol oE the capital was such a. validation. Afrita had also before witnessed situations where the capita:l city -like Kinshasa in Zaire– wascontroUed by a regime which many in Angola itself under MPLA regardedas illegitimate. In previous times the capital dty of Zaire ...: .14 Ibíd•.. 83