América Latina: ¿clase media de las naciones?

was even contCO'lled by Tshombe, with even more limited credentials for legitimacy. There seems little doubt that the decision in Havana to back MPLA with an additional 12,000 troops drastieally tilted the balance in favour of MPLA and therefore decíded the issue for Angolans. UNIT A is still kept at bay with Cuban troops. As it happened, MPLA was probably the best qualified oí the three movements to rule a newly liberated countr}' in Southern Afd. ca, sitllated in clase proximit}' not only to Namibia but, in the ulti. mate analysis, to the Land of apartheid itse1f. SOllthern AfrÍea did need a relativel}' radical Angola if the liberation of the regian was to be aecomplished. In this case the argument we are .putting farwara regarding Cuba should not be interpreted <lsan expression oí prefe– renee for MPLA's rivals within Angola. This author is quite satisfied that for the time being at any rate there is no evidence to dispute MPLA's superiority in terms of organization aud moral purpose, and in terms of potentia.l effectiveness as a base for the liberation of Namibia and one day as sn aUy in the strugsle to liberate South Afríes itself. The point we are raising here, once we aceept the superiority of MPLA as against UNITA :and FNLA, is whether thís kind of issue should have been d.ecided ultimately by a Caribbean factor íntrodu. ced into 1l delicate balance of forces. Was the Cuban tail once again wagging the African dog? Cuba thr.ewout Somali troops from the Ogaden! Was Cuba the new polkeman of Afries? Wlas it the eonscience of the O.A.U.? CONCLUSION The sub.Saharan sector of the Afrícsn eontinent has important areas of linkage with Latín America. Those linkages indude the folIowing factors. First, there is the black factor in the r.adal composition oE Latín America. There are minions of peopIe of AfrÍCan ancestry resident within Latín America. Among these are a sizable number of Cubans, as we indicated. Thete llre also miHions oE black Br.azilians. A seeond factor which links up sub-Saharan Africa with Latin America is something which wiI.l gain in importance in the years ahead, the presence of the Portuguese l:anguage in Africa. Brazil is to Portugal what the United States is to Brítain, a child that grew too large for the mother. In the case of the United States, she had by the seeond half of the twentieth century firmIy overshadowea Britsin in world affairs. B1)aza by the second half of the twentieth eentury is also firmly overshadowing Portuga:l in world affaies. Just 84