ANDRÉ PUBLIC SCULPTURES

Brief History

 

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was a Cuban politician and communist revolutionary who governed the Republic of Cuba as Prime Minister from 1959 to 1976 and then as President from 1976 to 2008.

Born: 13 August 1926

Died: 25 November 2016

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One of Castro’s central foreign policy goals was internationalism – the promotion of decolonisation and revolutionary politics abroad. This involved sending troops to fight in wars against colonial or proxy forces on the African continent, as well as supporting those movements with logistical and technical support. Cuba sent troops but it also sent tens of thousands of Cuban doctors, dentists, nurses, health-care technicians, academics, teachers and engineers to the continent and elsewhere. That a significant proportion of Cubans trace their ancestries to west and central Africa (owing to slavery) contributes to this politics.

Cuba’s involvement in the freedom of South Africa from white minority rule was even more dramatic. Twice – in 1976 and again in 1988 – the Cubans defeated a US-supported proxy force of the South African apartheid army and Angolan “rebels”. These instances were the first times South Africa’s army was defeated.

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Mandela writing from Robben Island: “It was the first time that a country had come from another continent not to take something away, but to help Africans to achieve their freedom.”