The neighboring Congo’s president was Alphonse Massamba-Débat, whose socialist views were similar to those of the Chinese Communist Party.9 In August 1965, Fidel dispatched a unit to the Congo that joined the fifty or so Cubans already there. The group was headed by Jorge Risquet, who was the “descendant of an African slave, her white master, a Chinese indentured servant, and a Spanish immigrant.”10
In the Congo, the Cubans discovered that the rhetoric of the country’s leaders did not match their politics, which were fueled by opportunism and personal feuds. Since Fidel had charged Risquet with defending the Congo, when an attempted coup broke out on June 27, 1966, the Cubans came to the defense of the government. Wanting to resolve the dispute diplomatically rather than by force, Risquet appointed a doctor to lead the maneuvers. The rebels backed down when confronted by the determination of the smaller number of Cubans. On July 6, the revolt ended with only one Congolese death.11 It soon became clear to the Cubans that their major task in the Congo was protecting one faction from another. Risquet persuaded the Cuban government that the best thing for them to do was leave, which they soon did. Two years later, a successful coup overthrew Massamba-Débat’s government.12
The uprising against the Portuguese in Guinea-Bissau stood in sharp contrast to the Congolese and Zairean movements. Even U.S. intelligence reports described Guinea-Bissau as having “Africa’s most successful liberation movement.”13 During his 1965 journey through Africa, Che spoke with the Bissau-Guinean and Cape Verdean Amílcar Cabral, head of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC, the acronym in Portuguese).14
Fidel recognized the importance of the Non-Aligned Movement, which brought together third world countries breaking from the yoke of imperialism. He persuaded those organizing the Tricontinental Congress to meet in Havana on January 3, 1966, and invited Latin American groups dedicated to armed struggle. It was there that Fidel and Cabral first met and spoke extensively. Fidel promised Cabral doctors, military instructors, and mechanics.15 Both made impressive speeches to the Congress’s delegates, and Fidel emerged as a champion of revolutionary movements.
For a critical year, Victor Dreke headed Cuba’s military undertaking in Guinea-Bissau. Dreke was a black commander who received extremely high praise from Che for his efforts in Zaire. Dreke was impressed by the discipline of the PAIGC, and by the time he returned to Cuba in late 1968, Cabral’s forces had strengthened their position. The Portuguese lost ground even while increasing their troops from 20,000 to 25,000.16 Cuba never had more than sixty soldiers in Guinea-Bissau, which was one of the ways Cabral kept the PAIGC under his command. The other way was restricting foreign military aid only to Cubans. Yet the Cubans’ roles as military advisers and teachers proved invaluable. When Fidel went to Africa in 1972, the PAIGC was the only force on the continent successfully fighting against a white regime.17
In this period, Cuba also played minor roles in Angola, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Tanzania, and possibly other countries.18 Here, however, we will focus on Zaire, the Congo, and Guinea-Bissau, which were, by far, its major arenas. Much of the information regarding the experiences of Cuban physicians in Africa is from extensive interviews with military doctors deployed in the three countries, as well as Tanzania.
WHITE DOCTORS, BLACK SOLDIERS
Cuban doctors going to Africa were almost all white, whereas its troops were almost all black. Before the revolution, it was very rare for black people to become doctors, although they rose quickly to high positions in the revolutionary military. Race was critical in every aspect of the African conflicts.
The United States had strong advantages over Cuba in its influence in Africa: it could offer vastly more economic aid and wield the political power of its European allies, accrued by their history of conquest and ongoing domination. But throughout the 1960s, the United States was increasingly tied up in Vietnam, and its ongoing racism repulsed people around the globe. Racism in the white regimes of Africa was also blatant and horrific. The Observer reported that mercenaries paid to put down the Simba rebellion “not only shoot and hang prisoners after torturing them, but use them for target practice and gamble over the number of shots to kill them.” One mercenary wrote of the “White Giants” in his memoirs: “Tall, vigorous Boers from South Africa; long-legged, slim and muscular Englishmen from Rhodesia—who would restore, in Zaire, the white man to his proper place.”19
African resistance leaders realized that they could use to their advantage the inability of racists to tell one group of black people from another. The revolutionaries in Zaire requested that the Cubans sent to aid them be black so they could pass undetected by U.S. and European spies. Cabral asked Cuban officials to send technicians who were “black or dark mulattoes so that they would blend in with his people,” a request that fell into place with the PAIGC’s policy of denying that their actions involved any foreigners.20
When Fidel asked Dreke to select troops who would serve in Zaire with Che, he specified that he had to “choose a platoon of men who have shown their mettle, who are all volunteers and who are dark-skinned blacks.” Neither Dr. Rodrigo Álvarez Cambras nor Dr. Julián Álvarez Blanco knew that Africa was their destination until they saw that almost all the combatants in the training camps were black.21
This led to very different experiences for those traveling by ship to Africa. Dr. Álvarez Cambras remembers episodes of Pavlovian conditioning when traveling aboard the Soviet ship Félix Dzerzhinsky:
Since the doctors were all white, there were no problems with anyone seeing us. But the troops were all black, and, in order to make sure that none of the passengers or U.S. spy planes would guess the purpose of the mission, they had to stay in the lower deck of the ship, which was hot and had poor ventilation. Occasionally, they could come out briefly at night.
Since the Russian food was very strong with disagreeable odors, the comrades who had to stay below without fresh air would get nauseous and vomit when they smelled it. The captain had a gong that he hit in front of a microphone to announce that it was time to eat. Some of the comrades started vomiting when they heard the gong.
At that point, I told Risquet that he had to tell the ship’s captain to stop banging the gong. He replied that it was I, as a doctor, who had to have that conversation with the captain. When I did, that robust Russian failed to understand the situation and argued that it was a tradition that he could not violate.22
Though the white doctors could lean over the side of the ship to vomit, it must have been profoundly unpleasant for the black troops confined to the lower deck. In response, and to the outrage of the Russian captain, the Cubans stole the gong and heaved it into the Atlantic!23
The strategy of recruiting black troops significantly slowed the ability of Western powers to detect Cuban involvement. A British adviser in Zaire observed that U.S. agents looked “for whites and their eyes … passed over Cuban blacks or mulattoes.” The same was true for the Congo, where bewildered officials from the United States, France, West Germany, and England “were unable to ascertain how many Cubans were in the Congo.” A Belgian ambassador could not tell if there were one hundred or eight hundred Cubans since “they are difficult to pick out because they are all colored.”24 It was likely a serious affront to the dignity of white supremacists to see black Cubans so successfully bamboozling them.
RECRUITING DOCTORS
Western observers could only be successfully deceived about Cuban involvement if Cuba’s own recruits were not informed about their destination. Rodolfo Puente was the only one of nine physicians interviewed by Hedelberto López Blanch who was openly told where he was going (in his case, the Congo).25 Others were led to believe that they were going to Algeria, Vietnam, or “other lands” or instructed to tell their families that they would be studying in the Soviet Union.26