BY GABRIEL MOLINA  
HAVANA—The U.S. Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations’ (SHAFR) 2003 first prize came as something of a shock to its winner.

Piero Gleijeses, professor at Johns Hopkins University, author of the book Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa 1959-1976, couldn’t believe that he was worthy of such a distinction, “given that the principal message of the text is the altruistic Cuban aid to Africa that, among other results, propitiated the release of Nelson Mandela,” he informed Granma International.

In fact it is extremely unlikely that a work that gives a positive balance to the Cuban Revolution would be awarded at any point. But now, in a year when campaigns against the island are multiplying in the United States and Europe, comes this astonishing result. The professor didn’t believe it until the decision was made official.

Gleijeses wrote Conflicting Missions after extensive research, during which he consulted declassified CIA files on Cuba, and others on Russia, Germany and South Africa, as well as press articles in the Congo, Guinea Bissau, Tanzania and other nations. As he admits, his method of investigation demanded time, memory, organization: “reviewing newspapers, archives, libraries—especially the presidential ones that are important—as national libraries hardly ever have CIA or White House documents. National archives up until 1974-75 are poor and slow to be declassified; the Carter one is the richest on his period and they are still being declassified.”

The author is an acknowledged researcher of more than 40 years of experience and has written outstanding books such as the one related to the U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965 and Shattered Hope: the Guatemalan Revolution and the United States (1944-54) in which he utilized sources from the Department of State historians’ office and volumes of the Foreign Relations of the United States publication in order to demonstrate how the CIA organized the downfall of the government of Jacobo Arbenz. Gleijeses confesses that this book opened the gates to Cuba, although this was in no way easy, nor was it anything other than conflictive.

“The importance of the prize lies in that the society, not being a left-wing organization, has acknowledged the value of a work whose author does not belong to the SHAFR, and which reveals the debt of the Africans to Cuba. From the early days of its Revolution this little country was very altruistic with Algeria during the war against French colonialism and with a large part of Africa, up until the war in Angola in 1976.

“The other unusual message in Conflicting Missions is that the United States does not come out very well. And even so it has gained a U.S. prize,” he added. “This is because it has been strongly documented in order to get over messages that the public does not like. If it had been an establishment kind of book what has happened wouldn’t have been so surprising.”

The book has three English editions, the last in February this year and can be found in Spanish, edited by the Cuban Ciencias Sociales publishing house.

“The thesis is that no country has maintained such an altruistic policy over such a long period,” Gleijeses confirmed. “It was present during the Bolshevik Revolution, during the Haitian one, with its aid to Bolívar. But in my research, that of Cuba reaches up until the end of the 1980’s.”

Based on the impression that he had, confirmed in his subsequent research, he states that the same elements of altruism, respect for the movements and governments that Cuba aids and almost sustains have been maintained post-1976. Cuba has avoided perceiving them with any superiority.

The essayist had access to transcripts of the 1981 conversations of Fidel Castro, Raúl Castro and Jorge Risquet with the Angolan leaders and comments: “The Cubans must have been very annoyed because there had been threats in ’79-80 from Reagan and the Soviet Union was weakening, but Cuba sent additional aid to Angola and maintained the same respect.

“There were a few ‘cuckoldings’ on the part of Lusaka such as the agreement made with the racist regime of South Africa without even informing Cuba. However, in the talks between Fidel and [Angolan president José] Dos Santos one could appreciate a magisterial knowledge, much education, with impact despite the offense, and always with great respect. Technical aid payments were behind and from October 1983 these were granted free of charge and moreover, given that regular medicines could not wait for a letter of credit, they were dispatched without concern as to whether they would be paid for.

“It’s very impressive. It will be part of something that I amt planning to do: to research Cuban foreign policy from 1959 to 1989. It’s not going to be declassified yet, but is a tremendously beautiful history, which I think will interest Fidel. For example, you have his visit to Argentina, where he was received how he was precisely because of the projection of the Cuban Revolution. That book is a dream of mine.”

The professor organizes his classes at Johns Hopkins in the following way: U.S. politics from independence up until World War I, history of the cold war, international relations from the Congress of Vienna up until World War II; in terms of Cuba, U.S. government opposition to its independence from Jefferson up until 1820, Narciso López in 1850, and from Martí and Bolívar to Fidel.

“Sometimes the students look at me as if I’m crazy, but they can’t object, because it’s all fully documented and evidenced. A few of them say that I’m prejudiced, but as I really know the material they respect me even though its is a conservative university, whose dean was Wolfowitz. This challenge makes me seek out strong evidence and hard information. For example, I reviewed 41 U.S. journals and 12 European ones on the 1898 war in Cuba. I know that debate better than anyone.”

With his little gray beard, thin and nervous, Professor Gleijeses is a great communicator and conversationalist. His critics say that the book on Cuba only goes up to 1976 or is just about Africa, “because they have no other way of refuting it. Nobody can deny Cuba’s altruism, which emerges from the documents investigated.”

“The difference between my work and that of García Márquez’s Operación Carlota, for example, is the extensive use of documents from all kinds of sources.”  
 
 
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