Vol. 73/No. 3 January 26, 2009
The documentary contains some very educational interviews with individuals who were on the front lines of these battles in the Congo, Guinea-Bissau, and Angola, including diplomats and intelligence personnel of the governments involved. The degree of U.S. government support for the South African-backed UNITA forces in Angola comes through clearly, as does U.S. involvement in plans to assassinate Congolese anti-imperialist leader Patrice Lumumba. The interviews with the Soviet military advisors and intelligence people—and their expressions of alarm and hatred for the proletarian internationalist course of the Cuban government—are especially striking. We rarely hear them expressing their views so unguardedly.
The article would have been more useful, however, had it also brought out the political biases of the producers—pointing to what’s there and not there. The Militant review doesn’t mention that the documentary was funded by the French Foreign Ministry. Given that pedigree, it is hardly surprising that one might come away from the film with the impression that history is made by diplomats. This is especially true of the second part of the documentary on Angola.
Nor is there any hint in this African odyssey of the first internationalist mission of the Cuban Revolution in Africa, when the Cuban people in 1963 wholeheartedly threw themselves into support for Algeria’s national liberation struggle against French imperialism. Hardly a surprise!
The socialist revolution in Cuba—which transformed millions of men and women as they transformed the world—is largely absent, except through the excellent interviews with a few of the frontline combatants like Che Guevara’s comrades-in-arms Víctor Dreke and Harry Villegas (Pombo). You see the kind of human beings they are.
The real proletarian roots of Cuba’s internationalism and its indispensable role in the survival of the Cuban Revolution don’t come through at all—as they do in the video Cuba and Angola: Response to the South African Escalation that Pathfinder Press has distributed for years, despite its problems of audio and video quality and its length.
Such limits notwithstanding, Cuba: An African Odyssey contains a wealth of information that is presented in a very accessible form, with real quality film work. I’m sure Militant readers will get a lot out of it and enjoy lively discussions of its content.
Mary-Alice Waters
New York, New York
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