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The decade of the long 1960s was shaped by major global transformations. The wave of revolution that swept the continents of Africa, Asia and Latin America from the late ‘60s onwards went hand in hand with the winds of change sweeping Europe. Student protests, incessant unrest, violence and terrorism dominated the front pages during these years in countries such as France, Italy, Germany and Spain, where the processes taking place in the Global South seemed to resound like distant echoes far removed from the effervescent European reality.

This apparent disconnection has overshadowed the impetus exerted by revolutionary movements in countries such as Cuba, Algeria, Palestine and Vietnam on the great socio-political conflicts in Europe. Within the broader spectrum of connections between Europe and this global revolutionary wave, the Tricontinental movement is a rare and largely unexplored example.

The Tricontinental sphere was formed out of the 1966 Havana Tricontinental Conference. Considered as a more radical Bandung II, this meeting materialised the integration of Latin America into the Afro-Asian sphere, being described by the United States as the most powerful gathering of pro-Communist, anti-American forces in the history of the Western Hemisphere. The markedly revolutionary orientation of this event aroused the misgivings not only of the West, but also of the socialist superpowers themselves, such as China and the Soviet Union, who perceived the Tricontinental as a threat to their interests in the Global South. As a result of this Conference, a project of international solidarity was launched, aimed at strengthening the unity of the diverse revolutionary forces of the world in a single great common current, which also included Europe.

Some of the most representative figures of the world revolutionary process, such as Ernesto Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, Graça Machel, Yasser Arafat, Kim Il-Sung, Assata Shakur, Amilcar Cabral and Eduardo Mondlane, had direct links with the Tricontinental movement that are little known. Although based in Africa, Asia and Latin America, Europe was the continent where this current exerted its greatest influence. Through the action of an international body called the Organisation of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America (OSPAAAL), Tricontinental penetrated deep into European territory in the late 1960s. The radical ideological action of this movement, carried out through the dissemination of materials, magazines or posters (sometimes falsified by the CIA) with Algerian, Palestinian, Cuban or Vietnamese motifs, had a decisive influence in Europe.

Through historical research, the magnitude of the Tricontinental’s impact on Europe is being brought to light. In 1968, the circulation of anything related to the Tricontinental was banned in France for representing, according to the French Minister of the Interior, ‘the centre of impulse, unification and coordination of different anti-imperialist movements’. In the same context, very diverse organisations such as the Bertrand Russell Foundation, the Norwegian Student Organisation (Sosialistisk Studentlag), the British Anti-Apartheid Movement, or the Vietnam solidarity committees in Italy and Denmark, also established direct links with the Tricontinental organisation.

Its influence was also felt at the level of armed struggle across Europe. Terrorist organisations such as Brigate Rosse in Italy, Revolutionäre Zellen in Germany, Euskadi Ta Askatasuna in Spain or the Partido Revolucionario do Proletariado-Brigadas Revolucionárias in Portugal were influenced to varying degrees by the Tricontinental. The construction of the link between Europe and the Tricontinental is visible, finally, in the deep involvement of European intellectuals in shaping the movement. Apart from the recognised commitment of figures such as Giangiacomo Feltrinelli and François Maspero, personalities including Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Mandel, André Gunder Frank, Giovanni Berlinguer, Peter Weiss, Gunnar Persson, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Dag Østerberg, Göran Therborn, André Pieyre de Mandiargues and Jean Suret Canale also maintained connections with the Tricontinental. These figures, together with many others present at the Tricontinental Conference, such as Régis Debray, Enrique Líster, Alberto Moravia and Robin Blackburn, illustrate the extent of the link between the Tricontinental movement and the European intellectual elite of the time.

The multiple and unexplored connections between the Tricontinental movement and Europe at the end of the 1960s provide interpretative keys to the transnational connections between the Global South and Europe. Above all, these elements offer new analytical frameworks for international relations in the context of the Cold War.

Alberto García Molinero is a PhD candidate at the University of Granada, Spain

 albertogm@ugr.es | https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0629-8579  If you’re a postgraduate student or ECR researching any aspect of post-1914 European history (including the UK and Europe’s overseas empires), we’d love to hear from you. To submit a blog idea, or for more information about New Voices, please email cehnewvoices@gmail.com