Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • 11 - From Playa Girón to Luanda

  • from Part IV - Frustrated Visions
  • Edited by R. Joseph Parrott, Ohio State University, Mark Atwood Lawrence, University of Texas, Austin
  • Book:
    The Tricontinental Revolution
    Published online:
    06 January 2022
    Print publication:
    20 January 2022, pp 304-331
    • Chapter
      • You have access
      • Open access
    • PDF
    • HTML
    • Export citation

  • Summary

    Mercenaries are controversial components of contemporary warfare but became common as decolonization and the Cold War intersected to cause conflict in the Global South. Under Fidel Castro, Cuba understood mercenaries as the products of capitalism, neocolonialism, and imperialism, using the term to describe a range of intermediates that acted on behalf of the United States and other Western nations. This global projection of counterrevolutionary force legitimized Cuba’s own deployments and revolutionary fights to combat these threats. Both of these opposing forces consisted of foreign militants fighting alongside rebels or for governments, but they had different motivations and relationships to allied movements or states. The chapter examines Cuban theorizing about mercenarism and the revolutionary fighter, ranging from the events at Playa Girón to the deployment of Cuban troops to Angola in the 1970s. At the same time, Cuba championed an expansive legal definition of mercenarism that sought – ultimately unsuccessfully – to incorporate its Tricontinental critique of Western intervention into international law.