Cuban Pan-Africanism or Revolutionary Third-Worldism: African anti-colonial struggles and Afro-Cuban consciousness in the newspaper Noticias de Hoy (1964-1965)

Abstract

From the newspaper Noticias de Hoy, publication of the Popular Socialist Party (PSP), historicallylinked to anti-racist militancy in Cuba and one of the main political forces to constitute the Statefounded by the 1959 Revolution, this work intends to analyze how the ambiguities of the racial questionin Cuban socialism were perceived and formulated by this specific group. For that,we will cross the coverage of anti-colonial movements in the African continent with the narrativesbuilt around the racial problem in the domestic news, between 1964, when the countrybecame more directly involved in conflicts in Africa, and 1965, the last year ofnewspaper publication. Thus, we tried to understand if, on the one hand, there was a particular attentionto the racial dimension of the struggles of African peoples, in a context of effervescence of Pan-Africanismin Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas, or if they were only read within a Third World keywider; and whether, on the other hand, there was some form of claiming theseexperiences in the affirmation of an Afro-Cuban identity by this party which, despite having beenan important force for the political mobilization of the black population in the republican history of Cuba,it was articulated within a State that propagated the ideology of racial democracy. At end,it is intended to contribute to the discussions on the role of Cuba in the formation of the Third Worldduring the Cold War, when paying attention to the complexity of the racial issue in this political project,relating the foreign policy and the internal disputes of the revolutionary State.