Wednesday, December 15, 2004

The Cuban Connection

I see the long-running argument on Chile has resurfaced over at Back Seat Drivers; I never did go back to offer an elaboration on Dick's sneer (go to comment 32 here) that I was portraying "Fidel Castro having Sauron like abilities to infect and destroy..."

I'm reading the book Revolution and World Politics by Fred Halliday right now too. He has some fascinating accounts of Cuban involvement in revoutionary guerilla warfare all over the world.

Apparently, they had armed and trained the Sandanistas since their foundation in 1961 and contributed most of their arms, including 500 tons delivered during the final two years of war before they took power from the Somoza regime in 1979, being greeted on arrival at the capital's airport by the Cuban consul to Costa Rica holding an M16. They went on to collaborate in supporting uprisings in Guatemala and El Salvador.

Regular military forces, were committed to Algeria, Ethiopia and Angola where 4,000 were killed. Halliday writes that "This record of more than thirty years of committment, from 1962 until 1992 [when the Russians stopped their foreign aid] ranks as one of the most extraordinary and sustained engagements by any state to the export of revolution".

No kidding!