London Exhibition Shows How Cuban Art Inspired Africa’s Liberation Struggles

Riyaz Patel

An exhibition of Cuban art in London shows the support Fidel Castro gave to African liberation movements during the Cold War.

The art works were produced for Castro’s Organisation of Solidarity of the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America (Ospaaal), which was born out of the Tricontinental Conference, hosted in Havana in 1966, to combat US imperialism.

Much of Ospaaal’s output was directed towards the fight against white-minority rule in South Africa, which did not end until 1994 when anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela was elected president.

Teishan Latner’s book Cuba Revolution in America shows a satirical advert for South African Airways included in Tricontinental’s July-August 1968 issue promising “an unforgettable vacation in the land of APARTHEID, where Africans are massacred, where prisons overflow with patriots fighting against white racists, where thousands of Blacks work as slaves in the gold mines, where miles and miles of land are