The death of Fidel Castro in November 2016 prompted me to revisit the extraordinary history of the Cuban Revolution, and in particular the diplomatic recognition, political support, and military assistance provided by Cuba under Castro to national liberation struggles and independent states all over Africa — from Algeria and Western Sahara, to Eritrea, Ethiopia, Zanzibar, and the Portuguese colonies of Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Cuban soldiers’ victories against South African forces in Angola in 1975–76 and again in 1987–88 played a crucial role in the successful struggles against white rule in Namibia and in South Africa itself.

The earliest Cuban aid effort went to the 1961 Algerian liberation movement when Castro sent a large consignment of American weapons captured during the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion. After the Algerians won independence in July 1962, they reciprocated by helping train a group of Argentinian guerrillas, even sending two agents with the guerrillas from Algiers to Bolivia in June 1963. Two years later, Cuba provided systematic support to a potentially revolutionary movement by sending an elite group of volunteer guerrillas, the vast majority of them black, to the eastern Congo. Che Guevara was among them.