International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

Extract

Walterio Carbonell, a communist activist in Cuba since the 1940s through the early twenty-first century, joined the French Communist Party in the 1950s where he was active in the movement to support the decolonization of Africa. He developed ties to “ Négritude ” scholars Léopold Sédar Senghor and Aimé Césaire , who were critical of European imperialism and supported independence. From exile he supported the 26th of July Movement in Cuba against both the Batista dictatorship and its orthodox Marxist detractors. A close friend and collaborator of Fidel Castro , Raúl Castro, and Ernesto “Ché” Guevara in the early stages of the Cuban Revolution, Carbonell wrote for the newspaper Revolución , worked for the ministry of foreign affairs, covered the US Bay of Pigs invasion as a war correspondent, and served briefly as Cuba's ambassador to Tunisia. In 1961 he published Cómo se forgió la cultura nacional , a controversial work that challenged, in the tradition of earlier Afro-Cuban scholars such as Gustavo Urrutia, Juan René Betancourt, and Elías Entralgo Vallina, the “whitening” of Cuban history by liberals and nationalists, as well as many sectors of the left. He was a leading advocate of the independent organization of blacks within the Cuban Revolution. A salient contribution to the history and politics of the African Diaspora in Latin America, his book chronicled black rebellions ... log in or subscribe to read full text