Latin American Revolutionaries and the Arab World: From the Suez Canal to the Arab Spring

204 Pages·2016·0.59 MB·English

by  Federico Vélez

Latin american revoLutionaries and
the arab WorLd
For Claudia Mejía and Sofía Vélez
Latin American
Revolutionaries and the
Arab World
From the Suez Canal to the Arab Spring
Federico véLez
Zayed University, UAE
© Federico vélez 2016
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Federico vélez has asserted his right under the copyright, designs and Patents act, 1988, to be
identified as the author of this work.
Published by
ashgate Publishing Limited ashgate Publishing company
Wey court east 110 cherry street
union road suite 3-1
Farnham burlington, vt 05401-3818
surrey, Gu9 7Pt usa
england
www.ashgate.com
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
vélez, Federico.
Latin american revolutionaries and the arab world : from the suez canal to the arab spring /
by Federico vélez.
pages cm
includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4724-6721-8 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-4724-6722-5 (ebook) -- ISBN
978-1-4724-6723-2 (epub) 1. Arab countries--Foreign relations--Latin America. 2. Latin Amer-
ica--Foreign relations--arab countries. 3. revolutions--arab countries--history--20th century.
4. revolutions--arab countries--history--21st century. 5. revolutions--Latin america--history-
-20th century. i. title.
ds63.2.L29v45 2015
909’.09749270825--dc23
2015019122
ISBN 9781472467218 (hbk)
ISBN 9781472467225 (ebk – PDF)
ISBN 9781472467232 (ebk – ePUB)
Printed in the united Kingdom by henry Ling Limited,
at the dorset Press, dorchester, dt1 1hd
Contents
List of Figures vii
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
introduction 1
1 Gamal abdel nasser in Latin america 5
2 The Cuban Revolution and Egypt: Defining the Limits of the
third World alliance 23
3 algeria and cuba: the sister revolutions 53
4 algeria and cuba: Partners in revolution 71
5 cuba–nicaragua and the Palestinian movements 1968–1989 93
6 “My Heart Beats with Millions of Arab Hearts”: Venezuela and the
arab World 133
epilogue 171
Bibliography 179
Index 193
This page has been left blank intentionally
List of Figures
2.1 cairo, egypt: egypt’s President nasser gestures to a crowd, as
visiting cuban industry minister ernesto Guevara, (L), looks
on admiringly 24
3.1 President of algerian council ahmed ben bella in cuba in 1962 54
5.1 Palestinian leader Yasser arafat with sandinista leader
daniel ortega and members of Government’s assembly, managua,
July 21, 1980 93
6.1 hugo chávez with the iraqi president saddam hussein, the
first visit of a Head of State to Iraq since 1991, Baghdad,
august 11, 2000 134
6.2 iranian President muhammad Khatami and saudi crown Prince
abdullah ibn abdul aziz al-saud in caracas with President hugo
chávez to commemorate 40th anniversary of oPec,
september 28, 2000 140
6.3 Hugo Chávez and Mohammed Qaddafi in Tripoli, Libya
on october 22, 2010. his last visit to the region. 157
This page has been left blank intentionally
Preface
my friend andy Klatt inspired me to write this book with an anecdote he told
me long ago in medford, massachusetts. his generous internationalist spirit
and his commitment to global justice had taken him to nicaragua in the 1980s.
his government, the united states (us) government, had declared nicaragua
to be a threat both to its own security and to that of the region. therefore,
Washington was financing a group of counterrevolutionaries created to
destroy the nicaraguan government in the hands of the Frente Sandinista para la
Liberación Nacional (also known as the sandinistas) since 1979. andy had gone
to help collect the coffee yield, as peasants had been drafted by the sandinista
government and sent to the front lines to fight the counterrevolutionaries, also
known as la contra. on a road waiting for a truck that would take him to the
coffee fields, he had a brief exchange with some young Nicaraguans, who told
him that they had been trained in Lebanon by a Palestinian group. despite my
insistent request for more details, andy had no more information to share with
me. “We took different paths, and i never saw them again,” he said. that was the
end of my conversation with Andy that day, but it was the first day for this book.
i wanted to understand the reasons behind an encounter between
revolutionaries from Latin america, nicaraguans in this case, and Palestinian
guerrillas, as well as the articulation and international implications of the
encounter. My initial research led me to explore declarations from both
the sandinistas and the Palestinian Liberation organization (PLo), as
both organizations publicly acknowledged in the 1980s that they had years
of revolutionary solidarity in the past. the us archives also contained
documentation from the ronald reagan administration (1981–1989) on the
sandinista-Palestinian relationship, which Washington interpreted as being part
of a major international strategy coordinated by Moscow to expand its influence
in the region. Within the framework of cold War rationale, the evidence
available was cited as justification for the diplomatic and military campaign the
us was waging in central america in the 1980s against nicaragua. my initial
approach was to study this Palestinian-sandinista encounter as another case in
the global confrontation between the soviet union and the united states.
As my investigation progressed, I began to find other episodes of encounters
between arab and Latin american revolutionaries that predated those of the
sandinistas and the Palestinians. thanks to the work of Piero Gleijeses, i
found out that more than two decades before the triumph of the sandinistas
in nicaragua, cuban revolutionaries had initiated what they heralded as a close