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The Global South in the Belly of the Beast: Viewing African American Civil Rights through a Tricontinental Lens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Anne Garland Mahler
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Abstract

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In January 1966, delegates from the liberation movements of eighty-two nations came together at the Tricontinental Conference in Havana, Cuba, to form an alliance against imperialism. This alliance, called the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (Organización de Solidaridad de los Pueblos de Africa, Asia y América Latina, OSPAAAL), quickly became the driving force of international political radicalism and the primary engine of radical cultural production throughout the world. I argue that this influential political movement, which has been the subject of surprisingly few scholarly studies, forms the ideological backbone of current conceptualizations of global subalternity, such as the increasingly circulating notion of the Global South. Through close analysis of documents from OSPAAAL's propaganda apparatus, namely the Tricontinental Bulletin and a newsreel by Santiago Álvarez called Now (1965), I examine how OSPAAAL, through its engagement with the African American Civil Rights Movement, presents a theory of transnational subaltern political resistance that is resurfacing in the contemporary notion of the Global South.

Resumo

Resumo

En enero de 1966, los delegados que representaban a los movimientos de liberación de ochenta y dos naciones se reunieron en el Congreso Tricontinental, celebrado en la Habana, Cuba, para formar una alianza contra el imperialismo. Esta alianza, la Organización de Solidaridad de los Pueblos de África, Asia, y América Latina (OSPAAAL), se convirtió rápidamente en la fuerza impulsora del radicalismo político internacional y el motor de su producción cultural en el mundo. Como se argumenta en este trabajo, este influyente movimiento político, que sorprendentemente se ha estudiado poco, constituye la base ideológica de conceptualizaciones contemporáneas de subalternidad global como la noción del Sur Global. Mediante el análisis del Boletín Tricontinental y de un noticiero de Santiago Álvarez titulado Now (1965), se examina aquí como la OSPAAAL, debido a su diálogo con el Movimiento por los Derechos Civiles Afroamericanos, presenta una teoría de resistencia política subalterna que resurge en la actualidad en la noción contemporánea del Sur Global.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , 2015 , pp. 95 - 116
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 by the Latin American Studies Association

Footnotes

I thank Dierdra Reber for her devoted editing, Joshua Lund and Mark A. Sanders for their helpful comments, and Emory University's Latin American and Caribbean Studies program for financial support.

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