Between Scylla and Charybdis: Cuban-Libyan Rivalry in the Caribbean (1979–1986)

Abstract

Sitting at the nexus of Cold War and Latin American history, this article delves into Cuban and Libyan competition in Central America and the Caribbean, which has attracted little scholarly attention but touches upon numerous strands of historical change and tension in the 1980s Second Cold War. The article is based on original research of Eastern European and US archival material, providing a glimpse into the tumultuous 1980s, and offering a broader contextual reading of the transformations in Cuba’s regional standing and Libya’s global conduct, leading to the two states’ competition in the Caribbean. Through this narrative, the paper seeks to elucidate Cuba’s moderating regional role within a short but notable episode of South-South competition within the broader history of East-South cooperation. It argues that the improvement of Cuba’s local standing in the 1970s proved a more influential factor among local leftists than Libya’s foreign concepts, as the Caribbean left remained vigilant against the ever-present potential of American retaliation, which justified their flexible modes of ‘anti-imperialist’ struggle, showing how closely both Eastern and Western observers followed Havana and Tripoli’s markedly different revolutionary tactics across the world.