South-South Solidarity and the Latin American Left

Abstract

Most studies of international solidarity focus on movements connecting the global North and South, sidelining the vital connections within the South. While revolutionaries have long prioritized both North-South and South-South relationships, academics have been slower to catch on. Only recently have we begun to give “South-South solidarity” the attention it merits.Jessica Stites Mor's study examines South-South solidarity movements involving the Latin American Left, primarily during the late 1960s and early 1970s. This was the heyday of internationalism driven by radical visions of anti-imperialism and socialism. South-South cooperation took new form following the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Havana, and the 1966 formation of the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa, and Latin America (OSPAAAL). Cuba in particular supported anticolonial and anticapitalist struggles across Africa and Latin America. Meanwhile, nonrevolutionary states and private institutions like the Catholic Church scrambled to fend off revolutionary change through a combination of reform and repression.Despite the book's narrow temporal frame, its scope is ambitious. It tackles four very different cases of South-South connections using archives from eight countries. The first chapter addresses Mexico's protection of Chilean political refugees after the 1973 coup. This policy followed an effort by Mexican legal scholars and certain regime officials to strengthen international asylum law by asserting the right of receiving countries to determine the validity of claims. Though some of these advocates had principled motives, the regime was also concerned with “shoring up domestic support” following the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre (p. 185n9). As many have noted, Mexico's less-than-revolutionary regime sought to boost its tarnished legitimacy by opposing some aspects of US imperialism in Latin America. It was essentially forced to practice some level of solidarity in the interest of maintaining power. And even that posture had major limits: for example, the regime simultaneously collaborated with Washington by sharing intel on Cubans and waging a brutal counterinsurgency in Guerrero state.OSPAAAL's artistic production is the topic of chapter 2. Stites Mor analyzes the organization's printed materials, which were designed in Cuba and disseminated around the world. Posters promoted solidarity with revolutionaries in Vietnam, South Africa, Palestine, Yemen, and elsewhere. Although these materials have been discussed in other studies, the visual analysis of the artists' decisions is a valuable contribution. The chapter reflects one of Stites Mor's overarching arguments, about how “representational solidarity” aimed to forge a shared revolutionary imaginary (p. 20).Chapter 3 addresses a more neglected case: the Argentine Left's solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle. Unlike OSPAAAL art, which was accompanied by Cuban material assistance to revolutionary movements, Argentines' use of representational solidarity was “mostly symbolic” (p. 124). They championed the Palestinian cause largely as a way to unify the domestic Left around a common agenda. This is an example of how domestic politics informs international solidarity, which is a common thread across all four case studies. The chapter also draws an insightful contrast with the Chilean Left. Stites Mor argues that the presence in Chile of a conservative Palestinian immigrant population, including many vocal capitalists, slowed the growth of solidarity efforts as compared with Argentina.The global transmission of liberation theology, another understudied question, is the focus of the final chapter. Stites Mor shows that Latin American articulations of liberation theology had a significant impact in apartheid South Africa. Antiapartheid activists read and circulated the writings of Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutiérrez, for example. The chapter says rather little about direct relationships between South Africans and Latin Americans, though it does suggest how ideas were transmitted via publications.Such a wide-ranging book is bound to have some limitations. It focuses on the discourse of solidarity emanating from top figures; it says less about the organizing of material solidarity, about how rank-and-file activists understood solidarity, or about how survivors view that era and its legacies. Oral histories might have offered insight into these questions. South-South solidarity in other times and places, such as Central America in the 1980s, is not addressed in any depth. In short, there is much research still to be done. This book's welcome reframing of solidarity should help inspire that work.