True and false revolutionaries. The Cuban example at the origin of the New Left in Italy

Abstract

This text deals with the relationship between Cuba and the New Italian Left during the 1960s. Interest in the Cuban Revolution began at the beginning of the decade, when the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Missile Crisis placed Cuba at the centre of the peace movement in Italy, triggering mass mobilisations that constituted a first moment of radicalisation of the youth. However, it was not until the second half of the decade that the Cuban Revolution influenced the development of a new revolutionary discourse and practice on the peninsula. During this period, Havana became a centre for the international dissemination of revolutionary ideas and discourse through the Tricontinental Conference, the OLAS Conference and the Havana Cultural Congress. The creation of the OSPAAAL and the journal Tricontinental, relations with European intellectuals and the internationalist example of Ernesto Che Guevara enabled Cuba to establish a bridge between the revolutionary experiences of the Third World and the New Left in Western Europe. Contrary to what happened in other European countries, Havana’s rapprochement with Moscow and the arrest of the poet Heberto Padilla did not diminish Cuba’s prestige on the peninsula, although in the years between the two decades the Cuban Revolution gradually came to an end as an model of revolutionary action, mainly due to the failure of the guerrilla foco strategy and the emergence of new revolutionary experiences in the Southern Cone.