The Cuban revolution and the Afro-Asian world in the prolegomena of the Tricontinental: meeting places, actors and political-ideological discussions

Abstract

The Tricontinental Conference, held in Havana in January 1966, highlighted the existence of a network of political and diplomatic connections within the so-called Third World, a field that is still in the early stages of scholarly exploration. This article examines the transnational alliances and projects that connected political actors from Latin America, Africa, and Asia during the 1950s and 1960s, focusing on the meeting spaces, key figures, and political-ideological debates between the Afro-Asian world and revolutionary Cuba in the years leading up to the conference. To this end, the study is structured into three sections. The first examines the ideas that facilitated the rapprochement between Cuba and the Afro-Asian world up until 1961. The
second focuses on the impact of transformative events in Africa and the proliferation of meeting spaces with the Cubans. Finally, the third section analyzes the period from 1963 to 1965, when the debates that would shape the Tricontinental were formulated, in a context marked by the crisis of the Afro-Asian project.This article aims to analyze the meeting places, the actors and the political-ideological discussions of the Afro-Asian world and the Cuban revolution in the years preceding the Tricontinental Conference.