Reminds Me Of 1959 |
Dr. Bruce Smith ——Bio and Archives--January 13, 2026
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Oh, they were heady days!
The countries with colonial origins or colonial pasts had teamed up to defeat the Nazis and the Empire of Japan, so now it was safe to run out from behind British and French and Dutch skirts and sneer and make rude gestures at their parent tormenters. In the Third World the fashion became solidarity against any country with a colonial past.
With fascism (they always conveniently leave out the socialist part) defeated, Marx’s poison ideology found fertile ground in newly independent third world countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, since they had avoided much of the conflict or had been on its periphery.
They were flushed with confidence and socialist energy after the Bandung Conference of the so-called non-aligned countries of 1955, held in Indonesia. It was time to show the weary colonial powers how real socialism would reform the world, feed the hungry, and bring the collectivist nirvana to front and center. Bandung was about Asian and African nationalist ambitions, but there were many areas of the Western Hemisphere in Latin America and the Caribbean where socialist ferment was also giving off its tempting aroma of envy and justice to come.
In Africa, Ghana led the way with independence in 1957, followed by Guinea in 1959. Then a wave swept the former colonial areas of Africa. In 1960 alone, seventeen new African countries gained independence from the European powers, and still more followed. The excitement in the air was palpable.
In Latin America there was talk of revolution and of throwing off the colonial oppressors. In Cuba there was chaos and economic turmoil spreading in resistance to the dictatorial rule of Fulgencio Batista. He had been Cuba’s president from 1940-44, then again from 1952. Cuban revolutionaries painted him as a dictator and oppressor who had to be removed by any means necessary. This opposition had been spearheaded by guerrillas in the Sierra Maestra mountains led by a young lawyer named Fidel Castro. Castro was on the march! In the course of 1958 Castro’s efforts began to pay off as........