Book review

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.12.1.0149
• Pages: 149-150
• Published date: 01 July 2020
• Date: 01 July 2020
• Author: Gary Prevost

IJCS Produced and distributed by Pluto Journals www.plutojournals.com/ijcs/

BOOK REVIEWS

Anne Garland Mahler, From the Tricontinental to the Global South: Race,

Radicalism, and Transnational Solidarity (Durham, NC: Duke University

Press, 2018), hb. 352 pp. ISBN: 978-0822371144

Reviewed by Gary Prevost1

In this volume, the author attempts the very ambitious task of analysing the

relationship between the Tricontinental process initiated by Cuba in the 1960s

with more contemporary political movements like Occupy Wall Street, and

doing so through the primary lens of race. The task is a complex one, and the

author does not always deliver on her promises, but on balance it is a significant

scholarly contribution.

The starting point of the book is the formation of the Tricontinental in

January 1966 when delegates from the liberation movements of eighty-two

nations in Africa, Asia and the Americas came together in Havana, Cuba to form

an alliance against economic and military imperialism. The Tricontinental

Conference marked the extension into the Americas of the Afro-Asian move-

ment begun at the 1955 Bandung Conference and continued with the formation

of the Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Organization (AAPSO) in Cairo in 1957.

The Tricontinental meeting in Havana was emblematic of the commitment of

Cuban Revolution to foster revolutions throughout the world, a process that is

better treated in Dirk Kruijt’s recent book, Cuba and Revolutionary Latin

America: An Oral History. However, Mahler does detail how the Tricontinental,

through its films, posters, and magazines published in many languages, became

the driving force of political radicalism in the years that followed. Tricontinental

did so by giving voice to a wide array of political parties and movements that

allowed for a dynamic networking of these movements even in the absence of

further gatherings. Mahler gives primary focus to the organisations of the

Americas promoted by the Tricontinental, beginning with the writings by Black

Power and Puerto Rican Young Lords activists as well as works from contempo-

rary social movements such as the World Social Forum and Black Lives Matter.

1 Gary Prevost is Professor Emeritus of Political Science with the College of Saint

Benedict/Saint John’s University, Minnesota, USA.