[ An exhibition of Cuban propaganda posters and magazines in
London shows the support Fidel Castro gave to African liberation
movements during the Cold War. The works were produced by 33
designers, many of them women.] [[link removed]]

HOW CUBAN ART FED AFRICA'S LIBERATION STRUGGLES  
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BBC News
November 6, 2019
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_ An exhibition of Cuban propaganda posters and magazines in London
shows the support Fidel Castro gave to African liberation movements
during the Cold War. The works were produced by 33 designers, many of
them women. _

Lázaro Abreu Padrón, Images courtesy of The House of Illustration
in London. Copyright: Ospaaal, The Mike Stanfield Collection // BBC
News

 

The art works were produced for Castro's Organisation of Solidarity of
the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America (Ospaaal), which was born
out of the Tricontinental Conference, hosted in Havana in 1966, to
combat US imperialism.

"A lot of African countries were represented as part of the delegation
there, including liberation movements. And Castro connected with a few
leaders, particularly Amílcar Cabral from Guinea-Bissau," Olivia
Ahmad, the curator of the exhibition at the House of Illustration,
told the BBC.

 

Amílcar Cabral on the poster Day of solidarity with people of
Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde Islands, 1974
Olivio Martínez Viera
courtesy of The House of Illustration in London. Copyright: Ospaaal,
The Mike Stanfield Collection  //  BBC News
Cabral led the fight against Portuguese colonial rule in Guinea-Bissau
and the Cape Verde islands, but was assassinated in 1973, a year
before Guinea-Bissau became independent.

Ms Ahmad says more Tricontinental Conferences were planned, but never
happened so Ospaaal's publishing arm became an important way to keep
in contact and share information - and posters were folded up and put
inside its publications.

Latin America's most recognisable revolutionary, Ernesto "Che"
Guevara, was "probably the most depicted across the whole output of
Ospaaal", she says.

"But there are recurring ones of these African leaders being
celebrated in the same way and commemorated as well."
 

Che Guevara depicted in a poster from 1969
Alfredo G Rostgaard
courtesy of The House of Illustration in London. Copyright: Ospaaal,
The Mike Stanfield Collection  //  BBC News
Guevara infamously went to what is now Democratic Republic of Congo in
1965 on a failed mission to foment revolt against the pro-Western
regime four years after the assassination of Congolese independence
hero Patrice Lumumba.

Lumumba's killing, four months after he had being elected the
country's first democratic prime minister, was widely blamed on US and
UK intelligence agencies.

 

Patrice Lumumba featured on the poster Day of Solidarity with the
Congo, 1972
Alfredo G Rostgaard
courtesy of The House of Illustration in London. Copyright: Ospaaal,
The Mike Stanfield Collection  //  BBC News
"The portraits are particularly interesting because they have all
these pop art influences that you might not expect to see, so they are
kind of celebrating people but in a genuinely celebratory way - rather
than having a sort of like lumpen socialist-realist aesthetic," says
Ms Ahmad.

The works showcased in Designed in Cuba: Cold War Graphics exhibition
were produced by 33 designers, many of them women - who made some of
those most enduring images.

A poster about Guinea-Bissau showing a woman holding a machine gun is
by Berta Abelenda Fernandez, "one of the women who made some of the
most iconic designs for Ospaaal", says Ms Ahmad.

 

Day of Solidarity with the People of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde,
1968
Berta Abelénda Fernández
courtesy of The House of Illustration in London. Copyright: Ospaaal,
The Mike Stanfield Collection  //  BBC News
It is one of the recurring motifs - women with guns - showing them
taking an active role and the Tricontinental magazine had "quite a lot
of contributions from women and articles about women as well on
guerrilla fronts", Ms Ahmad says.

 

A cover of the Tricontinental magazine in 1995
OSPAAAL
courtesy of The House of Illustration in London. Copyright: Ospaaal,
The Mike Stanfield Collection  //  BBC News
Castro played a major role in Angola, unlike Cuba's secret operations
in Africa in the 1960s, where he saw an opportunity to exert his brand
of international solidarity to make a difference on a global scale.

Ahead of Angola's independence from Portugal in 1975, Castro sent
elite special forces and 35,000 soldiers to support the Marxist MPLA
movement to stop apartheid South African troops installing pro-US
movements to power.

 

Day of Solidarity with Angola, 1972
José Lucio Martínez Pedro
courtesy of The House of Illustration in London. Copyright: Ospaaal,
The Mike Stanfield Collection  //  BBC News
According to Alex Vines of the think tank Chatham House, at least
4,300 Cubans are thought to have died in conflicts in Africa, half of
them in Angola alone where the civil war did not end until 2002.

The posters carrying messages of solidarity to liberation fighters
usually did so "using bold visual metaphors or quite simple visual
propositions", says Ms Ahmad.

They tended to have captions at the bottom, usually in four languages
- English, Spanish, French and Arabic - "to help them be more
universal because they were intended for circulation rather than to be
seen in Cuba", she says.

 

International Week of Solidarity with the Peoples of Africa, 1970
Gladys Acosta Ávila
courtesy of The House of Illustration in London. Copyright: Ospaaal,
The Mike Stanfield Collection  //  BBC News
Ospaaal oversaw a huge publishing operation, which involved a lot of
paper and ink. Olivio Martínez Viera, a designer who was at Ospaaal
from almost the beginning, said there were often material shortages
that meant they had to be quite creative.

 

Day of World Solidarity with the Struggle of the People of Mozambique,
1973
Olivio Martínez Viera
courtesy of The House of Illustration in London. Copyright: Ospaaal,
The Mike Stanfield Collection  //  BBC News
Viera "talks really fondly about that time, about Ospaaal being a real
nurturing space for experimentation and having the freedom to create
these really direct visual metaphors like the Mozambique" design of a
dagger plunging through a hand, says Ms Ahmad.

Much of Ospaaal's output was directed towards the fight against
white-minority rule in South Africa, which did not end until 1994 when
anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela was elected president.

 

Day of Solidarity with the People of South Africa, 1968
Berta Abelénda Fernández
courtesy of The House of Illustration in London. Copyright: Ospaaal,
The Mike Stanfield Collection  //  BBC News
Teishan Latner's book Cuba Revolution in America shows a satirical
advert for South African Airways included in Tricontinental's
July-August 1968 issue promising "an unforgettable vacation in the
land of APARTHEID, where Africans are massacred, where prisons
overflow with patriots fighting against white racists, where thousands
of Blacks work as slaves in the gold mines, where miles and miles of
land are used for concentration camps".

The images on the Ospaaal posters were just as blunt:

 

South Africa - Against Apartheid, 1982
Rafael Morante Boyerizo
courtesy of The House of Illustration in London. Copyright: Ospaaal,
The Mike Stanfield Collection  //  BBC News
After Mandela was imprisoned by the apartheid authorities in 1964, it
was illegal to photograph or republish a photo of him in South Africa.
This poster came out in 1989, a year before his release after 27 years
in jail.

 

Nelson Mandela, 1989
Alberto Blanco González
courtesy of The House of Illustration in London. Copyright: Ospaaal,
The Mike Stanfield Collection  //  BBC News
The artists producing the posters were mainly based in Havana and were
trying to understand the political context for real people often using
press photographs, says Ms Ahmad.

 

Namibia Will Win! 1977
Víctor Manuel Navarrete
courtesy of The House of Illustration in London. Copyright: Ospaaal,
The Mike Stanfield Collection  //  BBC News
"They are very graphically interesting… trying to sympathise with
all these geopolitical messages. I think most are hits and then some
of them are slightly questionable."

It is not always clear what some of the stylised sculptures were based
on. "I think they're basically just trying to relate contemporary
struggle in a long history," says Ms Ahmad.
 

Day of Solidarity with Zimbabwe, 1969
Jesús Forjans Boade
courtesy of The House of Illustration in London. Copyright: Ospaaal,
The Mike Stanfield Collection  //  BBC News
Ospaaal closed this year saying its work was done.

"I think the context for those international movements has really
changed, so you can see why," says Ms Ahmad.

But the curator says Ospaaal's work and diversity of output has been
impressive and its ability to sum up complex messages in an engaging
way.

"Also it's interesting to see what is essentially propaganda executed
with humour and often levity," she says.

 

Long Live Free Zimbabwe, 1980
Lázaro Abreu Padrón
courtesy of The House of Illustration in London. Copyright: Ospaaal,
The Mike Stanfield Collection  //  BBC News
_Images courtesy of The House of Illustration in London. Copyright:
Ospaaal, The Mike Stanfield Collection_

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