Visions of Freedom: Cuba and The Struggle for Southern Africa

This episode we are joined by Piero Gleijeses, author of Visions of Freedom Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991 (New Cold War History), to discuss the contents of his new book. Piero Gleijeses is a professor of American foreign policy at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. During the final fifteen years of the Cold War, southern Africa underwent a period of upheaval, with dramatic twists and turns in relations between the superpowers. Americans, Cubans, Soviets, and Africans fought over the future of Angola, where tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers were stationed, and over the decolonization of Namibia, Africa's last colony. Beyond lay the great prize: South Africa. Piero Gleijeses uses archival sources, particularly from the United States, South Africa, and the closed Cuban archives, to provide an unprecedented international history of this important theater of the late Cold War.