Journal of Global South Studies

SOUTH AMERICA’S TRANSNATIONAL SOLIDARITY WITH SOUTHERN AFRICA

CHILEAN AND ARGENTINE EXILES AS COOPERATORS IN MOZAMBIQUE, 1976–1986*

MARIO AYALA AND RICARDO PÉREZ HARISTOY**

After declaring the country’s independence from Portugal in June 1975, the Mozambique Liberation Front focused its efforts on building a modern nation-state and implementing a development strategy to pave the way for a socialist society. The initial lack of cadres for building and managing a postcolonial national state and the new state economy led it to request the international cooperation and solidarity of the Global Left. The aim of this paper is to analyze the notions and practices of international solidarity among leftist Chilean and Argentine exiles who assumed the role of professional-technical cooperators in independent Mozambique between 1976 and 1986. The working method is based on a qualitative analysis of the information obtained from oral sources, documents of the period, and specialist literature.

KEYWORDS: international solidarity; cooperation; South American exiles; Mozambique

INTRODUCTION

In the international context of the Cold War during the 1970s and 1980s, those fleeing from the wave of repression in the countries of the Southern Cone of Latin America had the chance to create transnational political action networks1 with other exiles and organizations in their host countries, which allowed them to reformulate international solidarity and alliances on the basis of the defense of the international principles of human rights and the condemnation of dictatorships for their violation.2 But they also discovered that they could continue their organized activism abroad, in both the resistance and political scheming against the regimes that had forced them into exile or as part of transnational solidarity and cooperation networks, through their institutional and individual participation in revolutionary or national liberation movements, irrespective of whether they became involved in armed struggles or in forming governments. These major diasporas from the Southern Cone of Latin America coincided with the processes of decolonization, national liberation, and independence of the former Portuguese colonies in Africa, on the one hand, and the Central American revolutionary movements, on the other. And from their Western or socialist countries of refuge, many of these exiles embarked on technical or military missions of solidarity as internationalist activists.3

These internationalist activists were prompted to become involved in transnational solidarity because they believed that they formed part of a new imagined revolutionary community of the Third World, as both a geographical and political frame of militant action during the period from the 1960s to the 1980s.4 This notion of the Third World as an imagined community arose in the context of the Cold War and the struggles for world power, thus influencing the way in which regional solidarity was shaped.5 As Christine Hatzky and Jessica Stites Mor recall,6 encouraged by the anticolonial movements emerging in Asia and Africa, political parties and national liberation and social movements, on the one hand, and governments, on the other, imagined a revolution against colonialism and neo-imperialism during the Cold War and invented a version of what would subsequently be described as the “Global South.” This was the imaginary scenario that led over five hundred participants from eighty-two countries to travel to Havana in January 1966 to attend the First Solidarity Conference of the African, Asian, and Latin American Peoples’ Solidarity Organization (AALAPSO), also known as the Tricontinental Conference, with a view to forming an alliance to liberate the Third World from racial violence, inequality, and capitalist exploitation.7

In Latin America, solidarity activism with the Cuban Revolution, embodied by Che Guevara’s internationalist mission in the Congo (1965), influenced left-wing organizations and their enhanced potential for forging transcontinental links. The vision disseminated by Cuba of an anti-imperialist and anti-colonial revolution fostered a political idea of what the transnational solidarity of revolutionary activists meant and the shape that it ought to take, while the scope of this global revolution was the Third World.8

In April 1974, an unexpected military coup overthrew the Portuguese dictatorship that had been in place for five decades, opening the way for the decolonization of the Lusophone African territories.9 Mozambique achieved independence on June 26, 1975, under the leadership of the Mozambique Liberation Front (hereinafter FRELIMO), thus marking the beginning of the country’s transformation into a socialist state. This socialist nation-building project got underway in a country that had to undertake the simultaneous tasks of guaranteeing national independence and giving shape to a new state and nation against the backdrop of a fragmented society and in conditions of extreme underdevelopment, a product of its colonial past.10

The initial need for technical-professional cadres for building and managing the postcolonial national state and the new state economy prompted the FRELIMO to request the support of the international cooperation and solidarity of the Global Left and socialist countries. There were vacancies in all areas, but those that needed to be covered most urgently had to do with education, health, administration and planning, engineering, agronomy, and technical areas. Seen in this light, the principles and visions of international solidarity at the time, such as proletarian internationalism and international cooperation, were incorporated and appropriated as an important part of the political platform and discourse of the FRELIMO, in clear continuity with the period of armed struggle (1964–1974), when transnational networks of solidarity with its cause had been created and had begun to offer the organization their support.11

In that context, several hundreds of Chilean and Argentine exiles living in different countries of the capitalist and socialist world volunteered as professional-technical cooperators in Mozambique.12

This work is at the intersection between the study of exiles and that of solidarity with/from Latin America during the closing years of the Cold War. In the literature on the exiles of the Southern Cone, there has been noteworthy progress over the past two decades, including studies of the technical-professional and/or military internationalism of Chilean and Argentine exiles in Central America.13 Be that as it may, there are still relatively few studies of South American exiles and cooperators in Africa in the context of the continent’s decolonization in the 1960s and 1970s—except for what has been written on Cuba, which had a state cooperation rationale.14 Therefore, the research performed by Eugenia Palieraki on Chilean exiles in Algeria, 15 by Fabio Da Cruz16 and Débora Strieder Kreuz on Brazilian exiles in Algeria,17 by Andreia Prestes Massen18and Ramos Azevedo on Brazilian exiles in Mozambique,19 together with Decía and Diez’s inquiry into Uruguayan exiles in Angola,20 is a line that has appeared only recently and, therefore, is still in its infancy, since it analyzes the same actors, dynamics, and logics from a transnational perspective that connects with political processes in Latin America and Africa during the Cold War. The historiography of the Argentine diaspora in the 1970s has yet to examine systematically their experiences on the African continent, in contrast to those of other host countries in America and Europe.21 It is only recently that the case of Mozambique has been addressed in academic studies and research documentaries.22 Similarly, as to the Chilean diaspora, there is only one token collective book coordinated by Sergio Basulto, Dalmiro Contreras, and Mario Glisser23 and the documentary Khanimambo Mozambique (Thanks Mozambique) directed by Constance Latourte.24

Supplementing this approach with that of the new studies of Latin American left-wing transnational solidarity networks in the 1960s and 1970s,25 following a historical and empirical approach the objective of this paper is to reconstruct and analyze the notions and practices of the international solidarity of Chilean and Argentine political exiles who, between 1976 and 1986, established themselves in Mozambique as international technical-professional cooperators. The methodology employed here is qualitative and the sources are oral interviews, edited testimonies, and documents of the period. Specifically, an in-depth analysis was performed on twenty personal pathways—involving ten Chileans and ten Argentineans, with gender parity. The timeframe corresponds to the duration of most of the stays of the Chilean and Argentine exiles in Mozambique, from the year after independence had been achieved in 1976 to following the death of President Samora Machel in October 1986.

FROM SOUTH AMERICA TO INDEPENDENT AND SOCIALIST MOZAMBIQUE

During the 1970s, National Security dictatorships seized power in the Southern Cone of Latin America. The repressive policies of the military regimes holding sway over Chile (1973–1990) and Argentina (1976–1983) were characterized by their massive human rights violations in the shape of enforced disappearances, imprisonments, murders, and exiles. The Chilean exile was one of the most emblematic in the last part of the Cold War due to the brutality of the repression beginning with the coup in September 1973. That was one of the reasons why this exodus adopted many forms, encompassed such a broad timeframe, and involved capitalist and socialist host countries in America, Europe, Oceania, Asia, and Africa.26 In 1990, the National Office for Returnees estimated that there were 200,000 political exiles, without taking into account their families,27 although there is still no consensus on the figures. In turn, the last Argentine diaspora was the most important in the country’s history due to its transcontinental scope, the many different countries of refuge in America and Europe, and the impact of its policy of condemning the military dictatorship on the international stage. 28 The various forms of forced departures from the country since 1974 (due to the repression during the third Peronist government) do not allow us to have reliable global figures, and some specialists estimate it between 30,000 and 50,000 people29 and others at between 250,000 and 500,000.30

Under these circumstances, between 1976 and 1986 some 950 political exiles from Chile and about 70 from Argentina living in different countries of the world volunteered as technical-professional cooperators in Mozambique.31 The reasons behind their decision ranged from the fact that they had been exiled yet again to their problems with adapting to life in their countries of refuge. Moreover, they were all encouraged by the opportunity to continue with their revolutionary commitment to other national liberation struggles and revolutions in the Third World, through their participation in international solidarity with the revolution in this southern African country.

These exiles arrived in Mozambique from Western or socialist countries, following specific paths through different left-wing transnational or international cooperation networks of the period.32 International cooperators, who were paid a salary,33 were expected to become involved in the management of the new state and, at the same time, contribute to training the locals so that they would be able to undertake the same tasks once their contracts had ended.34 Entry into Mozambique was carried out under strict political-ideological control by the FRELIMO authorities. The political endorsement of those who entered was carried out by political or nongovernmental organizations that worked with the Mozambican government.

As to the Chilean exiles, most of them traveled to Mozambique as a result of their local groups’ solidarity with the FRELIMO. The group of Chilean cooperators, the second most numerous from Western countries after the Portuguese, basically consisted of activists of the two main political parties forming the government of the Popular Front (FP), namely, the Socialist Party of Chile (PSCh) and the Communist Party of Chile (hereinafter PCCh). Even though the first group of Chileans traveled to Mozambique in 1976—the year in which the country achieved its independence—as foreign technical cadres in an “organizational phase of the republic,”35 the majority arrived there in 1977 by virtue of the agreement signed between the PCCh and the FRELIMO, during the party’s third congress, which was defined as a cooperation agreement contributing to the revolutionary decolonization process in Mozambique.36 The previous contacts between the PCCh and the FRELIMO at the Third United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD III), held in Santiago de Chile at the beginning of 1972, during the Popular Unity (UP) government, served as a basis for the subsequent relationship between the FRELIMO and the Chileans living in exile.37

As regards the Argentine exiles, most of them traveled to Mozambique in their personal capacity from the Western countries where they had sought refuge, through an assortment of state and nongovernmental cooperation programs with the FRELIMO government (mainly Sweden and Portugal). In light of the evidence collected to date, there was no agreement in place between Argentine left-wing political organizations and the FRELIMO for sending activist cooperators, as was indeed the case with the Chilean left-wing parties. Although the Peronist political-military organization Montoneros had been in touch with the FRELIMO before the diaspora, since the former had sent a delegation to attend the swearing-in of the government of the Justicialist Liberation Front (FREJULI) in 1973, there was no further contact between the two until relations were formally resumed in about 1978, through the Montoneros’ delegates in the Middle East and Tanzania.38

With respect to the FRELIMO, the reasons why it needed thousands of trustworthy foreign technical-professional cadres included its transition from armed struggle to the national government, the mass exodus of Portuguese colonists during the independence process, and its project of socialist modernization.

As with other Portuguese colonies in Africa, Mozambique achieved independence at a later date than the rest. On taking up the reins of government, the leaders of the FRELIMO realized that the control of the guerrilla army, which had underpinned its power during the armed struggle, was now insufficient to guarantee the effective management of an independent country, and that they lacked qualified cadres with the suitable technical skills to ensure the functioning of a complex administration and to manage the country’s services and economy.39 Following the proclamation of independence, the hasty departure of thousands of colonists who had occupied most of the posts in the administrative and economic apparatuses only exacerbated the situation,40 posts that had to be covered and assumed by the FRELIMO. The changes brought about in Mozambique by the system of Portuguese administration at the end of the colonial period had not been sufficiently complete to create an educated Black elite. At the moment of independence, 90 percent of the country’s inhabitants were illiterate, while there were only a small number of technicians and people with higher education.41 By and large, there were few people qualified to occupy the posts that the Portuguese had abruptly abandoned, whereby the administration inherited from the colonizers was unstable and practically nonexistent in the country’s interior.

Against this backdrop, so as to satisfy the need for qualified personnel the leadership of FRELIMO had no other choice but to resort to the collaboration of a large number of cadres who had not participated in the armed struggle and to foreign technical cooperators from Western and socialist countries. According to the historian Luis Brito42—and the analysis of our sources supports his hypothesis—there were two waves of foreign cooperators arriving in the country during the period under study.

The first wave occurred when independence was consolidated between 1975 and 1977. During this period, the FRELIMO’s recruitment drive led to the arrival of a small number of cooperators, mostly from Western countries, the majority of whom were activists or sympathizers of organizations that had been carrying out actions of solidarity with the national liberation movements of the Portuguese colonies. For its part, the second wave began to make itself felt after the Third Congress of the FRELIMO, where it announced its transition from a front to a “Marxist-Leninist vanguard party,” thus marking the start of its “building socialism”43 project developed between 1977 and 1983/4,44 which led to the arrival of a large number of Latin American exiles (with different political leanings, but most of whom were members or sympathizers of communist parties), plus thousands of cooperators from socialist countries. But only some of them were recruited for specific development projects; the rest were specialists or worked as consultants in drawing offices, the planning departments of ministries, or state enterprises. They were all expected to transmit to the Mozambicans their experiences of building socialism in their own countries.45

It was in that context that in Mozambique a transnational community of foreign technical-professional cooperators was gradually created, all of whom followed the tradition of international solidarity and socialist cooperation and whose number in 1982, according to sources of the embassies of socialist countries in Maputo, was estimated at 40,000 people from America, Western Europe, the Eastern Bloc, and, to a lesser extent, Asia and Africa.46 The city of Maputo was transformed into a place of encounter between organizations and exiles from Africa, Latin America, and Asia and representatives of the socialist camp. The experience of independent and socialist Mozambique became an example of the transnational circulation of the ideas, values, and revolutionary practices of the Left at the time. And the expression of a sort of feeling or new social awareness in which the values of cooperation, solidarity, internationalism, and Third Worldism took center stage.

NOTIONS AND PRACTICES OF INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY

A reconstruction of the notions and practices of international solidarity observable in the testimonies of Chilean and Argentine exiles in Mozambique reveals, in principle, four common patterns.

The first was the discovery of the practical aspects of international solidarity in situ while in exile. Although all were aware of the problem, few of them had any previous internationalist experience. In their countries of origin, most had participated in campaigns, protests, collecting signatures, and fundraising for diverse causes of international solidarity with revolutionary political projects and national liberation struggles in the Third World, from Latin America to Palestine, through Africa and Vietnam. The imagined and practical principles of international solidarity, proletarian internationalism, and cooperation formed part of the programs and action plans of organizations of the Old and New Left and engaged activists through the speeches of their leaders and party publications. However, always according to the testimonies analyzed here, they carried a more discursive than practical weight until the repression and exile obliged them to drum up international support for their own causes and struggles.

The second common pattern was that they all perceived their international cooperation as a continuation of their transnational militant and professional activity. In other words, for many of them, their experience in Mozambique was a second revolutionary opportunity and a continuity of their activist and professional identities before their exile, exemplified in their solidarity with revolutions and national liberation struggles in the Third World. For all of them, passing part of their exile in Mozambique resulted in new knowledge and political and professional growth, as well as allowing them to experience that time as a way of overcoming the traumatic and subjective dimension of their exile. Their experiences can be considered in the frame of the operational concept of “revolutionary activist cosmopolitanism,” an expression coined by Eugenia Palieraki47 to define a form of transnational activism anchored in Third World political thinking during the 1970s and 1980s, in which the cultural, historical and ideological divides between political and social processes of change were compensated by belonging to a new imagined revolutionary community: the Third World.48 In short, it was experienced as a practice of civil technical-professional international solidarity with a view to opposing Cold War imperialism and colonialism.49

The third pattern shared by these exiles was their enthusiasm for and commitment to the project of the FRELIMO for building a modern nation-state and a socialist economy in an underdeveloped country, at least during the initial years. As already noted, in the period between 1977 and 1984 the undertakings of the international cooperators from Western and socialist countries in the state apparatus as dependable personnel were extremely significant given their technical-professional skills and ideological commitment.

For the Chilean activist Dalmiro Contreras, although his displacement was an experience of rootlessness, his initial exile in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was profitable and encouraged him to continue to pursue his personal, professional, and political goals. However, Mozambique was a completely different place of exile since he became involved in the building of a new nation and society: “My exile was one full of advantages, knowledge of other peoples, different life situations. I was living in real socialism and trying to lay the foundations for real socialism in Mozambique.”50 In her account, the psychologist Silvia Quiroga, who worked in the Ministry of Health, highlights the following in relation to her previous experience: “We wanted to contribute to that project and to heal the wounds that our failures in Chile under Popular Unity had inflicted on us.”51 For his part, in his eyewitness account of the events unfolding in 1982, the Chilean leader Jaime Rovira described the uniqueness of his experience as a cooperator in the following terms:

But what’s perhaps more important than describing their work [as cooperators] is to talk about their [the exiles’] attitude towards it. An attitude that, first and foremost, derived from the fact that the Chileans didn’t feel like exiles here, an issue that’s essential and that differentiated them from the majority of Chileans who lived and worked in other countries of the diaspora. If you had a good job, for example, in France or Holland, it wasn’t the same. I worked in my specialty in the GDR in excellent conditions, but the two situations are incomparable. Here, everything was being built, we were pioneers of sorts, and you could say that our identification with the problems of Mozambique was total. For this reason, as a rule, we lived the experience of our work with true passion, with the zeal of builders. This allowed us to relive, to some extent, the psychological climate, the fervor of the time of Popular Unity.52

This perception of “not feeling like exiles” appeared as a fourth recognizable pattern among other interviewees, which allows for asserting that their experience in Mozambique was mainly perceived more as internationalist civil technical-professional cooperation work, rather than as an experience of displacement and political struggle against the country that had sent them into exile in the host country. Their revolutionary political commitment and their technical and professional know-how were more central to their greater identification with the host society and its government than with their activist past, their experience of the repression in their countries of origin, and their exile in the first host countries from which they had arrived: Western Europe, America, or socialist countries.

The doctor Mario Glisser, another Chilean cooperator who arrived in Mozambique following a number of years in exile in Israel, had the following to say:

The country was in dire need of foreign cadres for sustaining the economy, education, healthcare, etc. So, cooperators began to arrive from socialist countries, plus solidarity groups from Western Europe and the United States; others arrived in the framework of the cooperation of the governments of some European countries, chiefly Sweden and Italy. In this context, many exiles from Latin American countries under military dictatorships arrived. In addition to the Chileans, there were many Brazilians and, to a lesser extent, Argentineans and Uruguayans, some of whom had been in Chile, working in Mozambique. […] In a very underdeveloped country, visible results are obtained, even in the short term, which is very satisfying for cooperators.53

These perceptions also appeared in the testimonies of the Argentinians who arrived in Mozambique as technical-professional cooperators and internationalists. Unlike the Chilean exiles, the vast majority of them had abandoned their political activism before going into exile. Their contacts with the Argentine political scene thus severed, and these activists encountered a political space for pursuing their revolutionary goals of building socialism in that geographically and culturally distant country, thus helping them to overcome the traumas and the forfeiture of their professional careers, which had forced them into exile, and to abandon their status as refugees.54 Carmen Báez55 expressed this idea as follows:

We experienced a process of building socialism and were involved in the design and implementation of the public policies driving the revolutionary transformations. We put our heart and soul into the revolutionary process. […] I was fortunate enough to participate in an attempt to build socialism in a society that hadn’t experienced capitalism, but colonialism, a peasant society based on subsistence agriculture.56

Other testimonies also evoked this experienced notion of socialist, anticolonial, Third World international solidarity. The case of Domingo Suppa,57 an engineer specializing in the transfer of electric power, who traveled to Mozambique from France at the end of 1975, is revealing.

As one of the first cooperators in the Ministry of Energy, he became a dependable cadre and, in the following years, also helped to recruit other Argentine and Latin American exiles during tours of America and Europe:

I ended up working in power transfer.… The first foreign person I met in Mozambique was Portuguese, who worked with me in electricity; we were two crazy people, it was impossible. […] On arrival, they said to me, “Okay, this is your job: you have to install the Moatize power line,” which was [for] the Moatize coal field. […] Where were the materials? Dumped in the port of Beira. The posts were going to be made of eucalyptus, which I had to creosote in Chimoio. I had to go to the border with South Africa for the transformer, against all the embargoes that there were in the world, and transport it with the military to the north. This is so as to give you an idea of such an enterprise. […] To this should be added that they [the FRELIMO] skipped stages. Let’s say they dispensed with the pre-capitalist and capitalist stages to talk directly about socialism.… Mozambique started to talk about socialism in 1975, and that’s crazy.58

The case of Marta Lucas, recruited by Domingo Suppa and some Portuguese friends, who made the journey to Mozambique from France in 1980 in order to work in the Department of Literacy of the Ministry of Energy, is another good example. In this respect, she claimed:

The Carnation Revolution [in Portugal] had had huge repercussions in France. Many French people had gone to work in the first African countries to achieve independence. All this created a very appealing and novel climate, a country that was being built, which had to start from scratch, within the parameters in which you moved, the ideals you had. […] [In Mozambique] everyone was firmly committed to the work; you were there to work, to construct, to collaborate.… […] Of course, life was hard, but you gradually adapted, and as it was the same for everyone, that also helped you; everyone was in the same boat, there was an enormous amount of solidarity with the Mozambicans, with the foreigners.59

Reinforcing this same interpretation, Carmen Báez stated that owing to the cultural differences with Mozambican society, it was the values and practices of international solidarity and revolutionary fraternity that gave meaning to their time in Mozambique. For the activism, repression, and exile that they had experienced before arriving, there were no key elements of their identification with the host society and its government, as they had indeed been in the countries of refuge from which they had hailed. She described this feeling in the following terms:

In Mozambique, we had a split personality. I at least only told my story to a few Argentine friends and some political friends of my father. Nor did the Mozambicans really understand our situation. Nor did we talk [about it] much with our families. Daily life was the [political and social] process there. I remember that the topics included the revolutionary process, the war, Samora Machel, and the Boers.… As for me, my political interests were more regional and local, because I had married a South African60 and was integrated into a local process. This doesn’t mean to say that the most important people and friends of my father [didn’t] talk about the situation in Argentina. What united us in Mozambique? Solidarity and fraternity with the Latin Americans and Mozambicans.61

As can be observed in these testimonies, they not only underwent a far-reaching political change, but also important personal and cultural ones insofar as their work in a new setting intertwined with a sort of suspension of their status as exiles and contact with other experiences of struggle, exile, and transformation. In short, their experience as cooperators in Mozambique was for them the practical embodiment of socialist, anticolonial, Third World international solidarity, as well as giving meaning to their professional and political work in a geographically and culturally distant country. Therefore, these memories of their experiences of internationalism and cooperation with the “revolution” of Mozambique are an empirical and historical indicator of how they perceived the values of internationalism, solidarity, and revolutionary cooperation with the liberation and anticolonial struggles that left-wing Latin Americans fostered during the 1970s and 1980s.

The combined effect of the mounting social and ideological control (based on state security), the economic crisis (the shortage of food, basic services, and medicines), and the consequences of the war for the lives and physical safety of the cooperators and their families ultimately made them think twice about continuing in Mozambique. For instance, as of 1981 the domestic armed conflict escalated and spread to the south of the country, even reaching Maputo,62 and their status as cooperators signified that they ran an increasingly greater risk of being kidnapped or murdered by the Mozambican National Resistance (hereinafter RENAMO). In turn, the failure of the socialist economic development model of the FRELIMO and the gradual reversion to a command economy and a one-party system led to the disillusionment of the foreign cooperators with the Mozambican process at a moment when the dictatorships of the Southern Cone of Latin America were breathing their last.

As of 1984, the FRELIMO negotiated with South Africa to reach peace with RENAMO,63 while also establishing contacts with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, thus initiating a process of economic and political liberalization and distancing itself from socialism.64 As a party to the signing of the Nkomati Accord with South Africa (1984), Mozambique pledged to prevent liberation movements, like the African National Congress (ANC), from establishing bases in its territory.65 In the following years, the brigades of international cooperators from socialist countries gradually began to abandon the country, coinciding with the end of the Cold War and the defeat of the socialist camp. However, the memories of the protagonists of this story establish the end of the Mozambican revolutionary process in October 1986, when President Samora Machel and part of his cabinet died in a suspicious plane crash in South Africa.

CONCLUSION

Following independence, the FRELIMO appealed to international solidarity and cooperation to recruit thousands of dependable foreign technical-professional cadres. The endeavors of the international cooperators from Western and socialist countries were crucial for managing the state and the economy during the period from 1977 to 1984.

The majority of the Chilean and Argentine exiles who participated as cooperators in Mozambique did not have any previous practical experience of international solidarity. But their experience of exile and participation in the building of a new socialist state and society allowed them to gain such know-how in the decolonization and independence of a new country in southern Africa, thus changing their visions and ideas of solidarity, internationalism, and cooperation.

Overcoming the traumas and the forfeiture of their professional careers, which had forced them into exile, and abandoning their status as refugees, they sought to continue their political and professional activity and to familiarize themselves with and to participate and intervene in the revolutionary transformations planned by the FRELIMO government, motivated by their adherence to the principles and values of socialist, anticolonial, Third World international solidarity. Their political participation as cooperators was restricted to undertaking tasks set by the FRELIMO, while they received a wage for their work which involved collaborating in state management and contributing to training local cadres.

They perceived their civil technical-professional international solidarity with Mozambique as a way of opposing Cold War imperialism and colonialism, thus allowing them to maintain the political and professional identities that they had had before going into exile. This prevented them from “feeling like exiles” and helped them to be fully and enthusiastically committed to the building of a socialist society.

The particularity of this case in relation to other experiences of places of exile is that in Mozambique the transnational solidarity activism of the exiles mostly took the shape of tasks inherent to technical-professional cooperators, assuming the identity of left-wing internationalists, rather than that of exiles, in the host country. This contrasts with the experiences of those exiles in America and Europe, where their activism focused on the defense of democracy and human rights or, as in the case of the Chileans and Brazilians in Algeria, on revolutionary commitment and more activist or belligerent solidarity.66 These “cooperator memories” are characterized by optimism, enthusiasm, and militant and professional internationalist commitment, contrasting with the “memories of exile,” which are marked more by feelings like defeat, trauma, estrangement, and maladjustment.

Their experiences as cooperators in Mozambique brought the global Cold War home to them and have had an impact on their life paths, political-professional experiences, and identities down to the present day. This illustrates the way in which their experiences of transnational activism in exile contributed to forming multiple, hybrid identities resulting from movements in space and time.67 At present, the majority of the main characters of this account now live in their countries of origin, although quite a few of them continue to live and work in Mozambique or different places of the Global South, as part of international cooperation programs with the same spirit as in those former years.

Our study has offered the opportunity to fill in some of the historical lacunas with respect to the countries of residence of the exiles of the Southern Cone of Latin America during the closing years of the Cold War and the way in which they participated politically and professionally in the process of national liberation, decolonization, and building of new nation-states in southern Africa and, incidentally, also in the struggle against Apartheid. At the same time, our approach has allowed us to gain a better understanding of the experiences of solidarity activism in the Global South in the shape of Latin American left-wing technical-professional international solidarity with Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. In sum, it highlights how productive it can be to study the interactions, connections, and circulations between the massive number of people who were forced into exile by the wave of repression in the Southern Cone during the 1970s and contemporary processes of national liberation, independence, and decolonization in Portugal’s former African colonies.

NOTES

1. Mario Sznadjer and Luis Roniger, La política del destierro y el exilio en América Latina (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2013).

2. Luis Roniger, “Destierro y exilio en América Latina: Un campo de estudio transnacional e histórico en expansión,” Pacarina del Sur 1 (2011).

3. Eudald Cortina Orero, “Internacionalismo y Revolución Sandinista: proyecciones militantes y reformulaciones orgánicas en la izquierda revolucionaria argentina,” Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe 28, no. 2 (2017): 80–103; Eudald Cortina Orero, “Brigada Sanitaria Adriana Haidar: solidaridad técnica montonera con la revolución sandinista,” Secuencia 108 (2020): 1–27.

4. Eugenia Palieraki, “Chile, Algeria, and the Third World in the 1960s and 1970s Revolutions Entangled,” in Latin America and the Global Cold War, ed. Thomas C. Field Jr, Stella Krepp, Vanni Pettinà et al. (Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020), 274–300.

5. Christine Hatzky and Jessica Stites Mor, “Latin American Transnational Solidarities: Contexts and Critical Research Paradigms,” Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research 20, no. 2 (2014): 128–29.

6. Hatzky and Stites Mor, “Latin American Transnational Solidarities.”

7. Anne Garland Mahler, From the Tricontinental to the Global South: Race, Radicalism, and Transnational Solidarity (Duke: Duke University Press, 2018).

8. Hatzky and Stites Mor, “Latin American Transnational Solidarities,” 135. Since the beginning of the decade, the Cuban leadership had embarked on missions of solidarity with African national liberation movements, and specifically with Mozambique in 1965, when the ship Uvero was dispatched, with arms, munition, food and clothing in its holds for the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGCV), the FRELIMO and the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), an operation run by Comandante Jorge Serguera River, the Cuban ambassador to Algeria. Luis Suárez Salazar and Dirk Kruijt, La revolución cubana en nuestra América: El Internacionalismo anónimo (Madrid: Ruth Casa Editorial, 2015), 54.

9. Pedro Aires Oliveira, “Decolonization in Portuguese Africa,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), accessed May 23, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.41; Piero Gleijeses, Misiones en conflicto, la Habana, Washington y África, 1959–1976 (La Habana: Editorial Ciencias Sociales, 2007), 16.

10. David Robinson, “Socialism in Mozambique? The ‘Mozambican Revolution’ in Critical Perspective,” LIMINA 9 (2003): 131.

11. Nadja Manghezi, The Maputo Connection: The ANC in the World of FRELIMO (Johannesburg: Jacana Media, 2010).

12. The word used in both Spanish and Portuguese is “cooperante,” which usually refers to agents working for an entity that promotes development and humanitarian aid in the context of international cooperation.

13. Claudio Pérez Silva, “De la guerra contra Somoza a la guerra contra Pinochet. La experiencia internacionalista y la construcción de la Fuerza Militar Propia del Partido Comunista de Chile,” in Historia oral e historia política: Izquierda y lucha armada en América Latina, 1960–1990, ed. Claudio Pérez and Pablo Pozzi (Santiago: LOM, 2012), 213–44; Manuel Cortés, Yo Patán. Memorias de un combatiente (Santiago: Ceibo, 2015); Eudald Cortina Orero, “Internacionalismo y Revolución Sandinista”; Eudald Cortina Orero, “Brigada Sanitaria Adriana Haidar.”

14. Piero Gleijeses, Misiones en conflicto; Piero Gleijeses. Visiones de libertad. La Habana, Washington, Pretoria y la lucha por el sur de África (1976–1991) Tomo I y II (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2015); Christine Hatzky, “‘Latin-African’ Solidarity-The Cuban Civilian Mission in Angola, 1975–1991,” Iberoamericana 5, no. 20 (2005): 159–164.

15. Eugenia Palieraki, “Broadening the field of perception and struggle: Chilean political exiles in Algeria and Third world cosmopolitanism,” African Identities 16, no. 2 (2018): 205–18; Eugenia Palieraki, “Producing scientific knowledge by and for the Third World: postcolonial Algeria, South Americans and militant expertise in the Global Cold War,” Middle Eastern Studies (2021): 1–20.

16. Fábio Lucas da Cruz, Brasileiros no exílio: Argel como local estratégico para a militância política (1965–1979) (São Paulo: Diss. Universidade de São Paulo, 2016); Fábio Lucas da Cruz, Brasileiros Exilados na Argélia (São Paulo: Editora Dialética, 2021).

17. Débora Strieder Kreuz, “O exílio brasileiro na Argélia (1964–1979): breves notas para o debate,” Revista de la Red Intercátedras de Historia de América Latina Contemporánea 13 (2020): 170–81.

18. Andreia Prestes Massena, “Entre Brazil y Moçambique: os caminos percorridos no exílio,” Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe 20, no. 1 (2009): 67–92.

19. Desirée de Lemos Azevedo, Os melhores anos de nossas vidas: narrativas, trajetos e trajetórias de exilados brasileiros que se tornaram cooperantes na República Popular de Moçambique (Campinas: MA diss., Universidade Estadual do Campinas, 2011).

20. Luz Diez and María Carmen Decia, “Exilio político y misión internacionalista,” in I Jornadas de Trabajo sobre Exilios Políticos del Cono Sur en el siglo XX 26, 27 y 28 de septiembre de 2012 La Plata, Argentina. Agendas, problemas y perspectivas conceptuales (La Plata: Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación, 2012); María Carmen Decía,“Uruguay um povo en luta.” Fragmentos del exilio uruguayo en Angola (Uruguay: EPPAL, 2016).

21. See, for instance, Silvina Jensen and Soledad Lastra (coord.), Exilios: militancia y represión. Nuevas fuentes y nuevos abordajes de los destierros de la Argentina de los años setenta (La Plata: EDULP, 2014).

22. Ricardo Pérez Haristoy and Mario Ayala, “Solidaridad internacional en la descolonización de África: exiliados chilenos y argentinos en Mozambique 1976–1990,” keynote delivered at the “II Encuentro: Nuevos actores en las relaciones internacionales contemporáneas durante los procesos de descolonización de África, Asia y América Latina (1810-1990),” El Colegio de México and UAM, April 22, 2021 (virtual); Moira Cristiá and Mario Ayala, “Memorias de solidaridad y exilio durante la última dictadura argentina. Historias conectadas en Exilio en África,” keynote delivered at the XIV Encuentro Nacional y VIII Congreso Internacional de Historia Oral (Rosario, Argentina: Facultad de Humanidades y Artes de la Universidad Nacional de Rosario, September 20, 22, 23 and 24, 2021); Ernesto Aguilar and Marcela Suppicich (dir.), [Documental] Exilio en África (Argentina, 2019, 73 min.).

23. Sergio Basulto, Dalmiro Contreras and Mario Glisser, Chilenos en Mozambique. Experiencias de Solidaridad y Amistad entre dos Pueblos (Santiago de Chile: Ceibo Ediciones, 2013).

24. Constance Latourte (dir.), Khanimambo Mozambique [Thanks Mozambique] (France, 2009, 54 min.).

25. Jessica Stites Mor, South-South Solidarity and the Latin American Left (Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2022); Jessica Stites Mor and Maria del Carmen Suescun Pozas, ed., The Art of Solidarity: Visual and Performative Politics in Cold War Latin America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018); Jessica Stites Mor, ed., Human rights and transnational solidarity in Cold War Latin America (University of Wisconsin Pres, 2013); Hatzky and Stites Mor, “Latin American Transnational Solidarities.”

26. José del Pozo (coord.), Exiliados, emigrados y retornados: Chilenos en América y Europa, 1973–2004 (Santiago: RIL editores, 2006); Claudia Rojas Mira and Alessandro Santoni, “Geografía política del exilio chileno: los diferentes rostros de la solidaridad,” Perfiles latinoamericanos 21, no. 41 (2013): 123–42.

27. Olga Ulianova, “El exilio comunista chileno 1973–1990,” Estudos Ibero-Americanos PUCRS 39, no. 2 (2013): 216.

28. Silvina Jensen, La provincia flotante. Historia de los exiliados argentinos de la última dictadura militar en Cataluña (1976–2006) (Barcelona: Fundació Casa Amèrica Catalunya, 2007), 14.

29. Maletta Héctor, Frida Szwarcberg and Rosalía Schneider, “Exclusión y reencuentro: aspectos psicosociales del retorno de los exiliados a la Argentina,” Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos 1, no. 3 (1986): 293–321.

30. Silvina Jensen and Pablo Yankelevich, “Una aproximación cuantitativa para el estudio del exilio político argentino en México y Cataluña (1974–1983),” Estudios demográficos urbanos 22, no. 2 (2007): 399–442.

31. Primary sources: Jorge Risquet, “Informe de la visita a la República Popular de Mozambique de la delegación presidida por Jorge Risquet Valdés, Miembro del Buró Político y Secretariado del CC-PCC, realizada del 10 Septiembre al 2 de septiembre al Octubre 1982,” in History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, Archives of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party; Piero Gleijeses, “Visions of Freedom: New Documents from the Closed Cuban Archives,” in the Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) e-Dossier no. 44, accessed May 23, 2022, https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/117964; Mario Glisser (Chilean doctor, cooperator and activist of the PCCh), email to Ricardo Perez Haristoy, October 27, 2020.

32. Five routes of arrival in Mozambique were discovered in the trajectories analyzed. 1. The cooperation programs of the Nordic countries (Denmark, Norway and especially Sweden) with the FRELIMO government; 2. Through left-wing organizations and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) of solidarity with Africa located in Western European countries (Portugal, Holland, England, France, Italy and Spain); 3. From the countries of the socialist bloc that cooperated with the political organizations of the former Portuguese colony, such as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Bulgaria, the USSR, Cuba, Romania, and Hungary; 4. By obtaining different types of contracts between the local State and institutions dependent on the United Nations Organization. 5. Through the personal networks of exiles installed in Mozambique as international aid workers who facilitated the recruitment of compatriots asylees or refugees from various countries.

33. According to our oral sources, the average salary of the cooperators who worked for the government in the early 1980s was between 150 and 250 dollars, supplemented by an equal amount in meticales, the local currency. The salary varied according to the professionals, the position, and the highest degree of experience. Many cooperators resisted charging the amount in dollars for ideological reasons, but most used them in the “loja dos cooperantes” store, where non-existent products could be purchased in the common market and that only sold in dollars.

34. Basulto, Contreras and Glisser, Chilenos en Mozambique, 270.

35. Jaime Rovira, “Chilenos en Mozambique,” testimony recorded by Carlos Orellana, Araucaria de Chile 19 (1982): 101.

36. Glisser, email to the author: “Nearly half of us Chileans arrived in the country recruited by virtue of an agreement between the governing FRELIMO party and the Communist Party of Chile. The rest through other channels, even the international cooperation of other countries or organizations”; Dalmiro Contreras (member of the PSCh and accountant), telephone conversation, October 25, 2020.

37. The research conducted by Palieraki shows that Algeria was also a country where the Chilean parties in exile got in contact with African national liberation movements, including the FRELIMO, as of 1973. Palieraki, “Broadening the field,” 216.

38. See Vencer. Revista Internacional del Movimiento Peronista Montonero 1, no. 1 (1979); Fernando Vaca Narvaja and Frugoni Gustavo, Fernando Vaca Narvaja, con igual ánimo (Buenos Aires: Colihue, 2002), 195–98; Pablo Robledo, Montoneros y Palestina (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2018).

39. Luís de Brito, A Frelimo, o marxismo e a construção do Estado Nacional, 1962–1983 (Maputo: Instituto de Estudos Sociais e Económicos, 2019), 87.

40. De Brito, A Frelimo, 88.

41. Teresa Maria da Cruz e Silva, “Moçambique: um perfil” (2000), accessed May 18, 2022, https://www.ces.uc.pt/emancipa/gen/mozambique.html#up.

42. De Brito, A Frelimo, 88.

43. Allen Isaacman and Barbara Isaacman, Mozambique: from Colonialism to Revolution, 1900–1982 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press 1983), 11–112.

44. The period following the Third Congress of the FRELIMO was characterized by the intensive development of the public sector in the countryside, industry, and services, based on a centralized planning model, resulting from the growing influence of new cadres and cooperators from socialist countries in the state apparatus. De Brito, A Frelimo, 125.

45. De Brito, A Frelimo, 92.

46. Risquet, “Informe de la visita …,” 49. According to this secret memorandum, the total of the “capitalist area” was 37,740 “foreign technicians,” representing 94.4 percent. Distributed by nationality the figures by continent and countries are as follows: America: 950 from Chile; 7 from Argentina: 250 from Brazil, 20 from Uruguay; 20 from Colombia and 30 from the United States. Europe: 35,000 from Portugal; 130 from the Netherlands; 190 from Sweden; 40 from England; 260 from Italy; 180 from France; 90 from Spain; 40 from Norway; 40 from Denmark (subtotal: 35,970). Asia: 190 from India; 90 from Japan. Africa: 50 from Tanzania; 20 from Cape Verde (subtotal 70). Other nationalities: 80. While there were 2,260 technicians from the Socialist Area, equivalent to 5.6% of the total. Namely: 560 from Cuba; 500 from the USSR; 280 from Bulgaria; 500 from the GDR; 30 from Hungary; 260 from Romania; 50 from the People’s Republic of Korea; 90 from the People’s Republic of China. In contrast, the military cooperation of socialist countries with Mozambique was quite significant according to the dialogues of Jorge Risquet and Arnaldo Ochoa with Samora Machel and military commanders: the USSR, Cuba and the People’s Republic of Korea were the main ones in training high and medium commanders. In turn, Tanzania collaborated by providing basic training for soldiers. Ibid., 2–32.

47. As with the case of the Chileans in Algeria, studied by Palieraki, technical-professional cooperators in Mozambique maintained their activist and professional identities, which led to a growing transnationalization of their activist subjectivities and their political and professional activities. Palieraki, “Broadening the field.”

48. Ibid.; Palieraki, “Producing scientific knowledge.”

49. Hatzky and Stites Mor, “Latin American Transnational Solidarities.”

50. Dalmiro Contreras, personal interview, October 20, 2020, Santiago de Chile.

51. Basulto, Contreras and Glisser, Chilenos en Mozambique, 245.

52. Jaime Rovira, “Chilenos en Mozambique,” testimony recorded by Carlos Orellana, Araucaria de Chile 19 (1982): 99–109.

53. Mario Glisser, email sent to Ricardo Pérez Haristoy, October 27, 2020.

54. Cristiá and Ayala, “Memorias de solidaridad y exilio.”

55. Carmen Báez, a former activist of Guevarist Youth (JG), had been arrested and tortured before going into exile in Sweden, from where she traveled to Mozambique in 1979, together with her parents, both Paraguayan exiles in Argentina.

56. Carmen Báez (Argentine doctor), personal interview, Buenos Aires, Argentina, April 4, 2017.

57. Domingo Suppa (Argentine engineer), interview with the filmmakers Ernesto Aguilar and Marcela Suppicich, Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 15, 2017, for researching the documentary Exilio en África (Exile in Africa). In the context of the repression unleashed by the death squads against university leaders, he went into exile in Italy at the end of 1973, before moving to Francoist Spain and finally settling in France, studying in Paris. Living in the University City’s Brazil House, he joined groups of students showing solidarity with Mozambique. At the end of 1975, a group of Brazilian friends invited him “to live the revolution in Africa” and he left for Mozambique via Lisbon that same year.

58. Suppa, interview with the filmmakers Ernesto Aguilar and Marcela Suppicich.

59. Marta Lucas (Argentine language teacher), interview with the filmmakers Ernesto Aguilar and Marcela Suppicich, Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 15, 2017.

60. Martin Rall, an agricultural engineer, South African exile and international cooperator in Mozambique. Martin Rall, personal interview, Buenos Aires, Argentina, April 4, 2017.

61. Carmen Báez, personal interview, Buenos Aires, April 4, 2017.

62. Many exiles recalled the South African air strike against the suburbs of Maputo in January 1981.

63. Steven Metz, “The Mozambique National Resistance and South African Foreign Policy,” African Affairs 85, no. 341 (1986): 491–507, accessed May 23, 2022, http://www.jstor.org/stable/722294.

64. Anne M. Pitcher, Transforming Mozambique: The politics of privatization, 1975–2000 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002); De Brito, A Frelimo, 10; Teresa Maria da Cruz e Silva, “Moçambique: um perfil.”

65. In this respect, see Carlos Mendo, “Reportaje. El contencioso de Namibia y la actividad guerrillera en Angola y Mozambique, principales problemas pendientes,” El País, Madrid, May 14, 1985, accessed May 23, 2022, https://elpais.com/diario/1985/05/15/internacional/484956020_850215.html#?prm=copy_link; Nadja Manghezi, Amizade Traída e Recuperada: O ANC em Moçambique (1976–1990) (Maputo: CIEDlMA - Central Impressora e Editora de Maputo, 2007).

66. Palieraki, “Broadening the field”; Da Cruz, Brasileiros no exílio.

67. Mario Ayala, “Tendencias actuales en estudios sobre Historia de América Latina. Un diálogo con Luis Roniger,” Revista de la Red Intercatedras de Historia de América Latina Contemporánea 6 (2017): 189–97.

* This publication results from the research projects ‘Nuevos actores en las relaciones internacionales contemporáneas durante los procesos de descolonización de África, Asia y América Latina (1810–1990). Redes políticas, alianzas y cooperación Sur-Sur’, funded by Comunidad de Madrid through a multi- year agreement with Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, V PRICIT (Reference: SI1/ PJI/2019-00493).

**MARIO AYALA is a researcher with the Universidad de Buenos Aires, the Universidad Nacional de Tierra del Fuego and The National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), and can be reached via email at mhayala@untdf.edu.ar.

RICARDO PÉREZ HARISTOY is a PhD student in history at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and can be reached via email at raperez21@uc.cl.