ABSTRACT
This chapter concentrates on the cooperative educational programme between Cuba and Angola; and provides in-depth insight into the bilateral interactions of cooperation. It deals with the historical and colonial roots of this cooperation in order to address topics such as race, identity and belonging and explores the cultural practices of interaction and mutual perceptions between the Caribbean and Africa. Civil cooperation between Cuba and Angola was part of an overall political and military strategy to consolidate the Movimento Popular de Libertao de Angola (MPLA), jointly planned by the MPLA and Cuba. Cubans who volunteered for work in Angola were committed to unconditional internationalist solidarity and had absolutely no influence over where and under which conditions they were deployed. At the end of 1975, Castro created an interactive transatlantic space and went as far as defining Cuba as an Afro-Latin-American nation. From the 1990s on, Cuban foreign cooperation in the Global South was separated from ideological premises.
