U.S. Feminist Internationalism and Cuba: The Vexing Politics of Gender, Sexuality, and Class in Solidarity Brigades and Study Tours, 1970's and 1980's

Despite U.S. travel bans and the embargo, FBI harassment, U.S. political conservatism, and the U.S. militarization of, and intervention, in Latin America, thousands of radical socialist and feminist activists crossed geographic and political borders to participate in unique modes of solidarity activism and alliances with Cuba revolutionaries. Numerous international work and study exchanges in the late 1970’s and 1980’s were organized by various groups and organizations such as the Venceremos Brigades, Center for Cuban Studies, Weathermen, Black Scholars, National Lawyers Guild, Pastors for Peace, socialist-feminist collectives, and progressive faculty/student groups. Additionally, the Cuban government invited and organized exchanges with U.S. radical educators and African American cultural workers.

Based on oral histories and the travel journals of those who participated in the literacy campaigns, sugarcane brigades and radical education study tours, as well as archival materials from sponsoring organizations, this paper explores the “difficult conversations” around gender, sexuality, cultural/economic differences, and radical political ideologies. The intimacy of long travel times and living in mixed-gender and race groups from the U.S., Cuba,  and Vietnam allowed numerous opportunities for contentious debates not only within the brigade camps and study tours but also with Cuban hosts about Cuban policies, homophobia, racism, revolutionary priorities and the status of women, international alliances, gendering of work in the brigades, expressing admiration and critique of the Cuban revolution, and revolutionary politics in the U.S. This paper analyzes how political differences were both managed and/or silenced within these international activist encounters, and their import for contemporary transnational feminist organizing.