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Cold War in the Congo
It is widely acknowledged that Congo became an East- West battlefield during the first half of the decade of the 1960s, yet the participation of Cuban exiles in the struggles is rarely noted. In this absorbing volume Villafana details the contribution made by Cuban exiles to the preservation of democracy in Congo. When Congo was given its independence by Belgium in 1960, most of its people believed their new government had been installed by the West and opposed it. Anti-colonial, anti-government Congolese patriots started fighting. Some were pro-communist, some anti-communist, and most didn't know the difference. Many countries were involved on both sides of this conflict: Cuba, the Soviet U...
Expansionism
Starting in the early part of the nineteenth century, American administrations expressed a desire to own Cuba. A rationale for adding Cuba to the territory of the United States could be built on Cuba's sugar and tobacco industries, as well as Cuba's mineral deposits. But economics was not the primary motivation. American presidents knew that in the event of war, any nation occupying Cuba would have an advantage over the US military strategies; this fear, coupled with the economic benefit, explains a century of policy decisions. As Frank R. Villafana shows, Cubans were not sitting idle, waiting for outsiders to liberate them from Spanish oppression. A major part of this research is devoted to...
Coercion as Cure
Understanding the history of psychiatry requires an accurate view of its function and purpose. In this provocative new study, Szasz challenges conventional beliefs about psychiatry. He asserts that, in fact, psychiatrists are not concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of bona fide illnesses. Psychiatric tradition, social expectation, and the law make it clear that coercion is the profession's determining characteristic. Psychiatrists may "diagnose" or "treat" people without their consent or even against their clearly expressed wishes, and these involuntary psychiatric interventions are as different as are sexual relations between consenting adults and the sexual violence we call "rape." ...
Evolution of Revolutions
I wanted to know why a number of revolutions had occurred in the Western Hemisphere during a half century timeframe. I was also curious about the Russian Revolution and wondered if it had any similarity with the revolutions in the Americas. I tried to present the Russian Revolution as the sequential biographies of four men: Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin. Then I got to the start of World War II and kept on reading and writing. How did the Soviet Union arrange to ÒownÓ Eastern Europe nations at the end of the war? How long did it take Stalin to subdue the populations of the East Europe countries? How does it compare with how long it took Lenin to subdue the Russian people after World War I? Finally, I moved to my intoxicating curiosity about the Cuban Revolution. How long did it take Fidel Castro to subdue the Cuban people? How does that time compare with similar efforts by Lenin and Stalin? I read and wrote until I ran out of things to be curious about. Hope you enjoy reading this product of my curiosity.
Operation Melting Wall
In this sequel to Mule Train to Afghanistan, Ralphs new assignment, takes him to East Europe during the height of the Cold War. His life remains complicated and fast paced. The CIA has established teams to prepare East Europe countries for the eventual fall of the Iron Curtain. Ralph is assigned to the Romania team, which turns out to be the Soviet satellite to undergo the most violent transition. CIA operatives handling the Romania project are doing more than advising partisans, and Ralph is at risk in this dangerous mission, where Securitate, the KGB-clone organization, is well in control of the Romanian population. With no diplomatic immunity to protect him, RalphOs only protection is his carefully crafted job as a carpet merchant and his quick wit. Once again, this Cuban exile finds himself in a sticky situation, or as his mother would have said an arroz con mango. If he makes it out alive, who knows what will be next for Ralph. He hopes that it will be the liberation of Cuba.
OPERATION UIGHUR FREEDOM
Operation Uighur Freedom is the last chapter in a tetralogy of historical fiction books about the life and adventures of Ralph Martínez, one of the 1,400 Cuban children sent to the U.S. by his parents under a program called Pedro Pan. In this sequel to Operation Melting Wall, Ralph, now retired from CIA covert operations, is living in Cleveland with his wife Marlene, running his successful oriental rug business. During a rug buying trip to Urumqi, China, Ralph is shocked to learn that the abuses being inflicted on the Uighur population in Xinjiang, by the Chinese Communist Party, are significantly more serious than what the news media report. Ralph knows that something must be done. Retired...
Who Killed Hammarskjöld?
It has been 50 years since the UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold mysteriously died in a plane crash in Africa. Williams uncovers new evidence to demonstrate conclusively that the horrific conflict in the Congo was driven not so much by internal divisions as by the Cold War and the West's determination to control post-colonial Africa.
Mule Train to Afghanistan
In the sequel to Rice with Mango, Ralph, now a CIA operative, finds himself in the middle of the Cold War. Traveling to China to purchase oriental rugs for his shop in Ohio, he knows that he has traveled far from his first flight out of Cuba. In this historical work of fiction, set in the early 1980s, Afghanistan has been invaded by the Soviet Union. The CIA covert program to support the mujahedeen, is getting serious Congressional scrutiny. Rug salesman by day, Ralph's new assignment entangles him in the middle of the CIAs support of the Afghanistan mujahedeen. His nemesis, Baimurat, the KGB Station Chief in Kashgar, is not the brightest, but that makes him much more unpredictable and dangerous. Firefights that never get reported in the morning news, but still leave dead bodies, are surrounding him and killing his friends. Then there are the internal demons that may lead him to self-destruction or the sexy redhead with a healthy appetite, which offer dangers that were not included in his CIA training."
African Students in East Germany, 1949-1975
This book explores the largely unexamined history of Africans who lived, studied, and worked in the German Democratic Republic. African students started coming to the East in 1951 as invited guests who were offered scholarships by the East German government to prepare them for primarily technical and scientific careers once they returned home to their own countries. Drawn from previously unexplored archives in Germany, Ghana, Kenya, Zambia, and the United Kingdom, African Students in East Germany, 1949–1975 uncovers individual stories and reconstructs the pathways that African students took in their journeys to the GDR and what happened once they got there. The book places these experience...
Foreign Intervention in Africa
Foreign Intervention in Africa chronicles the foreign political and military interventions in Africa from 1956 to 2010, during the periods of decolonisation and the Cold War, as well as during the periods of state collapse and the 'global war on terror'. In the first two periods, the most significant intervention was extra-continental. The USA, the Soviet Union, China, Cuba and the former colonial powers entangled themselves in countless African conflicts. During the period of state collapse, the most consequential interventions were intra-continental. African governments, sometimes assisted by powers outside the continent, supported warlords, dictators and dissident movements in neighbouring countries and fought for control of their neighbours' resources. The global war on terror, like the Cold War, increased foreign military presence on the African continent and generated external support for repressive governments. In each of these cases, external interests altered the dynamics of Africa's internal struggles, escalating local conflicts into larger conflagrations, with devastating effects on African peoples.
