Copyright © 2024 Razor Step Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved
Six years prior to his victory in 1959 over the U.S.-backed Batista regime, Fidel Castro stood trial for his part in an attack on the Moncada Barracks, a strategic stronghold and headquarters for Batista in southern Cuba. In his own defense in court, Castro made a four hour speech that he ended with “history will absolve me,” a prophetic claim that was vindicated six years later when Castro and his revolution overturned the military regime, and became a flashpoint for anti-imperialism throughout the world.
In the same trial, Castro claimed that “the intellectual author of this revolution is Jose Marti, the apostle of our independence.” As a revolutionary poet, intellectual, and activist, Marti’s internationalist vision has had a profound influence not just on the nationalist struggles of Cuba, but throughout Latin America.
Marti would write “we are all Moors!” in 1893 as he proclaimed solidarity with the Berbers of Northern Morocco who were challenging Spanish rule at the time. Marti’s demand for Latino-Muslim unity at the time spoke to the urgency and necessity of solidarity amongst the non-white world, as Europe and the United States were dominating the world through imperial expansion. But more than that, Marti was also speaking to a past and to the future, as he saw Muslims and the indigenous of the Americas as having common cause, having both been targeted as enemies and threats to modernity and the West - an idea that began in the iconic year of 1492 when the Moor was expelled from Spain, and Columbus began the conquest of the Americas.
Histories Absolved taps into these overlapping and converging histories by showcasing the revolutionary graphic art work of the influential Cuban-based Organization of Solidarity with the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America (OSPAAAL). Supported by Castro’s new revolutionary government, OSPAAAL’s mission was to capture the energies of Third World internationalism that were overtaking the globe, and to use graphic art to raise awareness of the various struggles taking place against European and U.S. imperialism.
Histories Absolved showcases the artwork of OSPAAAL which is part of the Muslim International – a political and artistic space of radical possibility where multiple struggles converge: it’s when Malcolm X met Fidel Castro, Che Guevara travelled to Palestine, and the Black Panthers established themselves in Algiers. By exhibiting the poster art of the anti-imperialist struggles taking place in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s in Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Yemen, Afghanistan and numerous other places in the region, Histories Absolved links the struggles of the colonized in the Americas with those in Muslim lands. In the post-9/11 present, as U.S. economic and military expansionism continues to wreak havoc and mayhem, Histories Absolved bears witness to a radical past, but it does so with an eye towards a just future - one that connects Cairo to Caracas, Gaza to Los Angeles, Baghdad to Buenos Aires, and Kabul to Puerto Rico in a moment when land and borders are being contested and war, occupation, racism and repression are rampant.
Sohail Daulatzai
Razor Step
Six years prior to his victory in 1959 over the U.S.-backed Batista regime, Fidel Castro stood trial for his part in an attack on the Moncada Barracks, a strategic stronghold and headquarters for Batista in southern Cuba. In his own defense in court, Castro made a four hour speech that he ended with “history will absolve me,” a prophetic claim that was vindicated six years later when Castro and his revolution overturned the military regime, and became a flashpoint for anti-imperialism throughout the world.
In the same trial, Castro claimed that “the intellectual author of this revolution is Jose Marti, the apostle of our independence.” As a revolutionary poet, intellectual, and activist, Marti’s internationalist vision has had a profound influence not just on the nationalist struggles of Cuba, but throughout Latin America.
Marti would write “we are all Moors!” in 1893 as he proclaimed solidarity with the Berbers of Northern Morocco who were challenging Spanish rule at the time. Marti’s demand for Latino-Muslim unity at the time spoke to the urgency and necessity of solidarity amongst the non-white world, as Europe and the United States were dominating the world through imperial expansion. But more than that, Marti was also speaking to a past and to the future, as he saw Muslims and the indigenous of the Americas as having common cause, having both been targeted as enemies and threats to modernity and the West - an idea that began in the iconic year of 1492 when the Moor was expelled from Spain, and Columbus began the conquest of the Americas.
Histories Absolved taps into these overlapping and converging histories by showcasing the revolutionary graphic art work of the influential Cuban-based Organization of Solidarity with the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America (OSPAAAL). Supported by Castro’s new revolutionary government, OSPAAAL’s mission was to capture the energies of Third World internationalism that were overtaking the globe, and to use graphic art to raise awareness of the various struggles taking place against European and U.S. imperialism.
Histories Absolved showcases the artwork of OSPAAAL which is part of the Muslim International – a political and artistic space of radical possibility where multiple struggles converge: it’s when Malcolm X met Fidel Castro, Che Guevara travelled to Palestine, and the Black Panthers established themselves in Algiers. By exhibiting the poster art of the anti-imperialist struggles taking place in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s in Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Yemen, Afghanistan and numerous other places in the region, Histories Absolved links the struggles of the colonized in the Americas with those in Muslim lands. In the post-9/11 present, as U.S. economic and military expansionism continues to wreak havoc and mayhem, Histories Absolved bears witness to a radical past, but it does so with an eye towards a just future - one that connects Cairo to Caracas, Gaza to Los Angeles, Baghdad to Buenos Aires, and Kabul to Puerto Rico in a moment when land and borders are being contested and war, occupation, racism and repression are rampant.
Sohail Daulatzai
Razor Step