Black or Red Atlantic? - Mozambican Students in Cuba and their Reintegration at Home

This article presents the experiences of Mozambican children who were sent in the 1970s and 80s to study in Cuba as well as their professional and ideological orientation after their return. Challenging collectivising perspectives on either an Anthropology of the Afro-Atlantic or Socialist Internationalism, this contribution focuses on an individual and his agency in the highly regulated and disciplined context of Cuban schools. However, this context must be described in order to appreciate the agency. Thus, the article shortly presents Cuban-African relations after the Cuban Revolution, it describes how the students were selected, sent abroad, were assigned their subjects, were sent back home and finally integrated into the work force or in the latter case how the state failed to do so. It shortly looks at the current situation of African students in Cuba with respect to issues of race and identity and how the Cuban discourse of Cuba being an Afro-Latin nation, owing its development to the work of Africans and paying it back through its missions of solidarity, is experienced by African students.