Between Crisis and Collaboration: Nuclear Energy and Decolonization in Post-1959 Cuba

The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 created a global crisis of confidence in a communist nuclear project. Despite this watershed moment, the Cuban Academy of Sciences managed to secure international collaboration and development plans for a nuclear power plant only five years later (in 1967), and with the very same partner involved in the brink of nuclear warfare – the Soviet Union. This presentation seeks to untangle this seeming-contradiction through an analysis of the nuclear energy project in Cuba, from 1967—1980. I examine planning documents, memoranda, and letters from Cuban scientists, which reveal the Cuban-Soviet nuclear energy project as, first and foremost, a decolonizing project. For Cuban scientists, nuclear energy was not only a sign of the country achieving modernity, but also the key to detaching from the Soviet Union and Soviet oil for good. By focusing on Cubans’ decolonial approach to nuclear energy, the presentation offers a more critical perspective of the Cuban-Soviet relationship, whereby Cuban scientists define Cuba’s post-revolutionary identity on their own terms.