Tricontinentalism for kids:

N´vula (1981) and the fictional making of the new man in Cuba and Angola

Abstract

The article presents an analysis of the Cuban animation N’vula (1981), written by director Juan Padrón. This author, best known for the movie Vampiros en La Habana (1985) or the animated series Elpidio Valdés, released N'vula, a 9-minute short, within the context of Operation Carlota, a military action organized by the Cuban government, aiming to support the recently installed government regime of the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA). The execution of this operation can be understood on the dictates of tricontinentalism, here considered a doctrine of Cuban foreign policy, based mainly on third worldism and socialist internationalism. With Ernesto Che Guevara as one of its most iconic representatives, tricontinentalism can be closely related to the idea of the New Man, promoted by several Marxist-Leninist states, and also theorized by the Latin American revolutionary. This context proves to be fundamental for the discussion of the narrative meanings of N'vula, a film that, by targeting children, reveals itself to be an instrument for propagating tricontinentalism for children at a time when the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC) promoted a series of works portraying the Angolan reality and the actions of Cubans in that country. The protagonists of N’vula are “pioneer” children, educated within the Marxist parameters of the MPLA in liberated zones, who face cruel Portuguese soldiers sponsored by imperialism, whose objective was to destroy their school and village. In this sense, the film presents a projection of what the socialist New Man should be like, already created within an educational logic that was intended to be “revolutionary” and free from the assumptions of the bourgeoisie. For this reason, we can consider that the work embodies the precepts of tricontinentalism, serving as a kind of idealized projection of what the future of Marxist nations should be like.