It is widely acknowledged that the Congo became a battleground between East and West in the first half of the 1960s, yet the involvement of Cuban exiles in the fighting is rarely mentioned. In this compelling volume, Villafana describes the contribution that Cuban exiles made to the preservation of democracy in the Congo. When the Congo gained independence from Belgium in 1960, the majority of the population believed that their new government had been installed by Western powers and rejected it. Anticolonial, anti-state Congolese patriots began to fight. Some were pro-communist, others anti-communist, and most did not know the difference. Many countries were involved on both sides of this conflict: Cuba, the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, the United States, Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, and several African nations.