Mehdi Ben Barka - The Exile and Global Political Significance

The Exile and Global Political Significance

Ben Barka was exiled in 1963, becoming a "travelling salesman of the revolution", according to the historian Jean Lacouture. He left initially for Algiers, where he met Che Guevara, Amilcar Cabral and Malcolm X. From there, he went to Cairo, Rome, Geneva and Havana, trying to unite the revolutionary movements of the Third World for the Tricontinental Conference held in January 1966 in Havana, where he affirmed in a press conference, "the two currents of the world revolution will be represented there: the current emerged with the October Revolution and that of the national liberation revolution".

As the leader of the Tricontinental Conference, Ben Barka was a major figure in the Third World movement and supported revolutionary anti-colonial action in various states, provoking the anger of the United States and France. Just before his death, he was preparing the first meeting of the Tricontinental, scheduled to take place in Havana, Cuba - the OSPAAAL (Spanish for "Organization for Solidarity with the People of Africa, Asia and Latin America") was founded on this occasion.

Chairing the preparatory commission, he defined the objectives; assistance with the movements of liberation, support for Cuba subjected to the United States embargo, the liquidation of the foreign military bases and apartheid in South Africa. For the historian René Galissot, "The underlying reason for the removal and assassination of Ben Barka is to be found in this revolutionary impetus of Tricontinentale."

Victoria Brittain, writer for The Guardian, called Ben Barka a "revolutionary theoretician as significant as Frantz Fanon and Che Guevara", whose "influence reverberated far beyond their own continent. His writings have been collected and translated in French by his son Bachir Ben Barka and published in 1999 under the title Écrits politiques (1957–1965).