Fugitive States

In the 1970s, Cuba was a beacon of Third World liberation—and a sanctuary for US radicals on the run. Fugitive States is the true story of Charlie Hill, an American exile who has lived in Havana for fifty-five years. An Illinois native and war veteran who was expelled from the US Army for refusing to fight against the Vietnamese national liberation forces, Hill later joined the Republic of New Afrika, a dynamic Black nationalist movement that called for reparations for slavery and the creation of a sovereign nation-state for Black people in the American South.

Accused of killing a New Mexico state trooper in 1971, Hill hijacked an airplane from Albuquerque to Havana, where the Cuban government granted him asylum. In Havana, he hoped to connect with African revolutionaries and to join the armed struggle against colonialism in Angola or Guinea-Bissau; instead, he became the longest-remaining US political exile in Cuba and a witness to five decades of socialism and revolution. Drawing on archival sources and extensive interviews, historian Teishan A. Latner uses Hill’s surprising story to illuminate a broader set of encounters between foreign expatriates and the Cuban Revolution during a turbulent era of global radicalism.