Radio Cadena Agramonte emisiora de Camagüey
Havana, November 4 - Operation Carlota, in which Cuba assisted Africa, evokes anecdotes and pride today, half a century after its inception, as the island's most just, prolonged, massive, and successful internationalist campaign.
Carlota was a Liberian African slave who, on November 5, 1843, led a rebellion at the Triunvirato sugar mill in Matanzas, in the central region of the island.
After 132 years of being savagely dismembered by Spanish slave owners, her name inspired the operation that officially began on November 4, 1975.
In those days, Cuban advisors shed their blood for the first time alongside Angolan military personnel to prevent an invading South African military force from taking Luanda, the capital of that country.
Commander in Chief Fidel Castro, upon learning of these events in Cuba and in response to a request for help from the leader of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA, for its acronym in Spanish), Agostinho Neto, ordered the deployment of the first combat units by air and sea.
More than 300,000 combatants and another 50,000 civilians went to Angola to overcome the civil war, repel the South African invasion, attacks from Zaire and guarantee the independence of the African country, in an action that was also decisive for the liberation of Namibia and the elimination of apartheid in South Africa.
The historical leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, along with Army General Raúl Castro, was always at the forefront of coordinating Operation Carlota.
Documentary sources attest to the feeling of pride among Cubans for the Angolan war, which is why it obtained popular support. Operation Carlota concluded on May 25, 1991.
An official report from the Cuban Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces stated that 2,016 Cubans gave their lives in Angola, 787 of them in combat actions, 524 from illnesses and 705 from accidents.
The blood of the African Carlota merged with that of the Cubans in history.
Fifty years after the start of Operation Carlota, glorious epics are present, among them the decisive battle of Cuito Cuanavale, and the names of cities and Angolan geography such as Cabinda, Cunene, Cangamba, Quifangondo, Ebo, Sumbe, Benguela and many more where the Cubans were present remain familiar.
The solidarity between both peoples endures to this day, as Cuban professionals from various fields carry out internationalist missions in the lands of the African continent. (Text and photo: PL)
