By Tatiana Coll on December 4, 2021
Cuban and Angolan soldiers. courtesy of Gerardo Hernandez
“How far our intelligence services must have deteriorated that we did not find out that the Cubans were going to Angola, until they were already there!”, Kissinger commented to Carlos Andrés Pérez, president of Venezuela, after the official announcement of the news on November 24, 1975; in an anecdote told by Gabriel García Márquez in the impeccable article Cuba’s Operation Carlota in Angola. In fact, the first ship on the African coast, the Heroic Vietnam, arrived on October 4, followed by two others, that stealthily sailed 10,000 kilometers carrying 480 military specialists, in charge of organizing training centers to form 16 Angolan infantry battalions, medical brigades, since in Angola there were only 90 doctors, communications equipment, transportation and 1,000 tons of fuel. Operation Carlota started on November 7, transporting 600 members of special troops in the old Bristol Britania turboprop planes, loaded with 75 millimeter cannons and mortars to stop the advance of the enemy troops that had invaded the territory from the north and south, with the aim of preventing Agostinho Neto from declaring the country’s independence on November 11. Certainly Kissinger was unaware of what was happening and planned another outcome: a comfortable ride to annihilate this new decolonizing revolution. By then, all the people of Cuba were already keeping the shared secret.
This 2021 the anniversaries of that great epic of Fidel and Cuba in Africa are piling up. The oldest: 55 years of the first Tricontinental meeting of Ospaal (Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America) in January 1966 in Havana, where 500 delegates from 82 countries of the three continents participated, representing different ideological currents and forms of struggle; its objective was to form and consolidate a “Third World” alliance against colonialism and the military and economic interference of US imperialism, strengthening unity and developing post-colonial theories. The commitment was for national liberation in various forms, the self-determination of peoples against neocolonialism and against forms of domination such as apartheid and the blockade for disarmament and world peace.
The meeting took place under the images of Lumumba, Sandino, Ben Barka, José Martí, Farabundo Martí and Franz Fanon. It was attended by leaders and organizations such as Salvador Allende (Chile), Amilcar Cabral (Guinea Bissau), Turcios Lima (Guatemala), Cheddi Jagan (Guyana), Medina Silva (Venezuela), Nguyen Van Tien (Vietcong), Rodney Arismendi (Uruguay), Carlos Marighella (Brazil), representatives of the MPLA (Angola), Frelimo (Mozambique), Algeria, Egypt, Laos, Palestine, Yemen, Libya, Morocco, Cambodia, Tanzania; Zimbabwe, Congo, South Africa. Many of them contacted and trained by Che in the Congo. The promoter of this Pan-African-Asian-American idea was Ben Barka, a Moroccan leader who did not attend because he was kidnapped and disappeared. The intense anti-imperialist struggle during the 1960s and 1970s led Ospaal to face assassination and systematic violence against most of the leaders and their peoples and relentless coups d’état. But there were also important victories: Vietnam, Laos, Nicaragua, Morocco, Panama, Guyana, Jamaica, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea, Ethiopia and the formation of large social movements, even in North America. Fidel’s vibrant closing speech and Che’s article, Crear dos, tres Vietnam… are imprinted in our memories.
The second anniversary is the 45th anniversary of that March 27, 1976, when Cuban-Angolan troops succeeded in expelling, for the first time, the invaders who had entered from the north since March 75: Holden Roberto, a corrupt character, financed by the CIA, Europe and China; from the west Savimbi, a “tribalist” leader allied with Portugal and Zaire; on August 5 the first South African troops from the south, through the occupied territory of Namibia, forming an extensive pincer that would close over Luanda, the capital, to guarantee 500 more years of exploitation. From October, with the first Cubans, the defense was reorganized and the fighting increased. Incredible as it may seem, the first task was to clear the port of the hundreds of automobiles abandoned by the Portuguese in their mad flight, and in Angola there were not enough drivers. García Márquez relates that at that stage, Fidel went to all the shipments that were made, talked and reflected with everyone. In the first one, seeing the difficult conditions to sail 10,000 kilometers, he told them: “Well, anyway, you are more comfortable than in El Granma”, the comparison underlined the enormous symbolic challenge.
The understanding of the strategic moment in the anti-imperialist struggle led Fidel to assume this historical commitment. He remained daily in a room covered by large maps of Angola, analyzing every possibility. The decision to face a total war was taken by the Central Committee of the Party on November 5 and named it Operation Carlota, celebrating that on November 5, 1854, in the Triunvirato de Matanzas sugar mill, Carlota, a black rebel Lucumí, called, machete in hand, for the uprising, which would end when she was imprisoned and dismembered by being tied to four horses. The responsibility of this decision was immense: the defeat of Angola could lead to the resurgence of the European and American domination over Africa and their intervention in Cuba.
Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English