By Andy Jorge Blanco on December 7, 2021
Operation Tribute, photo: Liborio Noval
On every December 7, one hears again: “On choosing this date to give burial… fallen internationalist fighters… Cubans who gave their lives not only in defense of their homeland, but also of humanity”. From Fidel’s voice we hear with mixed images of coffins and ossuaries, of a country in silence and mourning, of Cuban flags covering the remains, of a mother who finds no consolation -how to find it when you lose a son?- and embraces a portrait, kisses it and cries.
That December 7, 1989, in the farewell of national mourning, 2,085 martyrs who served military missions in different parts of the world, mainly in Angola, and 204 civilians were buried. Between November 27 and December 4 of that year, the remains were transferred to Cuba as part of “Operation Tribute”.
After the Peace Agreements in 1988 and the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angolan territory, work began on the return of the combatants who had fallen during the war. “They brought in their blood the human warmth of friendship,” Agostinho Neto, president of liberated Angola said in a verse.
“There are historical events that nothing and nobody will be able to erase”, said Fidel Castro in the national ceremony of farewell mourning, held in El Cacahual, where the remains of Maceo and Panchito rest. The remains of 16 internationalist combatants were there, representing each province of the country and the special municipality of Isla de la Juventud.
Then, in the afternoon, the fallen were buried. It was simultaneous in the 169 municipalities throughout the country, the march of the funeral processions through the streets to the Pantheons of the Fallen for the Defense, the flowers, the children, fathers, mothers and grandparents in a closed cry…
The journalist and war correspondent in Angola, José Antonio Fulgueiras, wrote that on that December 7, 1989, an old man spoke to a portrait. “I’m touching you, Ernestito, can’t you see me?,”. In the book El hombre por dentro, the reporter relates that a young woman asked the old man why he named him Ernesto, to which the grandfather replied, “I named him Ernesto because I knew he was going to be like Che Guevara. Can anyone here say I was wrong?”
“I keep him alive in me as the good son he was, and I am proud of the upbringing I gave him and his brothers,” Lorgia Rodríguez Montoya, mother of Tomás Ávila Rodríguez, who died during the war in Angola, told the press earlier.
Retamar wrote: “Who died for me? Who received my bullet?”. This Tuesday the tribute will return, the touch of silence in front of each pantheon of this Island. The pain that will never go away, the kiss and the cry of the mothers will return. “In the blood, love”, as Neto used to say.
Source: Cubadebate, translation: Resumen Latinoamericano – English