By Pedro Ríoseco on November 2, 2020
Statue of Carlota Lucumi in Matanzas, Photo: Granma archives
Most of the world knows about Operation Carlota, which began 45 years ago on November 5, which resulted in the crushing of the South African troops who invaded Angola, playing an essential role in the liberation of Namibia and the elimination of Apartheid in South Africa. It was named for an enslaved heroine who was believed to have been brought to Cuba from Angola.
Carlota was a Black slave who came from the region of Lucumí origen who is known throughout Cuba for the uprising she led together with many other slaves on November 5, 1843, on the Triunvirato sugar plantation in the Cuban province of Matanzas. The uprising spread to other sugar plantations throughout Matanzas, as well as to coffee plantations and cattle ranches.
Pursued by the powerful army sent by the Spanish governor, Carlota and her fellow rebels were taken prisoner in a bloody and unequal battle. After her capture, while still alive, she was tied to four horses and her body was pulled apart, in an effort to make a cruel example of her to her followers.
The courage and rebellious spirit of this woman with African blood in her veins forms part of the heritage of freedom of the Cuban people. Because of her heroism many years afterward in her honor the internationalist mission of Cuba to the People’s Republic of Angola carried her name: Operation Carlota. This was the name given to the internationalist military aid given by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba to Angola, with the goal of preserving its independence and territorial integrity and throwing back a South African invasion on its southern border.
South Africa, with the support of the US and of the government of Mobuto Sese Seko, dictator of Zaire, armed the anti-government forces of the UNITA, headed by Jonas Savimbi and the arrogant organizations of the FNLA headed by Holden Roberto, a known agent of the CIA, who promoted invasion in different areas of the country in order to prevent Angola from achieving its independence.
The date fixed for the independence of Angola had been November 11, but the reactionary forces, in violation of this agreement, had organized, armed and trained the troops meant to impede the The People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola’s (MPLA) rise to power through scheduled elections. Faced with this imminent danger, the MPLA president, Agostinho Neto, asked Cuba for military aid to preserve the independence of Angola, since Cuba had promised to give aid to the guerrillas against Portuguese colonialism in 1965, after a meeting in the Congo with Commander Ernesto Che Guevara.
Since the 1960’s, Cuba had been cooperating with liberation movements of many counties on the African continent, in keeping with its fundamental principles of Internationalism. Once the liberation of Angola from Portuguese colonialism was achieved in 1975, and faced with a counter-revolutionary threat, Havana’s response was swift. In the first week of August in 1975, Commander Raúl Díaz Argüelles, head of the Tenth Command of the Armed Forces of Cuba, arrived in Angola, as a liaison between the revolutionary Angolan forces and the Cuban government. It was in this meeting that agreement to offer military aid to the MPLA, consisting of 480 advisors who would train several thousand soldiers of the Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FAPLA), the armed branch of the MPLA, since it was an open secret that the US, the South Africans, other western countries, and mercenaries of various nationalities were all lending aid to the movements opposed to Neto’s party.
The first contingent arrived in Puerto Ambroim on 3 Cuban ships transporting 33 military specialists and 17 members of a medical brigade between October 4 and 11. During the same dates, 142 internationalists arrived by air to Brazaville. The mission of all of these was to organize 16 battalions of infantry over the next six months, and in order to do this they set up four recruit schools, one in Dalantado, 300 km to the east of Luanda, another near the port of Benguela in the center of the country, a third in Saurino, in the eastern part of the country, and the fourth in the northern enclave of Cabinda.
The Cuban ships had been loaded with all the equipment for the schools, including 12,000 Czech M-52 rifles, various trucks, uniforms, boots, and other supplies. The Cuban instructors did not have time to organize even the most basic conditions in their bases, because in the middle of October, from the 14th to the 23rd, an invasion began, combined with an effort to catch the capital in a pincers movement on the north and south.
Operation Carlota began officially on November 5, 1975, when Fidel Castro Ruz, Commander in Chief of the Cuban Revolution, after finding out about the death of Cuban military advisors in a clash with invading forces in Caporolo, ordered the transfer of the first units of combat troops by air and by sea, in the beginning of one of the most outstanding military feats of modern history, with the objective of preventing the enemy forces from taking the capital before November 11, the date on which the MPLA would become the governing power.
Between November 5, 1975 and 1991, about 300,000 Cubans participated in the epic effort of liberation losing 2000 of their own; their bodies were repatriated to Cuba during Operation Tribute. Another 50,000 Cuban civilian collaborators also contributed their support and solidarity to this heroic deed.
Operation Carlota was recorded as one of the most brilliant actions in world military history, and the name of the woman who rebelled against slavery in Cuba was immortalized as a symbol of courage and of solidarity between the peoples of Africa and Cuba.
Source: Granma, translation Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau