Thirty years ago, the Cuban government began sending thousands of volunteer combatants to Angola to help defend that country’s newly won independence when it faced an invasion by the army of the apartheid regime, then in power in South Africa. The white-minority regime was backed by Washington and its client in the Congo, the Mobutu dictatorship.

The 15-year struggle was marked by the definitive defeat of the apartheid troops in the battle of Cuito Cuanavale in 1988. Cuban blood has also been shed backing struggles against imperialist aggression throughout Africa—and many other parts of the world. The Militant is publishing articles and a recent speech by Cuban president Fidel Castro to help explain the truth about that history, which is still being told.

Today, tens of thousands of Cuban doctors, teachers, and other volunteers are working in many countries in Africa, Latin America, and Asia—and Cuba even offered to send doctors to the United States to meet the needs of tens of thousands in the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. From the Central African country of Equatorial Guinea to Venezuela, Cuban medical volunteers are not only providing badly needed health care, often in working-class neighborhoods and isolated rural areas where other doctors will not go. Even more important, they are training youth from those countries as doctors and other specialists to strengthen the medical services there.

By contrast, the imperialist powers in Washington, London, and across Europe continue to engage in the so-called “brain drain,” enticing doctors and other professionals throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America to leave their countries in hopes of securing higher salaries—one more form of imperialist robbery.

How is it that thousands of Cuban volunteers serve abroad and provide competent assistance, asking for nothing in return? It is Cuba’s socialist revolution that makes this possible. Cuba has a consistent record of internationalism—from sending troops in 1963 to help defend newly independent Algeria to its support for literacy and medical programs in Venezuela today—a stance that has earned it the hatred and fear of Washington and the U.S. billionaire families it represents. Because of this record, there is every reason to believe that revolutionary Cuba today would respond to any request to defend a fellow nation’s sovereignty and social gains in face of imperialist threats.

The Cuban Revolution is a living example of what workers and farmers can do when they are organized and take state power, ending capitalist rule and building a society based on the needs of the vast majority. Today, in face of a world of increasing economic devastation, imperialist war, and capitalist brutality, the course taken by the Cuban people points the road forward for workers and farmers in this country and around the world.

We join with working people throughout the world in welcoming in the New Year with a renewed commitment to defend the Cuban Revolution. End the U.S. embargo! Abolish travel restrictions! Normalize relations with Cuba!
 
 
Related articles:
Cuba’s role in southern African freedom fight
Fidel Castro speaks on 30th anniversary of Cuban fighters’ arrival in Angola  
 
 
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