30 Years Since ‘Operation Carlota,’ Cuba’s Internationalist Mission in Angola

BY MARTA ROJAS  
The fifth decade of the 19th century was characterized by successive rebellions on the part of African and Cuban-born slaves, particularly in the great plain of Havana-Matanzas, the emporium of the slave-owning oligarchy, given the wealth of its land and the profusion of the sugar-cane industry….

Traditional Cuban history never touched on the impetuous beginnings of the slave rebellion in that historical period. But that silence—or deliberate omission in more than a few cases—is not the case in these years of Revolution. The restored landmarks include the rebellion at the Triunvirato sugar mill in Matanzas and, more specifically, the heroic dimension of Carlota, the pro-liberation slave.

The uprising led by Carlota and a group of rebel slaves had international repercussions. A few days after the rebellion began, the Vandalia, a U.S. Navy corvette, appeared in the port of Havana under the command of Rear Admiral Chauncey, the bearer of an “official” letter from the Spanish Business Attaché in Washington, which notified Captain General O’Donnell that he could count on the aid of the United States to crush the “Afrocuban” rebellion, a document that Commander Chauncey, accompanied by a Mr. Campbell, the U.S. consul in Havana, presented to the colonial governor in an official ceremony with full diplomatic rigor.

This support further spurred on the repression meted out by the Spanish authorities in Matanzas of the slaves who participated in the Triunvirato uprising, from the governor and district captains, to the slave owners of farms and sugar mills, to simple overseers. In the end, Carlota was literally torn apart. But her action was an epic one.

This was the beginning: the drums were talking in the Triunvirato mill in the months of July and August, 1843. Two Africans were in contact. They were Lucumies: Evaristo and Fermina, from the Acana mill. They devoted themselves to campaigning among the slaves to put an end to the brutality of that system. They managed to communicate via drums which they played with eloquence. On November 5, 1843, the Triunvirato slaves rebelled. There was a military trial from which it emerged that the Matanzas Military Committee had uncovered a vast conspiracy in the above-mentioned mills.

In addition to Fermina, other women had an energetic participation in the anti-slave movement, as well as their men. There was a militarily gifted and exceptionally daring woman in the front line: Carlota, of Lucumi origin, who belonged to the Triunvirato mill. Involved with her in the rebellion were Eduardo, a Fula; Carmita and Juliana, Cuban-born; Filomena, a Ganga from the Acana mill; and Lucía, a Lucumi from the Concepción estate, all of them in Matanzas.

For the white slave owners what they heard was merely a drumming ceremony from a black slave cabin calling to the ancestors. But the fact is that at 8:00 p.m. on the night of Sunday, November 5, Eduardo, the interpreter of the kettledrum voice, advised everybody, and Carlota, Narciso and Felipe, and the Ganga Manuel, like the “spokesperson,” had already sharpened their work machetes. At that hour the objective was not the cane plantations, but the brutal plantation manager, his overseers and lackeys. It was they who first felt the blades of steel and were felled, their pistols and rifles seized, as well as similar weapons from other white individuals who abandoned them in all haste.

Somewhat terse concerning these cases, the official municipal representatives on the Military Committee relate for history that the blacks “set fire to the main house, part of the plantation and the sugar mill huts.”

The Fermina from the Acana mill, who took part in a rebellion on August 2, had been imprisoned with shackles from which she was released by her brothers and sisters on November 3. Carlota and her captains, according to their secret plan, had gone from Triunvirato to Acana to free the slaves.

Nobody should imagine, because it would be naïve, that Carlota went with a holster strapped to her chest, and in boots. She went barefoot, in her threadbare dress. The successes at Triunvirato and Acana must have encouraged the rebel slaves who were fighting for freedom and they continued their surprise attacks in the area…. But the governor’s powerful forces were already pursuing Carlota the Lucumi, Eduardo the Fula and her other comrades, and in a battle as unequal as it was bitter—presumably due to the difference in the strength, quality, and quantity of the enemy firepower—Carlota was taken prisoner and tied alive to horses pulling in opposite directions until she was torn apart.

According to the annals, Blas Cuesta, administrator and co-owner of the San Rafael mill, earnestly appealed to the governor of Matanzas, who had just arrived on his property, not to continue massacring defenseless blacks. Some slaves who escaped got as far as the Ciénaga de Zapata and continued fighting in the Gran Palenque (hideout of runaway slaves) in the Cuevas del Cabildo.

Fermina was shot with four Lucumies and three Gangas in March 1844.

This was not the only or the first slave conspiracy or rebellion. One would have to recall that of José Antonio Aponte in 1812. And long before, the determined and victorious protest of the slave miners of Rey in El Cobre (1677), until their freedom was de jure acknowledged in 1801.

In terms of its vigor and bravery, Carlota’s liberation struggle is part of the Cuban heritage of rebellion against oppression. Thus her name has been enshrined as a symbol of the operation that gave rise to the Cuban military mission in Angola 30 years ago. It was as if the bones and blood of Carlota and her comrades in the uprising joined together again to serve the liberation of the descendants of those Africans who contributed to the forging of the Cuban nation.

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