Vol. 72/No. 33      August 25, 2008

During the ceremony at which Dreke and Morales were each decorated with the Independence of Equatorial Guinea Order, deputy foreign minister José Esono Micha noted that such distinction is rarely conferred on diplomats of another nation. He highlighted the work of the 230 Cuban volunteers who today are serving in Equatorial Guinea as doctors, nurses, teachers, electrical workers, and technical advisors in other fields. Referring to the discovery and exploitation of large oil reserves off the coast of this Central African nation since the mid-1990s, he noted that Cuba “has extended and will extend its collaboration before, during, and after the oil, because its collaboration is selfless.”

In brief remarks at the ceremony, Dreke said the Cuban Revolution has been marked from the beginning by its support to anti-imperialist struggles in Africa. He cited the role of Cuban volunteer combatants who in 1965 joined national liberation forces battling the proimperialist regime in the Congo. Dreke was second in command of that Cuban column under Ernesto Che Guevara.

Dreke also pointed to the hundreds of thousands of Cuban combatants who helped newly independent Angola defeat several invasions by the South African apartheid regime, starting in 1975 and culminating in a battle at the Angolan town of Cuito Cuanavale in 1988. The crushing defeat suffered by the South African forces there led to the independence of Namibia and accelerated the overthrow of the apartheid system.
 
 
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Event on Cuban Revolution held in Equatorial Guinea
 
 
 
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