HAVANA — The Cuban Revolution’s decadeslong history of aiding freedom struggles in Africa is a central theme of this year’s Havana International Book Fair. Several featured book presentations have addressed this internationalist record, and South Africa is the country of honor at the Feb. 13-23 fair.
Several events have marked 50 years since the start of “Operation Carlota.” That was the 16-year-long campaign in which hundreds of thousands of Cuban volunteer combatants helped defend newly independent Angola against invasions by the white-supremacist regime in South Africa. That victory also led to the independence of Namibia and the end of the apartheid regime in Pretoria.
A special program of events was called “Africa in Our Veins.” It was held at a hall displaying books by Verde Olivo and Capitán San Luis, publishing houses of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces and its Ministry of the Interior, as well as the Fidel Castro Center and others.
Cuban Revolution’s internationalism
“Since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, our commander Fidel Castro instilled among Cubans the need to fulfill a basic principle — to be an internationalist is to pay our debt to humanity,” Víctor Dreke told the audience at the Feb. 14 opening of the program. Dreke is a longtime historic leader of the Cuban Revolution from the days of the clandestine struggle and revolutionary war that brought down the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959, through hard-fought battles in both Cuba and Africa since that time.
He pointed to Cuba’s historic ties to the African continent since “the enslavement of Africans who were forcibly brought to the Americas. Their customs and traditions have marked our Cuban identity ever since.
“African blood was shed in the building of our country,” Dreke said, as well as in revolutionary struggles throughout Cuba’s history.
He cited the homage paid several years ago by Commander Juan Almeida, one of the historic leaders of Cuba’s socialist revolution, to Cubans who had fought in the Congo in 1965. That year 128 Cuban volunteer combatants, led by Ernesto Che Guevara, fought alongside national liberation fighters there. Dreke was second in command of that column.
After the internationalist campaign in the Congo, Dreke and other combatants from that mission returned to Africa in 1966 to lend support to the national liberation movement in Guinea-Bissau, which defeated the Portuguese government in 1974.
“Cuban volunteers in the Congo were pioneers in Cuba’s internationalist collaboration in Africa,” Almeida said. That “enormous undertaking is an expression of selflessness, solidarity, and a deep identification with the broad oppressed masses of the world.”
Dreke, today the president of the Cuba-Africa Friendship Association, concluded with a remark by Fidel Castro: “What the imperialists cannot forgive is the integrity, courage, and political firmness” of the men and women who made the Cuban Revolution.
Among those attending the event were Gen. José Antonio Carrillo, president of the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution, and Teté Puebla, a founder of the Mariana Grajales Women’s Platoon of the Rebel Army. Young soldiers from different branches of Cuba’s armed forces participated, alongside a group of cadets from South Africa studying at the Antonio Maceo military academy in Havana. To the audience’s delight, these cadets sang and danced to a traditional song in the Sesotho language of South Africa.
Combat missions: Algeria to Angola
A feature of the morning program was a presentation by Col. José Manuel Cereijo, head of the Center for Military Studies of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces. He outlined the history of Cuba’s military missions in 23 African countries over several decades, from Algeria to Guinea-Bissau to Angola. The presentation was dedicated to the more than 4,000 Cuban combatants who fell during those battles.
Cereijo paid special tribute to Cuba’s first combat mission in Africa. In 1963 some 700 Cuban volunteers went to Algeria, which had just won independence from French colonial rule. They helped deter a military attack by the Moroccan regime, an assault instigated by Paris and Washington.
Cereijo cited Fidel Castro’s explanation that the revolutionary government had “sent some of our best weapons to Algeria,” even though Cuba, “a small country, was relentlessly being threatened by the imperialists.”
Another book fair event presented Cuba-Argelia 1963: La primera misión (Cuba-Algeria 1963: The First Mission) by Mario López Isla. Nine former combatants in Algeria attended. One after another, they stood to describe how they signed up for that volunteer mission, even before knowing what country they were going to. The experience not only aided the Algerian people, they said, but transformed each of them into revolutionaries for life.
The opening program at the book fair featured a short documentary on Cuba’s combat mission in Angola as well, along with remarks by the film’s director, Milton Díaz Cánter, a war correspondent and combatant in Angola renowned in Cuba for his 24-episode TV series “La epopeya de Angola” (The Angola Epic).
Among the fair’s other presentations on Cuba’s internationalist missions in Africa was Cassinga: La verdad de una masacre (Cassinga: The Truth of a Massacre) by Yeniska Martínez. It recounts a 1978 chapter in the Angola war, when 600 Namibian refugees were massacred by the South African army in the southern Angolan town of Cassinga. Cuban combatants joined in rescuing some of the Namibians, and 16 Cubans were killed. Gen. Pedro Horta, a Cassinga veteran, was present at the program. Hundreds of surviving orphans were brought to Cuba for medical care and to go to school.
Another title presented at the fair was a biography of South African leader Nelson Mandela by Oscar Oramas, who over decades served as Cuba’s ambassador in Guinea, Angola, and elsewhere in Africa. A related tribute to Mandela featured Heriberto Feraudy and Ángel Dalmau, both of whom served as Cuban diplomats in Africa.
Hero of the Angola war
Another special presentation at the book fair introduced a book titled El indetenible (The Unstoppable One), which tells the life story of Gen. Ramón Espinosa Martín, one of the heroes of Cuba’s Angola mission. Written by Col. Rafael Moreno Ruiz and published by Verde Olivo, it was presented in a packed hall to an audience of hundreds of young military cadets.
The author recounted how Espinosa, as a teenager in the 1950s, joined the Rebel Army led by Fidel Castro in the revolutionary war that overthrew the Batista tyranny and opened a socialist revolution in Cuba. Years later, in 1975, Espinosa commanded troops in Angola’s oil-rich Cabinda region, decisively defeating an invasion by U.S.-backed troops from neighboring Zaire. Espinosa was Cuba’s deputy minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces from 2021 until his death last year.