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CUBA:
Angolan War
Memories Live On
Dalia
Acosta
HAVANA, (IPS) - The
arrival of December in Cuba, as
well as signalling the end of
the hurricane season and the
scorching temperatures of
summer, is also a time for
remembering one of the most
dramatic periods in recent Cuban
history: the country's
13-year-long participation in
the war in Angola.
Between 1975 and 1988, some
350,000 Cubans took part in the
civil war in the southern
African nation, which was also
the last time Cuba's military
forces were involved in an armed
conflict.
"I went because I wanted to, I
really wanted to take part in an
internationalist mission," said
Rubén Jiménez, a 62-year-old
retired Cuban armed forces
officer who wrote "Al sur de
Angola" (In Southern Angola), a
book about the final stages of
the war.
In an interview with IPS,
Jiménez said that enlisting in
the units that went to fight in
Angola was strictly voluntary,
even for members of the armed
forces.
But refusing to participate in
Operation Carlota, as active
duty in Angola was known,
brought expulsion from the party
ranks for members of the ruling
Communist Party and the
Communist Youth Union.
In addition, in a heavily "machista"
society like Cuba, those who
chose not to go to Angola risked
being labelled cowards.
The first Cuban military
contingent was sent to Angola in
October 1975 at the request of
Agostinho Neto, leader of the
leftist rebel Popular Movement
for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA),
who became the country's
president upon the declaration
of independence from Portugal on
Nov. 11 of that same year.
During the previous decade,
Cuban advisors had provided
assistance to MPLA combatants in
what was then known as the
Democratic Republic of the Congo
and was subsequently renamed
Zaire.
The arrival of Cuban troops was
considered decisive in
preventing Luanda, the Angolan
capital, from falling into the
hands of the MPLA's opponents,
the National Union for the Total
Independence of Angola (UNITA),
which was backed by Zaire, the
United States and apartheid-era
South Africa.
But while the heroic battles
waged by this Caribbean island
nation's troops are now being
celebrated in daily spots on
state-run national television
and radio, the thoughts of many
Cubans turn to the war's effects
on those who took part.
"My brother never even mentions
the war," said Ángel
Santiesteban, who added that his
stepbrother Jorge Luis Villazón
was changed forever by his
experiences in Angola.
"Reading his letters, we began
to realise that he was becoming
lost in time, that each
existential horror he suffered
stripped away more of his
essence, his personality. I
learned that death is not only
physical, that a person's spirit
can die as well," Santiesteban
told IPS.
Retired army officer Rafael
Alemañy, 60, maintains that most
of the troops who saw action in
Angola did not suffer this kind
of psychological trauma. "I
believe that the Cubans held up
and made the best of the most
difficult conditions in the most
remote places," he said.
Alemañy himself lived through
some harrowing moments during
the decisive battle of Cuito
Cuanavale in early 1988, when
Angolan and Cuban troops were
bombarded day and night by South
African artillery and he was in
charge of anti-air defence.
But 10,000 kilometres away, far
from the gunfire and explosions,
the war's effects were also felt
in Cuban homes.
Jiménez's wife Miriam Cruz, now
57, remembers how she used to
take her eight-year-old son down
to the Havana waterfront in the
evenings to look out at the sea,
"so that we weren't stuck in the
house fighting all the time."
For her part, Villazón's mother
used to cry every time she
opened her son's closet or
cooked his favourite foods.
"We spent two years waiting for
news of my brother's death,"
recalled Santiestebán. "Every
time the mailman came, my mother
would get all tense, and
couldn't bring herself to go out
and collect the letter or
telegram he'd brought," he said.
According to Cuban government
figures, during all of the
"internationalist" missions
carried out in Africa from the
early 1960s to the withdrawal of
the last soldier from Angola on
May 25, 1991, a total of 2,077
Cubans were killed.
The remains that could be
recovered were not brought back
to Cuban soil until December
1989, when they were repatriated
during the so-called Operation
Tribute.
There are no official statistics
on the war's consequences with
regard to those who were wounded
or disabled or contracted
serious illnesses while serving
in Africa. What is known,
however, is that the first cases
of HIV/AIDS reported in Cuba
were detected in troops
returning from Africa in the
mid-1980s.
>From the 1960s to the 1980s,
Cuba provided support to rebel
movements and leftist
governments in numerous African
countries, including Algeria,
Mozambique, Ethiopia,
Guinea-Bissau and the Congo.
Aid to Angola was not limited to
military assistance, but also
extended to health care,
education, construction and
other sectors, with initiatives
involving over 50,000 civilian
participants from Cuba.
Professor Olga Zayas, 62, spent
two years in Angola - 1977 to
1979 - training Angolan teachers
to work as headmasters. "Never
before had I felt so useful, so
needed as a human being," she
told IPS.
Her time in Africa was rewarding
in another way as well, she
added. Despite having been
diagnosed by doctors as sterile,
she returned to Cuba in 1979
five months pregnant.
Angola was also considered a
battleground in the Cold War
between the United States and
the now defunct Soviet Union.
The United States backed UNITA
troops - who fought until 2002
-with military advisors and
weapons, while the Soviets
provided the same support for
the Angolan army.
In the final stage of the
conflict, there were around
53,000 Cuban troops fighting in
the southern African nation.
On Dec. 22, 1998, Angola, Cuba
and South Africa signed a peace
agreement in New York that was
brokered by the United States,
through which South Africa
granted full independence to
neighbouring Namibia, while Cuba
agreed to withdraw its troops.
In July 1991, African National
Congress (ANC) leader and future
South African president Nelson
Mandela travelled to Havana to
personally thank Cuban President
Fidel Castro for his country's
pivotal role in the fight
against apartheid. The military
defeat suffered by South Africa
in Angola and Namibia, largely
thanks to the contribution of
Cuban troops, was considered a
decisive blow in bringing down
the racist apartheid regime.
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