Victorious End of Carlota Operation

Jorge Risquet Valdes

May 25 is the Day of Africa agreed by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) today African Union since the second half last 20^th century. It is also the victorious day with the definite return from the ancestral continent, of the internationalist Cuban troops on May 25, 1991, glorious end of Carlota Operation.

As it is known, November 11, 1975 was the date agreed for the end of the centenarian colonialist Portuguese domain in Angola and its birth as independent African republic.

Weeks before, as a request from the MPLA, half a thousand of Cuban military advisors, in four military schools of recruits opened in several parts of the country, were training young Angolan militaries that will serve in the army of the republic that had just born.

Nevertheless, the governments of the United States (U.S.) and South Africa, in complicity with Mabuto regime in Zaire developed their criminal plans to avoid patriots from the MPLA headed by Agostinho Neto will assume power in the newly-formed republic and fraction the huge and rich territory in small republics leaded by the counter-revolutionary puppet of the FNLA and UNITA, at the service of Yankee imperialism and Apartheid regime.

They were speedily undergoing the secret operations Iafaaturi from the CIA and Savannaa from Petroria government.

Angola was threatened to be invaded, that was the main goal. They planned to do it before November 11. Mobuto was the indispensible facilitator of the criminal plan. His operations were not identified with codes but with numbers: 50 million dollars.

On October troops from Zaire, armed gangs from the FNLA and white mercenaries advanced from the north and were approaching Luanda. From the south, a column from Petroria’s Army left from a South African colony of Namibia with 4,000 soldiers with armored vehicles and regular troops completed with infantry made of bandits of the UNITA and FNLA.

The South African column arrived at Benguela province at the beginning of November, where one of the four recruits school was.

A detachment made of 17 Cuban instructors and about 200 hundred Angolan recruits had the first combat against invaders. They caused them many casualties and injured people they never reported.

For the first time, Angolan and Cuban blood was shed in combat against Apartheid in Angola. We had casualties, injured and disappeared people.

The following day, a second combat in another direction of the racists’ advance made them realize their march to Luanda will be not that easy.

The news of the events was spread in Cuba on November 4. While the request was subject to decision a flight from Britannia left to Angola, Luanda on Nov. 7, with a hundred cannon, mortar, antiaircraft and multiple reactive artillery BM21 instructors.

That same day, Commander in Chief saw the Special Battalion from the Minister of Interior (MININT) off that left in a company by plane. This was the first to arrive to Luanda on Nov.9; the others arrived in the following weeks.

A Cuban vessel anchored in the Congolese port of Punta Negra set sail with a powerful load of artillery handed in by the USSR to MPLA, including the powerful BM21. It arrived to Angola on Nov 7.

Three days later, an infantry regiment left in a Cuban merchant ship and arrived to Luanda by the end of November.

On Nov. 10 was Quifandango battle, 23 kilometers north Luanda. Troops from FAPLA, artillery units with Cuban instructors from Dalatando Recruit School win with an overwhelming defeat against the invaders, and since then, they started their withdrawal to the north to Zaire.

In the morning of Nov.11, President of Angola, Agostinho Neto proclaimed in Luanda in front of a patriotic crowd, the birth the Popular Republic of Angola.

The South African troops that clashed with the Angolan-Cuban troops from Benguela could advance very little. They could not cross the Queve River’s bridges destroyed that were more than 200 kilometers far from Luanda.

Meanwhile in Cabinda, the assault of Mabuto’s elite troops and his helpers from Flec were scratched on No. 10, 11 and 12 by Angolan recruits and Cuban instructors from the school founded the month before.

The Popular Republic of Angola was saved from several plans to disassemble and subjugate it to the monopolies of the US and South Africa.

Carlota Operation lasted more than 15 years, which was baptized to honor the African rebel slave scarified in Triumvirato, Cuban province of Matanzas in 1843 by the Spanish colonialists. About 2, 077 Cuban internationalist combatants offered their lives in Angola.

It is impossible to describe all the heroic deeds of the Cuban troops in this article where the most outstanding events were: Cassinga, Cangamba, Zumbe, Cuito Cuanavale, Calueque.

For 30 years, as Commnader in chief Fidel Castro has said, “381,000 soldiers and officers had fought together with African soldiers and officials in this continent for their national independence or against foreign aggression…”

If we add the Cuban civilian collaborators that had served in Africa, for many years we have exceeded half a million. More than a million slaves were brought to Cuba for four centuries.

We will keep on paying an involuntary debt.  Those who enslaved them will never be punished; they not even recognize what they did wrong.