Cuba & Angola

Cuba & Angola Synopsis

In March 1988, the army of South Africa's apartheid regime was dealt a crushing defeat by Cuban, Angolan, and Namibian combatants at the battle of Cuito Cuanavale in Angola. That triumph, South Africa's future president Nelson Mandela proclaimed, marked "a milestone in the history of the struggle for southern African liberation." With the victory at Cuito Cuanavale, Angola's sovereignty was secured. Namibia's independence was won. The deepening revolutionary struggle in South Africa received a powerful boost. And the Cuban Revolution too was strengthened. Between 1975 and 1991 some 425,000 Cubans volunteered for duty in Angola in response to requests from the Angolan government to help defend the newly independent country against multiple invasions by South Africa's white-supremacist regime, backed by its allies in Washington and elsewhere. Here this history is told by those who lived it and made it. "Cuban intervention was viewed as a heroic act of international solidarity." -Research Book News "Operation Carlota…captured the spirit that the Cuban people wished to exhibit in every aspect of this conflict." -African Studies Quarterly "The intervention of Cuba in the liberation of colonies in Africa is one case where internationalism has prevailed over nationalism, and nowhere is this more evident than in the case of the Cuban presence in Angola." -Journal of Third World Studies "Provides a window into the remarkable partnership shared by revolutionaries in these two seemingly disparate countries." -Journal of African History "Liberation often can come in international brotherhood." -Midwest Book Review "The format-their words, not a historian's-gives authenticity to the work." -African Defense "We begin to understand the lasting impact of Cuba's overseas campaigns, moving beyond truisms to do justice to the lived reality of participants and those who awaited their return." -Diálogo

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