November 5 marks the 46th anniversary of ‘Operation Carlota’, the beginning of Cuba’s 15-year mission to defend Angola’s independence. 

-Cuba played a decisive role in southern African national and anti-colonial liberation struggles and helped defeat US-backed apartheid South African forces at Cuito Cuanavale, which in turn helped pave the way for the fall of apartheid.

-The solidarity action with Angola was named in homage to Carlota, who led a slave rebellion on the same date in the 19th century. Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote  “On another such November 5, in 1843, a slave called Black Carlota, working on the Triunvirato plantation in the Matanzas region, had taken up her machete at the head of a slave rebellion in which she lost her life. It was in homage to her that the solidarity action in Angola bore her name: Operation Carlota.”