Cuba & Angola

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.

Also available in Spanish (ISBN:9781604880472)

“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

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) – A student leader at the University of Havana from 1945. Founding member of the Orthodox Party in 1947 and central organizer of its revolutionary-minded youth.

Fidel Castro led the July 26, 1953, attack on the Moncada and Bayamo garrisons and was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Released in May 1955 after a mass amnesty campaign, he organized the founding of the July 26 Movement. From Mexico, Castro prepared the Granma expedition, which returned to Cuba in December 1956. He commanded the Rebel Army during the 1956–58 revolutionary war and from May 1958 headed the July 26 Movement.

Castro was prime minister from February 1959 to 1976, when he became president of the Council of State and Council of Ministers. He was commander in chief of the armed forces from 1959 to 2008 and first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from its founding in 1965 to 2011.

Among his writings published by Pathfinder are:
Cuba and Angola: Fighting for Africa's Freedom and Our Own (coauthor, 2013)
Playa Girón/Bay of Pigs: 1961, Washington's First Military Defeat in the Americas (coauthor, 2001)
U.S. Hands Off the Mideast! (coauthor, 1990)
In Defense of Socialism (1989)
Cuba Will Never Adopt Capitalist Methods (1988)
Nothing Can Stop the Course of History (1986)
War and Crisis in the Americas (1985)
Our Power Is That of the Working People
Building Socialism in Cuba (1983)
Fidel Castro on Chile (1982)
Cuba's Internationalist Foreign Policy (1981)
Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro (1979)

Raúl Castro (1931– ) participated in the 1953 Moncada attack, was a founding member of the July 26 Movement, a participant in the Granma expedition, and commander of the Second Eastern Front during the revolutionary war. After the victory of the revolution in January 1959, he served as minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces from October 1959 to 2008. Vice-premier from 1959 to 1976. First vice president of Council of State and Council of Ministers from 1976 to 2008. President from 2008 to 2018. Second secretary of Communist Party of Cuba, 1965–2011; first secretary since 2011.

​He is coauthor of Cuba and Angola: Fighting for Africa’s Freedom and Our Own (2013.

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) joined the African National Congress in 1944, was elected its general secretary in 1948, and president in 1950. He was a central organizer of the mass Defiance Campaign in 1952, in which thousands challenged the apartheid regime’s internal passport laws. Imprisoned on frame-up charges in 1962, Mandela was held until a worldwide campaign won his freedom in 1990. He was president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. His writings include:

Cuba and Angola: Fighting for Africa’s Freedom and Our Own (2013, contributor)
Nelson Mandela Speaks (1993)
How Far We Slaves Have Come! South Africa and Cuba in Today's World (coauthor, 1991)
The Struggle Is My Life (1990)