Cuba’s Other Internationalism: Angola 25 Years Later | North American Congress on Latin America

3.10.13

Cuba’s Other Internationalism: Angola 25 Years Later | North American Congress on Latin America: Overall, the number of Cuban volunteers (including troops, educators and doctors) who served in Angola from 1975 to 1991 is officially estimated at over 300,000 – 2,000 of which whom lost their lives.

This is primarily the reason why Cuba was the first non-African country visited by Nelson Mandela following his release from prision in 1991. Later at the 1995 Southern Africa Cuba Solidarity Conference, Mandela remarked that “Cubans came to our region as doctors, teachers, soldiers, agricultural experts, but never as colonizers. They have shared the same trenches with us in the struggle against colonialism, underdevelopment, and apartheid. Hundreds of Cubans have given their lives, literally, in a struggle that was, first and foremost, not theirs but ours. As Southern Africans we salute them. We vow never to forget this unparalleled example of selfless internationalism.”