The Double Life of Fidel Castro (26 page)

Agostinho Neto—who had met Che Guevara ten years earlier in the Congo—naturally called on Fidel Castro to help. The latter, in a flash of genius, immediately devised and organized the notorious and insanely daring Operation Carlota. This consisted of quickly establishing air and maritime bridges between Havana and Luanda in order to transport thousands of “internationalists” and equipment that would enable Neto’s MPLA to seize Luanda before the fateful day. In the autumn of 1975, thousands of soldiers crossed the ocean aboard cruise ships and the four-engine Britannia planes of Cubana de Aviación, to reach the shores of southern Africa in the greatest secrecy. The operation was facilitated by the fact that the Cuban contingent included numerous blacks and mixed-race men who blended easily into the background.

World opinion was shocked when it was discovered that thousands of Cubans had arrived in Luanda. Not just the Americans but also the Soviets! Fidel had not thought it necessary to warn the Kremlin about his great maneuvers; faced with the fait accompli, the Soviet leaders were flabbergasted, and with good reason: it was the first time, since the colonial period had begun at the start of the century, that an entire army had arrived on the African continent from overseas.

The Commander in Chief ’s plan worked perfectly. On November 10, 1975, after a week of fighting, Agostinho Nero’s MPLA won a decisive battle with the support of Cuban troops that enabled them to besiege Luanda. On November 11, the new leader of the country declared independence. In the middle of the cold war, Angola toppled into the Soviet bloc, its new Marxist government receiving the reinforcement of Russian military advisers and war equipment, allowing it to control most of the country. In Havana, the myth of Cuban invincibility, originating with the Bay of Pigs, was confirmed.

I had not yet joined Fidel’s escort at the time. At the age of twenty-six, I was studying at the specialist college of MININT, with the aim of becoming a security officer responsible for VIPs. However, as my deepest desire was to die for the Revolution, I went to talk to an officer to beg to be sent to Angola to take part in the glorious saga. To my great surprise, he rebuffed me sharply, asking who I took myself for. He explained that it was not for me to decide my future but for the Revolution to choose what mission suited me best. Later, I realized that two years before being appointed as one of Fidel’s bodyguards, I had already been preselected for the role.

In 1976, divine surprise: the American Senate, not wanting to be dragged into an “African Vietnam,” voted for the Clark Amendment, which forbade the United States from exporting arms or intervening militarily in Angola. In March 1977, Fidel embarked on his first triumphal visit to Angolan soil, where the situation was more or less under control. After the natural death of Agostinho Neto in 1979, he was replaced by José Eduardo dos Santos (still in power today). However, things got more complicated in the 1980s. To start with, the American invasion of Grenada, in which 638 Cubans were taken prisoner, dealt a serious blow to the myth of Cuban invincibility. Then, in Angola, the South Africans relaunched a military offensive, in the southeast of the country. However, Fidel constantly sent human reinforcements while the Russians continued to supply tanks, planes, helicopters, and missiles without concern for expense. Notwithstanding all this, the losses on the ground began to accumulate and ten years after the start of the conflict, Cuban mothers feared only one thing: that an officer from MINFAR would knock on their door one morning, holding a bouquet of flowers, as was the custom, to tell them their son had died in combat. In total, more than twenty-five hundred Cubans lost their lives in the Angolan conflict.

Meanwhile, the difference of opinion between the Cubans and the Russians became more obvious. According to Fidel, Soviet war theory was unsuited to the African battlefield. To make things worse, the Russians were unable to adapt to the local mentality. While the natural affinity between the Angolans and the Cubans was obvious, the Soviets seemed like aliens from outer space. First serious disagreement: in July 1985, the Soviet military commander insisted on launching a great offensive, Operation Congreso II, against the area of Mavinga, strategically situated in the southeast of Angola, about six hundred miles from the capital. Fidel was opposed to it because he thought the circumstances unfavorable—and what happened next proved him right. After having attained the objective, the CubanAngolan forces were compelled to withdraw quickly, because the Russians had not correctly secured the supply column. A battle for nothing . . .

In the war room of MINFAR in Havana one day with Fidel—which was where he followed all the fighting—I heard him once again repeating to Raúl, “I knew that was going to happen. I told them, the Russians, they had to secure the rear and the supply. . . . Now it’s too late. . . . They should have thought of it before!” After which the
Comandante
gave the order to his brother—who had always been the liaison agent between Havana and Moscow—to make known his complete unhappiness with what had gone on “to the highest authorities in the Kremlin.” Which he did.

The following year, between May and August 1986, the Soviets made the same mistake. They launched their second great offensive, which, for the same reasons, ended in lamentable failure: the South Africans and Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA sabotaged the bridges that spanned the rivers, cutting off the retreat of the Cuban-Angolan forces. Once again, Fidel made his displeasure known to Mikhail Gorbachev—whom, to his concern, he saw also forging diplomatic ties with the United States. That did not bode well for Cuba.

The following month, in September 1986, Fidel attended the summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Zimbabwe, as did I and Colonel Gaddafi. Fidel then decided to make a stopover in Angola, where forty thousand Cubans, soldiers and civilians, were stationed, including Raúl’s own son, the young Alejandro Castro, who is today a colonel. It was the second time Fidel had set foot in Angola, after the trip in 1977.

Fidel stayed in the country for three days. On the second evening, he went to visit our troops on the front line. His escort was minimal: three bodyguards, including myself; the head of the escort, Domingo Mainet; and Dr. Selman. We took off in three helicopters at dusk and, like in a film, flew at low height toward the combat zone. After landing in the middle of the bush, I realized we were just several hundred yards away from the South Africans. The enemy was so close that you could see the lights of their camp—if they had known that Fidel was within reach. . . .

There, the
Comandante
addressed our soldiers, galvanizing them with words, assessing their morale, discussing their daily routine, and trying to understand the military situation. It made one think of Napoleon talking to his soldiers. “What region in Cuba do you come from? From Oriente province? Ah, very good. . . .” “How long have you been in Angola?” “The supplies, are they alright?” I remember that when we got back to Luanda that evening, Fidel’s morale was sky high, keyed up by the trip.

After the failure of their two great offensives, the Soviets finally gave up command, leaving the tactical and strategic initiative to Fidel Castro. A fact that is so extraordinary it must be emphasized: throughout the whole of the war, Fidel directed military operations from Havana, from the other side of the world. One had to see him at it to believe it, the strategist in his MINFAR war room, surrounded by geological survey maps and models of the battlefields! Past master of the art of war (he had read Sun Tzu), he was Napoleon and Rommel rolled into one. Via the written word or telephone, he dictated his instructions to his generals, which gave rise to bulletins such as this:

The defensive perimeter east of the river must be reduced. Withdraw 59th and 26th squadrons to the fortified positions nearer the river. These two squadrons should cover the whole of the southwestern sector, so that the 8th can devote itself to food provisions. At the moment they are too exposed to attacks that could come from the zone the 21st squadron was previously defending. Given the situation, such a risk is unacceptable and should be immediately corrected.

Almost two decades later, in the 2000s, the former general and former South African minister of defense Magnus Malan, who had fought him at Cuito Cuanavale, was incredulous: “I don’t understand how he managed to do it. Commanding operations from 10,000 kilometers [about 6,200 miles] away is theoretically impossible. . . . No, I’ll never understand,” he avowed in a spirit of fair play and what amounted to an unintentional homage to his former enemy.
*

The legendary battle of Cuito Cuanavale was the ultimate clash between Cuba and South Africa. It lasted six months, from September 1987 to March 1988, and went down in history as the biggest military battle in Africa since the Second World War. This African Stalingrad with tanks, helicopters, fighter planes, and batteries of missiles ended with an impasse. Nobody had won and each side claimed victory—but the South Africans had to admit that they would never militarily overthrow the Marxist government of Luanda. They therefore accepted negotiations for peace on these terms: Fidel would bring his army back to Cuba, on condition that the South African Defence Force left Namibia and granted total independence to that former German colony, placed under South African protection since 1945, which served as a buffer state to Angola. And so Namibian independence was declared. At the same period, international pressure led to the racist regime in Pretoria making other concessions: the liberation of Nelson Mandela and then the abolition of apartheid. Three years later, Nelson Mandela declared that Cuito Cuanavale “destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor. [It] was a victory for all Africa.”

_______________

*
See the documentary film
Cuba, an African Odyssey
( Jihan El Tahri, 2007).

Fidel gained even more prestige through that extraordinary adventure. It would, however, be unfair not to speak about the crucial role of Arnaldo Ochoa in Angola. Considered the best Cuban general, he had taken part in all, or almost all, the events of the Castrist saga. For my generation, this hawk-nosed soldier with his irresistible charm was the very model of an accomplished guerrilla fighter. A member of the resistance in the Sierra Maestra at the time of the fight against Batista, he found himself in the Congo with Che Guevara in 1964, then in Venezuela in 1966 so as to organize a guerrilla
foco.
A vital cog in Operation Carlota in Angola in 1975, he also led the expeditionary Cuban corps in Ethiopia during the Ethio-Somali War (1977–1978) before becoming in 1984–1986—again at Fidel’s express wish—the special adviser of the Nicaraguan defense minister Humberto Ortega to help that country in its bid to withstand the attacks of the Washington-financed Contras.

Fidel named this genius of the Revolution, the most decorated soldier in the country, “hero of the Republic of Cuba,” the only holder of that title. In 1987, when the Cuban army found itself in a delicate position mainly through Soviet errors, Ochoa became head of the Cuban military mission in Angola. Once there, however, this skilled strategist—who was also Raúl Castro’s best friend—thought himself in a better position than Fidel to judge the reality on the ground. One day, for example, Ochoa suggested a weeklong break to allow the combatants to recuperate while the
Comandante
, for his part, wanted to return to battle without delay. The general got it into his head to formulate alternative propositions to the tactical choices decreed by
El Jefe
.

In the
palacio
or in the MINFAR war room, I heard Fidel grumble to Raúl: “Ochoa is showing signs of incompetence” (implying mental incompetence), “Ochoa is out of touch with reality,” or else “Ochoa’s feet are not on the ground.” In January 1988, when the battle of Cuito Cuanavale was in full flow, the general was summoned back to Havana, where Fidel ordered him to withdraw all squadrons except one from the eastern bank of the Cuito. Back in Angola, however, Ochoa did not implement this strategy, which he believed to be wrong, and made other, probably better, choices. Several weeks later, Ochoa was recalled to Luanda and then to Havana.

Deep down, I was worried for him—I had long known that nobody, not even the hero of the Republic of Cuba, could contradict Fidel. To do so was, sooner or later, to risk disgrace. Little did I imagine, however, that the countdown to his death had already started.

Less than a year later, Arnaldo Ochoa was shot by a firing squad. By order of Fidel.

The end of 1988. A day like any other was coming to a close in Havana. In a few minutes, my life would be overturned.

Fidel had spent his afternoon reading and working in his office when he stuck his head through the door to the anteroom, where I was, to warn me that Abrantes was about to arrive. Gen. José Abrantes, in his fifties, had been minister of the interior since 1985 after having been, notably, the Commander in Chief ’s head of security for twenty years. Utterly loyal, he was one of the people who saw
El Jefe
daily. He also belonged to the circle of people closest to the supreme power, along with Raúl Castro and those whom readers already know but whose positions I will reiterate here: José Miguel Miyar Barruecos, aka Chomy, Fidel’s personal secretary; his personal doctor Eugenio Selman; the diplomat Carlos Rafael Rodríguez; the spymaster Manuel Piñeiro, aka Redbeard; and his two friends—the writer Gabriel García Márquez, known as “Gabo,” and the geographer Antonio Núñez Jiménez. Another characteristic made Abrantes stand out: other than Raúl, he was one of the rare people able to enter Fidel’s office without going through the main door of the
Palacio de la Revolución
but rather via the basement car garage at the rear, then the elevator that led directly to the third floor.