Clive
25-01-2008, 11:22
Castro explains why Angola lost battle against the SADF (PART 5 OF 5)
By Simon Barber, dated 27 July 1989
When I visited the Museum of the Revolution in Havana last Match, it struck me as odd that the exhibit commemorating the "glorious victory" at Cuito Cuanavale should have been secreted away from public view in a side corridor.
Now there seems to be an explanation. Fidel Castro had yet to decide who should be credited. The general to whose genius the glory might logically have belonged was shot at dawn last Thursday.
Division General Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez, commander of the Cuban Expeditionary Force in Angola between November 1987 and January this year – the man, in other words, sent in to clean up the mess after Unita and the SADF had thrashed the MPLA and its Soviet advisers at Mavinga – was executed on charges, principally, of attempting to smuggle cocaine to the US in cahoots with Columbia’s notorious Medellin cartel.
Or so at least the Cuban people and the world have been asked to believe. The transcripts of those sections of Ochoa’s "trial" that were broadcast on Cuban television, and other evidence, suggest that the truth is rather different. The general may, tangentially, have been involved in the drug trade, but that was not the reason for his arrest and liquidation.
Ochoa, according to those who knew him (including diplomats involved in the Angola/Namibia settlement process), was a man of striking countenance and much intelligence and charisma.
He knew his mission was to preside over Cuba’s last hurrah in Angola and that the "heroic" defence of Cuito was, therefore, a vainglorious fraud, designed to cover a retreat that had already been decided. The 15 000 new troops who followed Ochoa came to save Cuban face, not the MPLA.
Defence Minister Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother, quoted the general as saying: "I have been sent to a lost war so that I will be blamed for the defeat." That was, indeed, his view.
From: Paratus, September 1989.
I thought that the members would enoy this piece of Cuban history that I picked up on the web a few weeks ago.
Clive
By Simon Barber, dated 27 July 1989
When I visited the Museum of the Revolution in Havana last Match, it struck me as odd that the exhibit commemorating the "glorious victory" at Cuito Cuanavale should have been secreted away from public view in a side corridor.
Now there seems to be an explanation. Fidel Castro had yet to decide who should be credited. The general to whose genius the glory might logically have belonged was shot at dawn last Thursday.
Division General Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez, commander of the Cuban Expeditionary Force in Angola between November 1987 and January this year – the man, in other words, sent in to clean up the mess after Unita and the SADF had thrashed the MPLA and its Soviet advisers at Mavinga – was executed on charges, principally, of attempting to smuggle cocaine to the US in cahoots with Columbia’s notorious Medellin cartel.
Or so at least the Cuban people and the world have been asked to believe. The transcripts of those sections of Ochoa’s "trial" that were broadcast on Cuban television, and other evidence, suggest that the truth is rather different. The general may, tangentially, have been involved in the drug trade, but that was not the reason for his arrest and liquidation.
Ochoa, according to those who knew him (including diplomats involved in the Angola/Namibia settlement process), was a man of striking countenance and much intelligence and charisma.
He knew his mission was to preside over Cuba’s last hurrah in Angola and that the "heroic" defence of Cuito was, therefore, a vainglorious fraud, designed to cover a retreat that had already been decided. The 15 000 new troops who followed Ochoa came to save Cuban face, not the MPLA.
Defence Minister Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother, quoted the general as saying: "I have been sent to a lost war so that I will be blamed for the defeat." That was, indeed, his view.
From: Paratus, September 1989.
I thought that the members would enoy this piece of Cuban history that I picked up on the web a few weeks ago.
Clive