Angola

Fidel Castro and the Cuban Role in Defeating Apartheid

Until the fall of the Portuguese dictatorship in 1974, apartheid in South Africa was secure. There was no substantial resistance anywhere in southern Africa. Pretoria’s neighbors comprised a buffer zone that protected the racist regime: Namibia, their immediate neighbor which they had occupied for 60 years; white-ruled Rhodesia; and the Portuguese-ruled colonies of Angola and Mozambique. The rebels who fought against minority rule in each of these countries, operating without any safe haven to organize and train, were powerless to challenge the status quo.

The Six Jesuit Scholars and the American War on Self-Determination

Twenty-five years ago this week, six Jesuit scholars at the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) in El Salvador opened the doors of their residence to members of a government death squad, who had been armed and trained by the United States. The soldiers marched the priests to the back garden. They were ordered to lie face down. They were shot and killed like dogs along with their housekeeper and her teenage daughter.

Cuba in Africa: A Forgotten History

During the funeral of Nelson Mandela in South Africa, members of the United States press were surprised when President Obama was photographed shaking the hand of Cuba’s President Raul Castro. The handshake, which was purely formal and ceremonial, did not have any meaning beyond what the protocol for such occasions demands. In 2000 President Bill Clinton shook the hand of President Fidel Castro which also led to all sorts of idle speculation about the meaning of that gesture. Unfortunately, there is a blind spot in the U.S.

Mandela Is Dead: Why Hide the Truth about Apartheid?

Maybe the empire thought that we would not honor our word when, during days of uncertainty in the past century, we affirmed that even if the USSR were to disappear Cuba would continue struggling. World War II broke out on September 1, 1939 when Nazi-fascist troops invaded Poland and struck like a lightning over the heroic people of the USSR, who contributed 27 million lives to preserve mankind from that brutal massacre that ended the lives of 50 million persons.

Once They Called Him a Terrorist, Now the Media Fawns

Nelson Mandela died peacefully at 8:50pm last Thursday, December 5, 2013, in his Johannesburg home. The South African President called him a son of Africa and father to the new nation of South Africa. Tributes are pouring in particularly from the western world so it is easy to forget what it thought of him even thirty years ago. He was the first Commander-in-Chief of ANC’s military wing, forced into this role by the South African government’s savage attacks on unarmed demonstrators engaged in peaceful acts of civil disobedience.