The 10th of May of 1994 Nelson Mandela made history when he was inaugurated as the first democratically elected President of South Africa. Mandela's election marked the end of apartheid, a system of racial segregation and discrimination that had been in place for nearly 50 years.

The end of the South African apartheid would have been impossible with out 'Operation Carlota', Cuba’s 15-year mission to defend Angola’s independence.

Cuba played a decisive role in southern African national and anti-colonial liberation struggles and helped defeat US-backed apartheid South African forces at Cuito Cuanavale, which in turn helped pave the way for the fall of apartheid.

-The solidarity action with Angola was named in homage to Carlota, who led a slave rebellion on the same date in the 19th century. Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote “On another such November 5, in 1843, a slave called Black Carlota, working on the Triunvirato plantation in the Matanzas region, had taken up her machete at the head of a slave rebellion in which she lost her life. It was in homage to her that the solidarity action in Angola bore her name: Operation Carlota.”