We feel the 50th anniversary of the Algerian people’s independence as our own

Giraldo Mazola*

FIFTY years ago on July 5, 1962, Algeria won its independence after a bloody national liberation struggle which cost the lives of more than one and a half million of its people.

It was an atrocious war. Algerian soldiers, who had fought bravely in the ranks of the French troops during World War II, perceived at the end of that hecatomb that the ideals of peace, democracy and liberty embodied in the battle against Nazism, were barred to them. French colonialism brutally repressed their dreams. The Vietnamese victory in Diem Bien Phu demonstrated to them that, through armed struggle, it was possible to win their independence by defeating French colonialism, and their war of liberation began two years later.

That war was not a complete victory because, through 1968, France continued to exercise ownership and control of Algeria’s vast gas and oil resources.

During the National Liberation Front (FLN) Congress in Tunisia shortly after the March 19, 1962 meeting with French authorities in Evian where it was agreed hold a referendum confirming the people’s will to become independent, Colonel Hoari Boumediene, then chief of the Liberation Army, affirmed that independence could not be attained without economic independence, an issue that was definitively achieved almost 10 years later through the nationalization of the country’s hydrocarbons.

The result of the July 1 referendum was categorical. Only 16,534 of six million Algerians voted against Algeria becoming an independent state. Ahmed Ben Bella, a great friend of Cuba who died recently, was its first president.

In Cuba, thousands of kilometers away, in the midst of that battle for definitive independence, prior to our victory in January 1959, the revolutionaries of the Sierra Maestra and the plains followed with admiration and solidarity news of struggles so similar to ours taking place in Algeria’ mountains and cities.

We had to learn to read between the lines of cables from French and Western news agencies which, as was the case here, distorted the truth about the development of that epic struggle, always awarding victories to the colonial army.

In 1960, we received a delegation from the Provisional Government of the Republic of Algeria (GPRA) and, two months after the Bay of Pigs victory, on June 27, 1961, we were the only country in the Western Hemisphere to recognize the GPRA, prompting reprisals from the French government, which lent itself to the increasing hostility of U.S. imperialism.

But the solidarity of Cubans with the Algerian people went much further and was, in fact, the beginning of the altruistic aid given to many Third World nations, with the dispatch of doctors, construction workers and teachers in the civil context, and military support in the Congo, Angola, Guinea Bissau, Syria and Ethiopia.

In October of 1961, Jorge Ricardo Masetti, an Argentine who founded the Prensa Latina agency and later died initiating a guerrilla movement in northern Argentina, was sent to contact the National Liberation Front and confirm our disposition to help them. At that time the FLN needed weapons. That same year the Cuban vessel Bahía de Nipe set sail with a sizeable consignment of arms and munitions and, in January of 1962, arrived in Casablanca, Morocco, headed for the FLN camp in the vicinity of Quida, close to the Algerian border. On its return to Cuba, the vessel transported 78 seriously wounded guerrillas to receive medical attention on the island, as well as 20 children from the refugee camps, most of them orphans, to be cared for and educated, a task assumed by the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP).

With independence won, Ben Bella visited Cuba after Algeria was accepted into the United Nations in his presence. He arrived just before the October Missile Crisis and expressed his enduring solidarity with the Cuban Revolution.

One cannot relate the ties between our peoples without mentioning the active presence of Che in Algeria and his contribution to strengthening these indissoluble links forged in the common struggle against imperialism, colonialism and neocolonialism. This is attested to by President Ben Bella himself, who wrote of Comandante Che Guevara at the end of the 90’s, "Yes, only Revolution can sometimes make a man a luminous being."

Not long after this visit, on May 24, 1963, the first Cuban internationalist medical mission of 45 men and 10 women arrived in Algeria, given the situation that the majority of the few doctors there were French and left when independence was won.

At that time our contribution was not very large, because Cuba did not have many doctors, due to the fact that 3,000 of the 6,000 practicing before the Revolution had left the island. However, as on other occasions, we did not give what we had in abundance, but shared the little we had with our Third World brothers and sisters.

During the summer of 1963, taking advantage of the fact that the Algerian guerrilla columns had not as yet become a modern regular army, Morocco attempted to change the border with Algeria, in order to control the rich iron ore mines in Gara Yebilet, land it had never claimed during the French occupation. This led to what is known as the Desert War. In military terms, Morocco was superior to Algeria, given that its army was better equipped and trained. The Algerian government of Ben Bella asked Cuba for help and immediately, in October of 1963, in the midst of the devastation caused by Hurricane Flora, 686 combatants, under the command of Comandante Efigenio Ameijeiras, embarked in a turbulent sea to provide military solidarity.

The presence of internationalists who had fought victoriously at the Bay of Pigs and the steadfastness of our combatants in the October Crisis was a factor in the Moroccan authorities’ decision to sign a ceasefire and recognize the existing border.

An essential aspect of these ties is the many visits to Algeria of Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro, which constantly fortified relations between the two nations. The first took place in 1972, with an extensive tour of the country, in testimony of this enduring friendship, and the next in 1973, to take part in the 4th Non-Aligned Movement Summit, where Cuba, responding to its demand, broke off relations with the Zionist state of Israel. He visited the country on another five occasions.

Likewise, Boumediene’s 1974 visit to Cuba and those made to Algeria by the current President Raúl Castro Ruz continued to foster those links.

It comes as no surprise then, on the basis of a friendship forged in reciprocal solidarity that, in one of his Reflections, Fidel wrote movingly about the current President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, "It was 2006. I was really very seriously ill but at the same time fully aware of what was taking place. The 14th Non-Aligned Movement Summit, where Cuba was elected president, was ending at that time, in mid-September. With great difficulty, I was able to be part of it and sit at a table. In that way I received important heads of state and government.

"Abdelaziz Bouteflika, President of Algeria, one of the figures with whom I met, looked at me directly and said, ‘Fidel, if you need my blood, you have it.’

"I greatly appreciated that. He was Minister of Foreign Affairs of the government of our friend Houari Boumediene.

"His words constituted a noble and selfless support of our cause, which was not expected, given our internationalist spirit which was never exercised in exchange for anything."

Neither is it surprising that Bouteflika himself affirmed years previously, "We have had the immense privilege of having as a friend compañero Fidel, who has never failed us. Fidel travels into the future, returns and explains it."

For that reason, it is genuinely understandable for us to affirm that as Cubans, we feel the 50th anniversary of the Algerian people’s definitive independence as our own and, in congratulating them, we are congratulating ourselves as well.