''Os Bons Colonizadores'': Cuba's Educational Mission in Angola ...

64 C. Hatzky
Cubans organized their transport for holidays themselves, and could completely
elude the control of the Angolan authorities. 39
MEMORIES AND SILENCES
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The Cubans left an unsolved educational problem behind following their withdrawal
in 1991. Today’s rate of illiteracy is again at sixty percent. 40 The mission was not
aimed for sustainability; there were still not enough Angolan teachers to substitute
the Cubans. In fact, the constant availability of Cuban teachers prevented the
development of an Angolan educational system, as a self-critical statement from an
internal Angolan document at the beginning of 1990 indicates. 41 Nevertheless, many
young Angolans experienced their Cuban teachers in a very positive way because they
had a better pedagogical training than their Angolan counterparts. Their lessons were
much more interactive, flexible, and interesting. The Cubans could take the credit for
the education of at least one generation of Angolans, as one of my Angolan interview
partners stated. 42 A Catholic priest and physics teacher from the hard-fought
province of Kuando Kubango in South-East Angola told me that he wouldn’t have
been able to understand physics at all without his Cuban teachers, and that he
appreciates that they taught in his community at the cost of great personal
privation. 43 (Incidentally, many of today’s leading figures in Angolan economy and
politics have benefited from the Cuban education.) Despite many positive
experiences, the interviews I conducted revealed a range of feelings from admiration
to incomprehension. Perhaps the Angolans’ vernacular expression offers the best
characterization of what the Cubans meant to them: they called them the ‘‘Bons
colonizadores,’’ the ‘‘good colonizers.’’ 44 The Angolans actually admired the Cubans
because of their self-sacrificing attitude, their diligence, and courage, though they
also felt sorry for them because they were sent thousands of kilometres away by their
39 See, for example, the transcripts of the V. Intergovernmental Cuban-Angolan Mixed Session of Economic and
Scientific-Technical Cooperation, Luanda, 28 October 1983, or a communication of 18 October 1983 from the
head of the Department of International Cooperation to the Minister of Education, stating that the primary task
of his department could not be fulfilled: control of the Cuban Cooperation.
40 Ministério da Educação, Analise da Situação, 4.
41 MED, Gabinete de Intercâmbio Internacional, Memorando: Problemática da Retirada da Cooperação Cubana
da RPA, 15 October 1990.
42 Interview 25, Luanda, Angola, 29 November 2006; my own translation from the Portuguese.
43 Interview 23, Luanda, Angola, 14 March 2006; my own translation from the Portuguese.
44 I heard this expression on various occasions during my stay in Angola, and it corroborated what two of my
Cuban interviewees had told me two years ago: ‘‘‘The Cuban master is good’ they [the Angolans] said ...‘it is
good that we changed our masters, today they are not Portuguese but Cuban.’’’ (Interview 60, Sta. Clara, Cuba,
17 December 2004; my own translation from the Spanish) and: ‘‘On some occasions they refused us because
they thought we were from the same Portuguese colonial institutions, in fact there were sometimes anecdotes
that came to our ears ... ‘the Cuban colonists are good, they are not like the Portuguese’... they put us in
the sack with the colonists. Of course they qualified us as good colonists ...colonists who treated the Africans,
the blacks well, colonists who tried to learn their language, Umbundu, they saw us trying to use Umbundu
words ...’’ (interview 48, Sta. Clara, Cuba, 11 December 2004; my on translation from the Spanish).