Foto Internet.
May 27 is a day to remember the brave men who sacrificed their lives, to defend the freedom of their homeland and that of sister nations.
The date is also dedicated to the combatants fallen in Angola during the Operation Carlota and to those who fulfilled military missions in the African continent. In 1991, the last brigade of internationalist fighters that fought against apartheid in Angola, returned to Cuba.
At the end of Operation Carlota, Army General Raul Castro delivered a speech on May 27, 1991, in El Cacahual, where he said: "We honor, above all, the comrades who did not survive to see the victory, because they fertilized it with their blood. They will always be among the most beloved children of the country "... Thereafter, that date was designated as the Day of the Cuban Internationalist Combatant. Operation Carlota was named in honor of the black African woman who gave her life in 1843, when she was leading an insurrection against slavery in Matanzas.
More than a century after Carlota's death, the collaboration of dozens of children of San Antonio de los Baños in the struggle of the people of Angola, lasted little more than 15 years. Ariguanabenses Santiago Figueroa Cruz, Evaristo Rodríguez Pérez, Roberto Pulido Sandoval, Gilberto Pérez Sotomayor, Roberto Cabrera Lazo, and Arturo Díaz Álvarez, among others, are some of the combatants dead in Angola. Another of the fighters who participated in that important internationalist feat was Carlos Rosendo Rodríguez Pérez. Carlos Rosendo arrived in the People's Republic of Angola, in November 1987, in his second internationalist mission; where on May 3, 1988, he lost his life honorably.
Carlos Rosendo Rodríguez Pérez worked as a fighter pilot at the San Antonio de los Baños Air Base and completed his first internationalist mission in Angola in 1984. For his valuable career he was decorated with the Antonio Maceo Order and Distinguished Service; in addition to the Calixto Garcia medals and the Internationalist Combatant.
At present the Association 04-04 of the Combatants of the Cuban Revolution of San Antonio de los Baños, is honored with the name of the internationalist Carlos Rosendo Rodríguez Pérez. His remains rest in the fighters' pantheon, located in the necropolis of San Antonio de los Baños.
