Carlota: Heroine of Cuba

“There was a militarily gifted and exceptionally daring woman in the front line: Carlota, of Lucumbi origin…”

In 1843, Carlota Lucumí, an enslaved African woman, led a major Maafa/Atlantic slavery uprising in Matanzas, Cuba. Decades later, her name was given to Cuba’s internationalist military mission in Angola, Operación Carlota, which played a decisive role in the struggle that culminated in the battle of Cuito Cuanavale and the defeat of the South African army.

Believed to have been kidnapped as a child from her Yoruba (Lucumí) people, Carlota was forced into captivity at the Triunvirato sugar mill in Matanzas, where she laboured under brutal conditions harvesting and processing sugar cane. In response to the appalling work regime and violence of the Spanish, she began planning an uprising together with another woman, Fermina, from the nearby Acana plantation. When the Spanish discovered Fermina’s role, they had her severely beaten, chained, and imprisoned in an attempt to break the plot for freedom.

Carlota refused to abandon the revolt. Known for her strategic intelligence and musical skill, she used talking drums to send coded messages and coordinate attacks across the plantations. On 3 November 1843, she led a daring raid that liberated Fermina and around a dozen other captives from custody. Two days later, on 5 November, the uprising erupted at the Triunvirato and Acana sugar estates, where Carlota personally led the assaults, wielding a machete and directing fighters as they overthrew overseers and plantation authorities.

The victories at Triunvirato and Acana reverberated across the region, inspiring further Risings. Over the following months, freedom fighters liberated people from at least five large sugar plantations in the Matanzas area, including estates linked to San Miguel, Concepción, San Lorenzo, Santa Ana, Guanábana, and San Rafael, and also attacked nearby coffee and cattle estates.

Records preserve fearful testimonies of Carlota’s leadership and ferocity. Witnesses reported that she attacked María de Regla, the daughter of an overseer, with a machete; one fieldworker, Matea Gangá, recalled Carlota boasting about the force of her blow. De Regla survived and later testified that as she lay wounded, the “Black woman” urged the other people to strike harder because she was still alive.

In 1844, during fighting at the San Rafael mill, Carlota was captured. She was executed in a public spectacle of terror, tied to horses driven in opposite directions until her body was torn apart. Fermina was shot and killed in March 1844 along with several other leaders. The ferocious repression that followed the Matanzas uprisings helped make 1844 infamous in Cuban memory as the “Year of the Lash,” when thousands of captive and free Black people were tortured, executed, banished, or disappeared in efforts to crush real and alleged plots.

Carlota’s uprising stands as a landmark in Cuba’s long heritage of resistance to slavery and colonial oppression. In the 1970s, the Cuban government invoked her legacy by naming its military mission to support Angolan independence and to confront South African apartheid forces “Operación Carlota,” linking her nineteenth-century rebellion in Matanzas to twentieth-century African liberation struggles.

Acknowledgement: This article was refined and fact-checked with the support of Perplexity AI (Tylis), which assisted in clarifying dates, names, and key events in the life and legacy of Carlota Lucumí and Operación Carlota. The featured image was created with AI assistance (Perplexity’s ‘Comet’ assistant), under the author’s direction, as a visual tribute linking Carlota Lucumí’s 1843 uprising in Matanzas, Cuba, to Operación Carlota and the battle of Cuito Cuanavale in Angola. The mural’s composition, symbolism and historical narrative were collaboratively shaped through descriptive prompting and AI‑generated imagery, honouring Carlota’s enduring legacy in Black Atlantic and African liberation struggles.

Sources:
http://www.afrocubaweb.com/carlota.htm#CARLOTA
http://eyeoftheday.org/herstory/2013/05/14/carlotta-and-the-slaves-revolt-of-1843-in-cuba/
http://www.afrocubaweb.com/carlota.htm#Carlota the rebel
http://thefemalesoldier.com/blog/carlota
https://www.africanamerica.org/topic/carlota-lukumi-yoruba-woman-fighter-for-liberation-massacred-in-matanzas-cuba-in-1844