Career
Ochoa was born from an old Oriente area family of farmers. Ever since its creation, he was part of Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement, and by March 1957 he had joined Castro's guerrilla army in the Sierra Maestra, fighting against dictator Fulgencio Batista. Ochoa played a major role in the fall of Santa Clara, becoming a close friend of Raúl Castro. Ochoa is said to have been the only survivor of the Camilo Cienfuegos loyalists sent on a doomed expedition against the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic in 1959 .
He also fought against the invaders in the Bay of Pigs Invasion. E. Bovo, the Curator of the Bay of Pigs Museum, claims that he was not a commander, rather that he served under 'El Gallego' José Ramón Fernández, a former officer under the Batista government.
In 1965 he became a member of the Communist Party of Cuba. Ochoa was a member of the Party's Central Committee for more than twenty years. He attended the War College in Matanzas, Cuba, and was later sent to the Frunze Academy in the Soviet Union.
Between 1967 and 1969, he trained rebels in the Congo. At some point, he took part in an expedition into Venezuela, one of his most secretive operations that ended in a major strategic loss at large human cost. In 1975, Ochoa was sent to fight in a critical campaign against the FNLA in Luanda, Angola, where he won the respect of both Soviet and Cuban commanders. In 1977 he was named commander of Cuban Expeditionary Forces in Ethiopia under the command of Soviet General Petrov. His successes against the Somalian army impressed the Soviet commanders in the field.
By 1980, Ochoa was widely considered a great internationalist, and was awarded the title "Hero of the Revolution" by Fidel Castro in 1984.
Read more about this topic: Arnaldo Ochoa
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)
“The problem, thus, is not whether or not women are to combine marriage and motherhood with work or career but how they are to do so—concomitantly in a two-role continuous pattern or sequentially in a pattern involving job or career discontinuities.”
—Jessie Bernard (20th century)
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)