Cuba commemorates this Wednesday, the Day of the Victims of State Terrorism. It pays tribute to the more than 3,400 Cuban citizens who have died due to United States aggression.
Havana, Cuba.- The date commemorates the mid-flight explosion of a Cubana de Aviación aircraft on October 6, 1976. The attack on the plane with 73 people on board was orchestrated by notorious terrorists Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch at the service of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Forty-five years have passed since that horrendous act.
The event, known as the Crime of Barbados, took the lives of the 24 members of the youth fencing team, who were returning to their country after successfully competing in the IV Central American and Caribbean Championship of that sport, held in Venezuela. A total of 57 Cubans, 11 Guyanese, and five Koreans died.
That attack provoked international repudiation, especially in Cuba, where millions of people united in grief, with an energetic and virile demand for justice.
However, this was not the only act of State terrorism suffered by this Caribbean nation, a victim of those actions orchestrated by the United States for decades.
According to the document Demand of the Cuban people to the U.S. government for economic damages, Washington's covert operations began in 1959. Since then, thousands of acts of sabotage have been organized, executed, and financed.
These include economic, military, biological, psychological, diplomatic, media, and espionage aggressions and assassination attempts against leaders, in addition to the systematic tightening of the sixty-year-old blockade of that country, even amid the Covid-19 pandemic, which reinforces its genocidal character.
Among examples of that policy are the arson attacks on the El Encanto store on April 13, 1961, in which Fe del Valle lost his life, and the explosion of a bomb in the Copacabana Hotel, where the young Italian tourist Fabio Di Celmo died.
At the dawn of the Revolution, there was the sabotage of the French steamship La Coubre, which left 101 dead, among them six sailors from France and 400 people injured or disabled for life.
According to press reports, at least 3,478 people died, and 2,099 were affected due to Washington's violent plans against the island. (RHC)
