Cubana Air Disaster victims remembered 33 years later

Oct 07, 2009 News

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Martin Carter poetic phrase ‘death must not find us thinking that we die’ in the revolutionary Death of a Comrade, reverberated yesterday during reflections on the 33rd  Cubana aircraft disaster.
Yesterday through a simple but significant wreath laying ceremony in the Cuban Embassy compound High Street, Kingston, took time out to honour the memories of the 73 people, among them eleven Guyanese who died on October 6, 1976.

In unison voice Prime Minister Samuel Hinds, Venezuelan ambassador Dario Morandy, Cuba’s ambassador Raul Gortazar- Merrero and Guyana Cuba Friendship Association President Samuel Abdool, dubbed the bombing of the Cubana aircraft “one of the worst terrorist acts to date in the western hemisphere.”
Performing the duties of President, Prime Minister Hinds said that Guyana must not forget that the infamous, cowardly and terrorist attack snuffed out the lives of Guyanese, six of whom were Guyana’s best scholars.
Joining the people in the commemorative event, the Prime Miniser recommitted Government’s continued support and solidarity to Cuba and its people and pledged to further strengthen the shared friendship and cooperation ties enjoyed by the two countries.
He said the dastardly act aimed at the Cuban people, magnified the presence of terrorism in the Latin American and Caribbean region. He further noted that it took three decades for the international community to recognize the collective effort needed to counter terrorism in all its forms.
Reiterating efforts in this fight, PM Hinds said his Government has joined calls for the perpetrators of the bombing to be brought to justice. Further, he encouraged all gathered to pay tribute to the resilient spirit of the Cuban people as they continuously seek to rise above the external challenges to their development and made particular reference to “those brought about by the trade and economic embargo.”
Cuban Ambassador, Raul Gortazar-Merrero, thanking Guyana for its solidarity praise to Guyana for Guyana’s solidarity, made reference to the continued noble and selfless contribution of his country and peoples to the development of Guyana.

He said that everything that Cuba is doing for Guyana is considered by all Cubans “as a sacred duty, and the exercise of an internationalist vocation that we deeply recorded in our conscience.”
Ambassador Gortazar- Merrero said too that his country’s identification with the people’s of Guyana is even more significant with the Cuban and Guyanese blood joined forever on October 6, 1976 as a uniting factor for both countries.
“Thirty-three years ago, at the Cuban Revolution Square, the Cuban people laid off coffins carrying small pieces of human remains and personal clothing,” the ambassador said.
More than a million people, amidst tears, dismissed that day in a symbolic way to their brethren, whose bodies were lying at the bottom of the ocean.
He chided the US Government’s double standards. He added that  Hernan Ricardo and Freddy Lugo, two Venezuelan mercenaries, placed the bomb on the airplane during a journey from Trinidad Tobago to Barbados.
When they returned to Trinidad they were arrested and immediately confessed to their participation in the bombing.
Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, intellectual perpetrators of terrorist crime, linked to the CIA from 1960, were arrested and subjected to a plagued tortuous process of irregularities in the midst of colossal pressures.
General Elio Garcia Barrios, President of the court, sentenced both terrorists to a prison term of several years. The Miami terrorist mafia avenged with the shooting death of one of his children in 1983.
The Cuban ambassador said Posada was rescued by the Cuban American National Foundation which he said sent $50,000 from Panama to finance the leak; and they escaped on August 18, 1985.
In a matter of hours they appeared in El Salvador. There they were visited just after arriving by leaders of the Cuban American National Foundation.
“Today the confessed murderer, Luis Posada Carriles walks freely on the streets of Miami and in several interviews he presented cynicism publicly.”
He said that on days like October 6 each year,his government has the right to ask what measures will be taken with Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch.
He declared that 33 years following the Barbados terrorist act “we can ensure that injustice continues trembling for the energetic and virile people who cried that day of indignation, today cries of emotion, hope and pride to remember them.”  Mayor Hamilton Green was amongst the other presenters at the anniversary observance.
Cubana Flight 455 was a Cabaña flight from Barbados to Jamaica that was brought down by a terrorist attack on October 6, 1976. All 73 people on board the Douglas DC-8 aircraft were killed in what was then the most deadly terrorist airline attack in the Western hemisphere.
Two time bombs were used, variously described as dynamite or C-4. Evidence implicated several CIA-linked anti-Castro Cuban exiles and members of the Venezuelan secret police DISIP.
Political complications quickly arose when Cuba accused the US Government of being an accomplice to the attack.
The eleven Guyanese passengers included 18 and 19-year-old medical students, and Margaret Bradshaw, the wife of Guyanese diplomat then serving in Cuba.

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