40th Anniversary of The Cubana Tragedy Commemoration: The Journey from Terror to Love and Life
The 'Cuban 5' [Image Credit:Web]
As we approach the 40th anniversary of the Cubana tragedy of 6th October 1976, let us embark upon a reflection on what we call “The Journey From Terror To Love And Life”. And let us begin by reminding ourselves of some of the more recent acts of “Terror” that have so scarred our world:-
· In the five month period between April and September 1997, the Caribbean nation of Cuba was subjected to a heartless and intense terroristic campaign of bombing that targeted the island’s tourism industry, the Chiba, Capri, Nacional, Triton, Miramar and Copacabana hotels were all attacked with explosives, and an Italian tourist by the name of Fabio Di Celmo was killed!
· Approximately one year later, on 12th September 1998, a team from the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) swooped down on five Cuban men who were resident in the American City of Miami, arrested them, and charged them with espionage and other related charges. The men who subsequently came to be known as “the Cuban Five” were in Miami for the express purpose of investigating the several anti-Cuba terrorist organizations based in that city, and forestalling any further terrorist attacks on Cuba. The “Cuban Five” were put on trial in Miami, and were convicted and sentenced to periods of imprisonment ranging from 15 years to life!
· Almost exactly three years later, on 11th September 2001, a group of terrorists attacked the World Trade Centre in New York City and the Pentagon building in Washington D.C., by flying three civilian airlines full of passengers into these structures. These events precipitated the declaration of a so-called “War Against Terror” by the President of the USA, and led to the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan for the purpose of waging war, and of Pakistan, for the purpose of assassinating the alleged mastermind of 9/11, Osama bin Laden!
Many persons will readily recognise that these terrorism based events are all inter-related, and are at the very centre of the great political and human rights issues that the world is grappling with today. But what will escape most analysts and observers is that underpinning all of these developments is a tragic precedent setting event that occurred right here in Barbados some forty years ago, in the year 1976 to be precise.
A full quarter of a century before the perpetrators of 9/11 conceived of the evil idea of using an in-flight civilian airliner as an instrument of terror, a cabal of anti-Cuba terrorists with links to the USA’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) demonstrated the devilish horror of such a concept in the skies over Barbados!
It was on the 6th day of October 1976 that, within minutes of a Cuban civilian airliner taking off from our national Airport in Barbados, a bomb that had been planted in the cabin of the aircraft while it was parked on the tarmac in Barbados, exploded! As had been planned, the violent explosion caused the Cubana airplane to plunge into the waters of the Caribbean sea, in close proximity to the west coast of Barbados, and every single one of the 73 Cubans, Guyanese and North Koreans on board the aircraft perished in this precedent setting act of terrorism!
In the aftermath of the downing of the Cubana airline, the people of Barbados were faced with the horrendous task of retrieving the mangled, dismembered bodies of the victims, mostly young Cuban athletes and Guyanese medical students from the Caribbean Sea, and of coming to terms with the shock and trauma that this unprecedented act of butchery generated in our small 166 square mile nation.
One week later on 14th October 1976- the government of Barbados appointed a Commission of Enquiry, under the chairmanship of High Court judge Denys Williams, to investigate the causes of this tragic event. And in its report issued some four months later, the Commission noted that substantial evidence existed to identify Ricardo Lozano and Freddie Lugo, two Venezuelan passengers who had joined the Cubana flight in Trinidad and who had disembarked when the plane landed in Barbados as the two functionaries who had been responsible for planting the bomb on the plane.
Furthermore, in evidence before the Commission, the representative of the Cuban government, Senior Martinez, explained that the Cuban government’s own investigation had determined that Lozano and Lugo were subordinates of anti-Cuban, CIA supported terrorist organisations known as CORU and ICICA and run by arch-terrorists Orlando Boschand Luis Posada Carriles, two veteran terrorists with an implacable hatred of the revolutionary, Fidel Castro led, regime of Cuba.
Needless-to-say, the Cubana mass murder in Barbados shocked the entire Cuban nation and brought about a national realization that the campaign of terrorism that had been launched as far back as the year 1960 against the Cuban Revolution by the Cuban-American mafia and their United States backers, had now reached a new level of barbarity, and that bolder measures would have to be taken in the future to foil the US based terrorists.
Although they were arrested in Venezuela, Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles were never held accountable for their role in the Cubana tragedy! Indeed, Carriles escaped justice altogether when he escaped from his Venezuelan prison, while Bosch benefited from a protracted eleven year trial marred by a contamination of the evidence against him, and was ultimately acquitted. Furthermore, in the years after 1976, both of these men of violence were permitted to reside in the USA, and were given comfort, succor and support by the several Cuban-American counter-revolutionary terrorist organizations stationed in the city of Miami.
Indeed, Carriles and Bosch became so emboldened by their US based support, that in the mid 1990’s Bosch embarked upon a new conspiracy to assassinate Fidel Castro, while Carilles masterminded a terrorist campaign to blow up hotels in Cuba. And so, as we learnt earlier, counter-revolutionary terrorists found their way from Miami to Cuba and set off explosions at no less than six Cuban hotels in the year 1997!
In fact, so brazen and arrogant had the counter-revolutionary forces become, that the Miami Herald newspaper actually openly reported that Carriles was at the heart of these bombing operations, while Carriles himself, in a 1998 New York Times interview, publicly admitted to having organized the bombing campaign.
It was this intensification of terrorist attack on Cuba by Luis Posada Carriles ,the butcher of 1976 that led five Cuban patriots to station themselves in Miami in order to infiltrate the various terrorist organisations, and to collect advance intelligence that could be used to forestall pending attacks on their homeland!
But who exactly are these heroes that the world has come to know as the ‘Cuban Five’? Well, their names are Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo, Ramon Labanino Salazar, Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez, Fernando Gonzalez Llort and Rene Gonzalez Sehweret. And although we refer to them as the ‘Cuban Five’, two of them are actually US citizens, having been born in the United States to Cuban parents. These five sons of Cuba are all highly educated men of humanity, civility and decency. They are all dedicated family men, husbands, and in three cases, fathers, and pursue occupations ranging from cartoonist, to economist, pilot, engineer and poet.
Needless to say, the presence and activities of the Cuban Five in Miami posed absolutely no threat to the government and peoples of the USA. Their sole purpose was to discover and foil pending unlawful terrorist attacks against Cuba!
Indeed, so open and well-meaning were the Cuban authorities, that in June 1998 Cuba’s Ministry of Home Affairs actually provided the FBI with dossiers of information on the acts of violence being planned in Miami, together with audio and videotapes which explicitly identified the malefactors. Ironically, it was this honest and constructive overture that the American authorities pounced upon and used as a springboard to launch arrests, not against the Miami based terrorists, but against the five Cuban patriots who had helped to ferret out the information.
And so, as noted above, on 12th September 1998, the “Five” were arrested in Miami, subjected to a biased and deeply flawed political trial, and sentenced to unjust and inordinately long prison terms!
Now, as far as we in the progressive Movement of Barbados were concerned, we Barbadians more than any other people, had a duty to help to get the Cuban Five released, simply because, in a very real sense, the journey of these five Cuban patriots to their imprisonment in the USA began right here in Barbados with Luis Posada Carriles, and the Cubana tragedy way back in 1976!
Indeed, we felt that the best way we could help to bring about their freedom was by raising our voices in condemnation of this egregious injustice, and by lobbying our government and fellow citizens to get involved in the international campaign to free the Five. And this is precisely what we did!
A group of progressive Barbadians came together and committed themselves to a long term campaign of activism. That group included such well known Barbadian "freedom fighters" as Bobby Clarke, Anthony "Gabby" Carter, David Denny, Trevor Prescod, Sally Comissiong, Hamilton Lashley, Tennyson Joseph, Edmund Douglas, John Howell, Thelma Gill Barnett, Wayne "Onkphra" Wells, Rodney Worrell, Edson Crawford and David Comissiong. We became one small component of a massive world-wide Movement for justice for the Cuban Five. And great was our celebration when, in December 2014 the last three of the incarcerated members of the "Cuban Five" walked out of their US jails for the final time and made their way home to Cuba!
But even as we still continue to bask in the warm after-glow of that remarkable "people's victory", it still behooves us as a nation to reflect deeply and soberly on the meaning of the Cubana tragedy and our response to it.
Put simply, October 6th, 1976 was our 9/11, just as it was Cuba’s 9/11! The citizens of the USA are not unique in having experienced the shock of a 9/11 type episode of terror. We Barbadians and Cubans had our own version of 9/11 way back in 1976! We Barbadians and Cubans therefore know something about terrorism and the pain and trauma that it causes.
But, to our everlasting credit, when we experienced our 9/11 , our primary instincts were to pursue a course of the due process of law to arrest the suspects and to subject them to a legal trial. It should be noted that in 1976, both Barbadian and Cuban Police and intelligence personnel travelled to the locations in which the culprits were being held in Trinidad (Lozano and Lugo) and Venezuela (Carriles and Bosch), not for the purpose of assassinating them, or attempting to assassinate them, but for the purpose of ensuring that a proper legal process was put in place!
This is how civilized nations, governments and people behave! They do not trespass into a foreign country and simply put a bullet through a suspect’s head without the benefit of any process of trial and conviction! They do not succumb to the ‘law of the jungle’ nor to the evil philosophy that ‘might makes right’. Rather, they try to respect and observe the rule of law even in relation to those who have no regard for the law, because that is the only way to ensure that justice is done and that civilisation is preserved!
Almost thirty years after the tragic events of 6th October 1976, Mr. Ricardo Alarcon, the President of Cuba's National Assembly of People's Power, paid the ultimate compliment to the governments and people of Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago when he publicly stated that "Barbados and Trinidad, it must be said, acted with great dignity and honour", and acknowledged the "meticulous, rigorous, serious investigation done by people who respect themselves, people from countries that are small but which know how to respect their sovereignty."
It should be clear to us all that, as small as our country is, we have something of importance to contribute to the world, and that we must therefore take an interest in all of the great and urgent international human rights issues of our era and raise our voices to high heaven in defense of justice, dignity and humanity!
In this 40th anniversary year of the horrific Cubana tragedy, let us therefore all resolve to be active participants in the “Journey From Terror To Love And Life”!
David A. Comissiong
President
Clement Payne Movement
