The crime in Barbados is one of the bloodiest and most painful acts our country has ever experienced. The mid-flight destruction of a Cuban plane claimed the lives of all 73 people on board. That October 6, 1976, the history of Cuba was in mourning.
On that flight, 455, there were 24 members of the national youth fencing team, who were returning home after having won all the gold medals in the Central American and Caribbean Championships, some of them were not even 20 years old.
Luis Posada Carriles and all his gang celebrated a success in their endless list of misdeeds against the Island, thinking at that time that we would become more vulnerable.
The families, like the people mourned a shared loss, our historical leader, Fidel Castro Ruz, in a political event in Bridgetwon, Barbados, on August 1, 1998, reminded that when it comes to defeats this country, it is done stronger with them:
?There is a punishment for criminals greater than any other, and it is when the crime that they thought to turn into a weapon to discourage the people, to frighten the people, becomes energy for the people, strength for the people, and the multiplication of the value of a people. There is a punishment to which they will never resign themselves: the defeats of their ideas.
Today, 44 years after that event, on the Day of the Victims of State Terrorism, I reply as our Fidel did:
?Our brothers who died in Barbados are no longer martyrs; they are symbols in the fight against terrorism, they stand today like giants in that historic battle to eradicate terrorism from the face of the earth?.
