Havana, Cuba: Cubans today remember Fe del Valle, a victim of state terrorism against Cuba, in the park that bears her name in this capital, where the El Encanto store used to stand, Prensa Latina publishes.
On April 13, 1961, one of the largest businesses in the country and one of the first to be nationalized by the revolutionary government burned to the point of being consumed, also taking the life of one of its workers, as a result of an attack perpetrated under the auspices of the CIA.
Fe del Valle, who worked in the Children’s Department, died in the incident while she was trying to rescue the collection of a delegation from the Federation of Cuban Women that was kept there.
The author of the incident was part of the terrorist group Movement for the Recovery of the People, with proven links to the Miami station of the US secret services.
Waiting for his accomplices, he remained on a beach, where he was arrested by the militiamen, to whom he would confess his involvement in the events.
Cuban sources state that between October 1960 and April 1961 the CIA introduced 75 tons of explosives and 45 tons of weapons into Cuba, carried out 110 dynamite attacks, set off 200 bombs, derailed six trains and set fire to more than a hundred factories and cane fields.
The purpose of these actions was to sow panic and chaos in Cuban cities and prepare the conditions for an invasion that would take place at Playa Girón, in the western province of Matanzas, a few days later and would be defeated in less than 72 hours.
The script was applied other times against Cuba, even in dates as recent as 2021 and the current 2022 in other scenarios, now virtual, but with the same objectives and procedures.
The Cubans never rebuilt El Encanto, but turned it into a park that honors the memory of Fe del Valle and recalls the painful consequences of the US government’s dirty war against Cuba.