BY JOAQUÍN ORAMAS
The following article is reprinted from the October 9, 1996, issue of the Cuban newsweekly Granma International. It was originally published under the headline, "Time doesn't erase the pain."

Twenty years of history go by in a flash. However, the inexorable passage of time hasn't been able to erase from the hearts and minds of Cubans the pain and indignation that shook our people's sensibility on learning of the terrible consequences of the sabotage of a Cubana airliner, perpetrated by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Minutes after taking off from the Barbados airport on October 6, 1976, a Cubana airliner with 73 people on board exploded in midair over the Caribbean Sea. All the passengers (57 Cubans, 11 North Koreans and five Guyanese) perished. Subsequent investigations confirmed that the explosion was the result of a sabotage perpetrated by counterrevolutionary elements who placed a bomb in the aircraft.

Venezuelans Freddy Lugo and Hernán Ricardo were charged with direct responsibility for the crime, and counterrevolutionary Cubans Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles were accused of masterminding the sabotage and providing the means for Lugo and Ricardo to carry it out.

The Venezuelans' confessions and supporting evidence stunned and angered millions of people. Photographs of more than one million people filling Revolution Square to express their repudiation, supported by condemnation of the horrific crime in every Cuban city and town, are tremendously moving.

How could some individuals' hatred for the efforts of an entire people to develop and defend its sovereignty lead to such abominable deeds? That was the question on the lips of many sensible people who, personal beliefs and political positions aside, found such methods totally unacceptable. Clearly, the explosion wasn't the result of some desperate act, but part of a plan and method initiated immediately following the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. Counterrevolutionary bands organized by the CIA and sponsored by the U.S. government, after failing in their attempts to instigate fratricidal warfare on the island, tried to unleash terror on Cuba. Prior to the explosion, Cuban counterrevolutionary elements had carried out dozens of attacks on Cuban offices and installations as well as entities related to Cuba.

Shortly after mounting attacks on the Cuban embassy and the Air Panama offices in Colombia, CORU, a CIA organization of Cuban counterrevolutionaries, claimed responsibility for those and other acts of aggression and stated: "Very soon, we're going to attack aircraft in flight."

Echoing the Cuban government's accusations against those responsible for the crime, in October 1976 the Montreal daily La Presse recalled that Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles had both been trained by the CIA to assassinate Cuban leaders. It also revealed that they were linked to the murder of Orlando Letelier, former foreign minister of Chile's Popular Unity government.

Cuba revealed the facts surrounding the Barbados sabotage at the 5th Regional Navigation Conference, held in Lima in October 1976, and U.S. pressure was unable to deter the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) from condemning it at its general assembly. The ICAO resolution exhorted any state with the means to do so to pursue and punish with the utmost severity those criminals who carried out this act, so that the sanction would correspond to the magnitude of the crime and constitute a deterrent to future sabotage.

What did the U.S. government do? It attempted to silence the international repercussions provoked by the sabotage. Raúl Roa, Cuba's foreign minister, made this clear during a conference held in Trinidad and Tobago to discuss the steps to be taken in relation to the investigation and evidence that had come to light concerning the Barbados sabotage. The conference was attended by the host country, Cuba, Barbados, Guyana and Venezuela.

Today Orlando Bosch flaunts his impunity on the streets of Miami, protected by the U.S. authorities. Posada Carriles escaped from prison, with the aid of Venezuelan elements and the CIA, to work subsequently as one of the instigators of the U.S. dirty war against the Sandinista government. He was also linked with the Salvadoran death squads, always at the service of the CIA.

During these 20 years, the U.S. government and even the ICAO have maintained a wall of silence over the criminal sabotage of the Cuban passenger flight transporting young athletes, students and workers. They did not even recall it during the recent controversy over the downing of the two light aircraft piloted by counterrevolutionary elements that violated Cuban airspace.

It didn't suit their purposes to talk about the Barbados sabotage, nor about the thousands of attacks on Cubans, Cuban properties and friends of Cuba.

Nevertheless, time has not erased the memory of the profound pain that shook the Cuban people when that event occurred, nor has it diminished one iota the validity of what Fidel said to the over one million Cubans who filled Revolution Square to honor the martyrs of that terrible explosion: `When an energetic and virile people weep, injustice trembles."  
 
 
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