From staff and wire reports. CNN, July 15, 2000. Web posted at: 6:54 p.m. EDT (2254 GMT)
OFF HAVANA, Florida Straits (CNN) -- A flotilla carrying about 60 Cuban-Americans anchored about 12 miles off the Cuban coast Saturday for a ceremony in honor of at least 32 Cubans who drowned trying to flee the communist nation in 1994.
The Cuban-Americans -- members of the Democracy Movement, a Miami-based anti-Castro exile group -- launched a wreath, held a prayer service and sang the Cuban national anthem in what has become an annual event to remember the Cubans who, according to the U.S. Coast Guard, died after a Cuban
gunboat rammed their tug boat.
"Our purpose here is not a confrontational one," said Ramon Saul Sanchez, the group's president. "We are here to remember the Cubans who died on the tugboat 13 de Marzo and Elian Gonzalez."
The Cuban government has said the sinking was accidental. Cuban patrol boats, trying to stop the stolen government tug from leaving Cuban waters, used water cannon, which caused it to sink.
The U.S. Coast Guard said 32 people aboard the tugboat drowned and 31 people were rescued. The Democracy Movement put the number of dead at 41.
Prayers and song
The Coast Guard on Saturday monitored the progress of the flotilla, which set out from Key West, Florida, shortly before midnight the day before, covering 80 miles under moonlit skies.
The boats gathered just outside Cuban waters after sunrise, and complied with a Coast Guard request not to proceed further. Sanchez said the flotilla never intended to enter Cuban territorial waters.
From the flotilla's vantage point, Havana's skyline was visible through an atmospheric haze, the first time participant Anna Bonnin had seen the city since leaving Cuba 38 years ago.
"I can't believe it because I'm so close, and I can't touch it," Bonnin said. "And that's very painful to me."
"Cuba is a nation divided by its government," said Sanchez. "Almost 20 percent of the population lives in exile. Almost every family unit has been stricken by that division, and it is time for that to end and the barriers that divide the Cubans to be brought down."
They also flashed mirrors toward Cuba's coast, where they hoped Cuban dissidents would return the signal in a show of solidarity. In response, at least one signal was returned from atop a building in nearby Havana.
'Good will come out of this'
"I think a lot of good will come out of this, and now with what happened with Elian it will only strengthen the message we are trying to portray," said Marta Evora, 53, of Miami.
Six-year-old Elian Gonzalez was rescued by recreational fishermen off Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, on November 25, 1999, one of three survivors of a Cuban shipwreck in which his mother drowned.
Elian's Cuban father escorted him home last month after his anti-Castro relatives in Miami lost an intense U.S. court battle over immigration and custody issues.
CNN Correspondent Mark Potter and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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