Agustin Blazquez. with the collaboration of Jaums Sutton.
Friday, July 13, 2001.
Today is the seventh anniversary of one more unpunished crime by the Castro
regime. It was July 13, 1994, and again I say we must not forget the infamous
case of the "13 de Marzo" tugboat, in which 72 Cuban men, women and
children were trying to escape for the U.S.
In this attack, 42 lost their lives, including 12 children one of
them just 6 months old. The U.S. media were silent when it happened and since
then have hardly mentioned it.
According to the testimony of survivors and Tim Bowers book "Cuba:
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea," the passengers attempted to
surrender, and many of them held their children up in the air. But Fidel Castros
Coast Guard was relentless in its savage attack and began to pummel the helpless
passengers with water cannons.
Bowers book recounts the testimony that water cannons were used to "spray
children from the arms of their mothers into the ocean waters." Other
children were simply swept off the deck into the sea. Desperate to protect the
children, the women carried the remaining children down into the boats
hold.
Maria Victoria Garcia, a survivor of the massacre - who lost her husband and
10-year old son, her brother, three uncles and two cousins - said: "We
struggled to stay above water by clinging to a floating body. I held on to my
son because I saw he was weakening and he didnt have the strength to go
on. But people fell on me and my son slipped from my grasp." Bowers
book explains, "The young boy could not fight the huge waves created by the
government vessels and his mother was forced to watch helplessly as her baby
drowned just five feet away."
The survivors relate how "The tugboat filled with water and cracked in
two by renewed ramming." Another survivor relayed that she "saw how
they (the fire hoses) were filling the hold with water. Once the boat was
sinking, I didnt see anybody come out (of the hold)."
Cubas Coast Guard, following Castros orders, executed this
criminal massacre, which to this day remains unpunished. Those responsible for
this barbaric act received congratulations and promotions from Castros
regime. And Castro himself travels the world with proud impunity. Unlike
Milosevic, he will not face justice when he is no longer in charge because he
will be in charge until he dies.
This was not the first time Cuban children have suffered and paid with their
lives at the whim of the Castro regime.
Before 1959 Cubans did not leave their country; once Cuba became Castros,
its history is riddled with massive and daring escapes. There are enough
thrilling and dramatic stories to fill entire libraries and entire graveyards.
"I had never faced death before nor saw it on other peoples
faces. I'll never forget those children. Or the look on their mothers
faces," said Eduardo Serrera in Helga Silvas book "The Children
of Mariel."
Serrera recalls the traumatizing event he experienced while leaving via the
port of Mariel, Cuba in 1980. He was crammed aboard a 24-foot shrimp boat along
with 36 men, women and children. He was leaving with his mother, but Castros
guards forced them to travel apart. He lost track of her.
"By the third day water started coming into the boat. We used
everything at hand buckets, containers to bail out."
Fortunately, around noon the U.S. Coast Guard spotted the boat. Serrera recalls,
"The sailors had to make a human chain to physically lift us from our
sinking boat."
Aboard the cutter on their way to the U.S., they encountered other Cubans in
distress in the Florida Straits. But not everybody could be saved because the
waves prevented the Coast Guard cutter from getting close enough to rescue them.
A boat was drifting away and falling apart, and Serrera cannot forget the
screams for help.
"It was awful." When the women aboard realized that they could not
be rescued, they "picked up their children and threw them over the railings
over to our side. Eight or nine children were flung in the air. I caught one, a
baby about nine months old so cold his skin was blue. And his eyes
were open wide in terror.
"The women on the boat looked so desperate when their boat began to
drift away. They wailed in pain. I could hear their voices trail off in the
darkness begging us to look after their children."
According to Helga Silvas book, of the more than 125,000 refugees who
came to the U.S. during the 1980 Mariel boatlift, there were 13,000 to 18,000
minors.
However, the biggest exodus of unaccompanied children ever recorded in the
Western Hemisphere which is largely unknown to the American people,
thanks to the U.S. media took place in Cuba from Dec. 26, 1960 through
Oct. 22, 1962. During that period, 14,048 children between the ages of 6 and 18
years left Cuba for the U.S. in what was later called "Operation Peter Pan."
This massive exodus was triggered by the increasing revelation of Castros
turn to communism. This awakened fears in Cuban parents that they were about to
lose the right to make decisions about raising their children and their
education as happened in the Soviet Union, China and other communist regimes.
This fear was well founded. On May 1, 1960, Castro ordered the creation of
communist indoctrination schools, and private schools were under increasing
pressure from the regime to change to Marxist textbooks to indoctrinate the
children. Many private schools closed rather than be taken over by Castros
regime. Many parents kept their children home instead of sending them to public
schools, where communist indoctrination had already begun. The future didnt
look promising for families under Castro in 1960, just as today.
Cuba is a country where parents have taken extraordinary risks for decades
to get their children out. This desperate exodus has Castros fingerprints
all over it. He often uses a crisis to divert attention from his failing
revolution, as he masterminded the Elian Gonzalez case.
These stories of daring escapes from Castros Cuba are just a few
grains of salt on the vast sea of the tragedies taking place for the last 42
years in the Florida Straits. The fact that Cubans have been risking their lives
and would rather die at sea is very eloquent testimony, indeed.
When taking a vacation cruise traveling though the Florida Straits, just
consider for a minute the thousands of lives that have been needlessly lost at
sea and the last minute human struggle for survival of men, women and children
before they drown or are eaten by sharks - about 84,800. All of it because of
the ambition for power of one man shielded behind a failed and inhumane
political system and very much protected by the silence of the U.S. media.
Let us remember today all the children who died along with their parents
seeking freedom. Is it moral to look the other way in order to visit Cuba as
tourists? Or for the sake of making some dubious business deals, giving up
principles and ideals on behalf of a man and the dehumanized political system he
created to violate the human rights of the citizens of his nation?
© 2001 ABIP
Agustin Blazquez is producer-director of the documentaries "Covering
Cuba," "Covering Cuba 2: The New Generation" and the upcoming "Covering
Cuba 3." E-mail: ABIP@olg.com
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