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Homeland- The blood of the workers and soldiers who unloaded the French steamer La Coubre is still fresh, the world heard for the first time the oath of Homeland or Death! Proclaimed by Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz.
He said it the day after the terrible sabotage of March 4, 1960, at the burial of the hundred dead left by the two explosions on the ship, caused by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to prevent Cuba from taking over. shipment of weapons and ammunition to defend themselves.
Subversion actions against Cuba revealed
Around 3:10 pm that Friday, the roar shook Havana and a black mushroom rose over the west side of the port, where 31 tons of grenades and 44 tons of ammunition were landed.
It was a necessary burden for the defense of the process of social change started on the 1st. January 1959, threatened since birth by the US Government.
The first explosion left the cellars without a roof and destroyed the stern of La Coubre, causing many deaths and injuries. Minutes later, a second explosion claimed new victims among those who came to the rescue, and the disastrous balance increased to more than a hundred dead and 400 injured, not counting the dozens of women who were left widows and more than 80 children without parents.
The Belgian factory, supplier of the arms, received strong coercion from the White House to avoid the sale and to breach the signed contracts.
Subversion actions against Cuba revealed
The cargo had departed from Brussels, and had previously loaded in Hamburg, Bremen and Antwerp 5,216 packages of explosives, including 525 boxes of grenades and 938 boxes of ammunition. Its arrival in Havana was scheduled for March 2, and the return to Europe on April 7, with 340 tons of sugar that would be shipped in the capital’s own port.
Thorough investigations, such as that of the writer José Luis Méndez Méndez, directly link the CIA with the terrorist act.
On March 9, just five days after the fact, the constitutive meeting of the WH 4 group was held, led by CIA Colonel JC King, where the execution of the Covert Operations Plan was structured, which would be signed by the president. Dwight D. Eisenhower, March 17.
Bonifacio Byrne 160 years after his birth and 122 years after his poem “My Flag”
The aforementioned colonel was in contact, in Miami, with the counterrevolutionary leader Rolando Masferrer Rojas, who learned from an American, a mining engineer, the arrival of other ships with weapons in Cuba, and the ports where they would disembark. This interview occurred between February 28 and March 10, 1960.
It is striking that documents on this fact have not been declassified by the State Department, which compiled its communications with the United States Embassy in Havana in that period, and that there is a curious traffic gap between February 18 and March 12, 1960. The US authorities have hidden their knowledge of the heinous act for decades.
To the consternation of the bloody sabotage came the firm resolution of the people to defend the Revolution, at the cost already being charged by its most bitter enemies.
Fidel’s sentence was not just a slogan then. Cuba standing, 61 years later, is the greatest testimony of the full validity that today confirms that cry: Either the homeland, or death.
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A regrettable act of terror:
The sabote steamed La Coubre
Fragment of speech at the funeral service of the victims of the explosion of the ship “La Coubre”
The vapor La Coubre was a boat originally French who was the object of a terrorist act in the port of Havana the March 4 of 1960 when transporting weapons and ammunition.
Two explosions took place that caused about a hundred deaths and four hundred wounded and injured. The Cuban authorities denounced it as a terrorist act of the CIA to prevent the nascent Revolution from strengthening militarily.
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Sabotage
Numerous people came to the place to give their help, and died in the second explosion.
The March 4 of 1960 It dawned wintry and peaceful. Port workers were engaged in unloading the French ship. La Coubre, who had arrived at the Havana port with the weapons necessary for the defense of the country. In its warehouses it brought 31 tons of grenades and 44 tons of ammunition.
Around 3:10 p.m. m., an explosion shook the earth. Power lines shook and a black-edged mushroom rose above the dock. Romualdo Díaz, a stevedore on the ship, was thrown into the air. The warehouses had no roof and La Coubre’s stern was smashed.
Soldiers of the Rebel Army, from Revolutionary National Police, firefighters and people in general, came to help. The rescue of the wounded and the corpses began. A second explosion claimed new victims among those who, defying the danger, had made that gesture of human solidarity.
Tribute to Cuban heroes 126 years after the cry “Viva Cuba Libre”
The end result, a hundred dead, including 34 missing, around 400 wounded or injured – dozens of them disabled for life – and as a consequence, dozens of widows and more than 80 orphans.
That fact, extraordinary in itself, acquired the following day a special relevance for the history of Cuba.
Faced with the attempt to terrorize the Cuban people so that they would desist from the hopeful path they have just undertaken, the response expressed by the commander in chief Fidel Castro Ruz at the funeral of the victims was to resist and fight until the last drop of blood, which was summarized from that day and forever in the cry of Homeland or Death! From different parts of the city they came quickly Che and other revolutionary leaders.
According to the results of the investigations, all the evidence points to the Central Intelligence Agency of U.S linked to this terrorist act.
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