On September 11, 1983, Cuban diplomat Felix Garcia, an official of the Cuban mission to the UN, was assassinated. Four pistol shots took his life when he stopped in front of a red light. He had come from commemorating, together with Chilean comrades, the resistance of President Salvador Allende to the coup d'état perpetrated 7 years before. Felix was a victim of the counter-revolutionary action of the terrorist group Omega 7, based in Florida. That is why, on a day like today, we pay tribute to all the foreign service officials who offered their lives to defend the Revolution from that trench.
Throughout these years of revolutionary diplomacy, U.S. imperialism and the Miami-based terrorist groups have tried to intimidate and turn their hatred and frustration against our officials abroad. There are several examples:
Enrique Valdés Morgado and Juan Mulens Quirós, diplomatic couriers who died on March 15, 1963, victims of a criminal enemy action against the plane in which they were traveling.
Sergio Pérez Castillo, an official of our mission in Canada, who died in 1972 as a result of the terrorist attack on the Cuban Commercial Office in Montreal.
Adriana Corcho Calleja and Efrén Monteagudo Rodríguez, officials of the MINREX, who died on April 22, 1976, while they were working at the Cuban embassy in Lisbon, Portugal, when a bomb planted in the mission by terrorist elements exploded.
Jesús Cejas Arias and Cresencio Galañera Hernández, officials who were acting as custodians in our mission, were kidnapped and disappeared on August 9, 1976 in Argentina.
It is an inspiration to learn about the example of the comrades who fell while serving diplomatic missions, many of them victims of terrorist and counterrevolutionary acts. Likewise, it means a commitment to prepare ourselves more and more, and like them, to defend the Revolution in future struggles for the continuity of the ideas and the social project that Fidel left us.
José Martí said "...to honor those who have done their duty is the most effective way (...) to encourage others to do so". Today, we honor the martyrs of the Cuban foreign service and in doing so, we swear to follow their example and eternal loyalty to our homeland.
Embacuba Liberia