Together with our entire nation, we commemorate the tragic and painful 49th anniversary of 6 October 1976, the date on which a Cubana de Aviación aircraft carrying 73 passengers and crew members—57 Cubans, 11 Guyanese and 5 Koreans, most of them young people under the age of 20—was destroyed in mid-flight in one of the most brutal and ruthless terrorist acts ever committed in this hemisphere. All passengers and crew members died, including the 22 members of the youth fencing team. All passengers and crew members died, including the 22 members of Cuba's youth fencing team that had won the Central American and Caribbean Championships, and 5 Guyanese students who were travelling to Cuba to study medicine.
The plane had taken off nine minutes earlier from Grantley Adams International Airport in Barbados and was heading for Norman Manley Airport in Jamaica, from where it was to travel on to Havana. A bomb in the passenger cabin, and almost immediately another in the toilet, caused the plane to crash into the sea. The bombs were made with C4, a plastic explosive manufactured by the United States Armed Forces.
As Cuba has demonstrated and denounced at the United Nations and its Security Council over the years, the perpetrators of this crime were Freddy Lugo and Hernán Ricardo, and the planners were Orlando Bosch Ávila and Luis Posada Carriles, with the financing, support and protection of the CIA and the FBI, who were aware of these plans.
All kinds of rigged trials and prison escapes took place, and these sinister characters, confessed terrorists, were never convicted and remained protected in the United States until their deaths.
The funeral for the few remains we managed to recover from our dead was one of the most crowded events and one of the greatest expressions of the pain, mourning, and indignation of our people, culminating in the farewell ceremony for the victims, where Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro delivered a powerful speech in which he expressed the courage of the Cuban people and their pain at this loss, along with their determination to fight and resist imperialist aggression.
The countries of the Caribbean Community and Cuba subsequently agreed to declare 6 October as the Day of the Struggle against Terrorism.
Eternal glory to our heroes and martyrs.
Until Victory Always, Homeland or Death, We Shall Overcome.
Association of Cuban Residents in Jamaica Antonio Maceo, 6 October 2025