Massacre of the Day

Ten years ago yesterday a little collateral damage in the left's war on reality tried to free themselves.

In the predawn darkness of July 13, 1994, 72 desperate Cubans-- old and young, male and female-- snuck aboard a decrepit but seaworthy tugboat in Havana harbor and set off for the U.S. and freedom. A few miles into the turbulent sea 30 year-old Maria Garcia felt someone tugging her sleeve. She looked down and it was her ten year-old son, Juan. "Mami look!" and he pointed behind them towards shore. "What's those lights?"

"Looks like a boat following us, son." She stuttered while stroking his hair."Calm down, mi hijo. Try to sleep. When you wake up we'll be with our cousins in a free country. Don't worry." In fact, Maria suspected the lights belonged to Castro patrol boats coming out to intercept them.

In seconds the patrol boats were alongside the tug and -- WHACK!!--with it's steel prow the closest patrol boat rammed the back of the tug. People were knocked around the deck like bowling pins. But it looked like an accident, right? Rough seas and all. Could happen to anyone, right?

"Hey WATCH IT!" a man yelled as he rubbed the lump on his forehead. "We have women and children aboard!" Women held up their squalling children to get the point across. If they'd only known.

This gave the gallant Castroites nice targets for their water cannon. WHOOSH! The water-cannon was zeroed and the trigger yanked. The water-blast shot into the tug, swept the deck and mowed the escapes down, slamming some against bulkheads, blowing others off the deck into the five foot waves.

"MI HIJO!-- MI HIJO!" (My son!) Maria screamed as the water-jet slammed into her, ripping half the clothes off her body and ripping Juan's arm from her grasp. "JUANITO! JUANITO!" She fumbled frantically around her, still blinded by the water-blast. Juan had gone spinning across the deck and now clung desperately to the tug's railing ten feet behind Maria as huge waves lapped his legs.

WHACK! Another of the steel patrol boats turned sharply and rammed the tug from the other side. Then-- CRACK! another from the front! WHACK! The one from behind slammed them again. The tug was surrounded. It was obvious now: the ramming was NO accident. And in Cuba you don't do something like this without strict orders from WAY above.

"We have women and children aboard!" The men yelled. "We'll turn around!--OKAY!!"

WHACK! the Castroites answered the plea by ramming them again. And this time the blow from the steel prow was followed by a sharp snapping sound from the wooden tug. In seconds the tug started coming apart and sinking. Muffled yells and cries came from below. Turns out, the women and children who scrambled into the hold for safety after the first whack had in fact scrambled into a watery tomb.

With the boat coming apart and the water rushing in around them, some got death grips on their children and managed to scramble or swim out. But not all. The roar from the water-cannons, and the racket from the boat engines din muffled most of the screams, but all around people were screaming, coughing, gagging and sinking. Fortunately, a Greek freighter bound for Havana had happened upon the scene of slaughter and sped in to the rescue. NOW one of the Castro boats threw out some life-preservers on ropes and started hauling people in, pretending they'd been doing it all along.

Maria Garcia lost her son, Juanito, her husband, brother, sister, two uncles and three cousins in the maritime massacre. In all, 43 people drowned, 11 of them children. Carlos Anaya was three when he drowned, Yisel Alvarez four. Helen Martinez was six months old.

"I Hate The Sea," is the title of a gut-gripping underground essay by Cuban dissident Rafael Contreras. It's about some young men Rafael met on the beach near Havana. They stared out to sea, cursed it and spit into it. "It incarcerates us," they fumed, "worse than jail bars."
(Thanks to Human Events Online.)