The city of Miami will honor victims of the “13 de Marzo" tugboat massacre, which left 41 Cubans, including 12 children, dead after Cuban authorities attacked and sunk the vessel in the waters off the Cuban coast in the early morning hours of July 13, 1994.
A monument will be unveiled 3 p.m. Wednesday at the Plaza de la Cubanidad, 1704 W. Flagler Street, Miami, 33138.
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, Miami District 3 Commissioner Joe Carollo, along with the city of Miami Department of Parks and Recreation officials, will host the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
“We will commemorate this important moment for our community and pay tribute to the enduring spirit of those who fought for liberty,” said Carollo in a statement on Tuesday.
Following an investigation, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights found the Cuban government violated the rights of those 41 people killed and the 31 people who survived.
“The Cuban State was seriously at fault for having failed to establish the identity of those responsible and punishing them so that such terrible events might never occur again,” the commission ruled in a 1996 investigative report.
The massacre took place July 13, 1994, at about 3 a.m., when 72 Cubans attempted to leave the island for the United States from the port of Havana in an old tugboat named 13 de Marzo.
Four Cuban government boats, equipped with water hoses, attacked those on the tugboat just seven miles off the Cuban coast. Those on the tugboat were sprayed with pressurized water from the Cuban government boats.
