Cuban writer Zoé Valdés revealed in a roundtable discussion broadcast live on CiberCuba that after the sinking of the tugboat 13 de Marzo, Fidel Castro admitted on the evening news that he had given the order to sink the vessel.
Valdés provided this testimony during the discussion led by Tania Costa, which aired on July 13, 2026, coinciding with the 32nd anniversary of the crime in which between 37 and 41 people died, including 10 children, when four state tugboats attacked the vessel seven miles off the Malecón in Havana.
"Fidel Castro acknowledged that night on the eight o'clock news that he had given the order for the sinking," stated Valdés, who was in Cuba at the time with his young daughter and went out to the Malecón, where photographs and recordings of that moment were captured.
The writer described the impact that the public confession had on her immediate surroundings. "For the first time, I felt that in the same neighborhood, in the same building, the silence was one of shock, but at the same time knowing that it was yet another mass murder, but this time involving children."
Castro's statement that night contrasts with the official version that the regime would uphold for decades. On August 5, 1994, in a three-hour television appearance, Castro described the actions of the workers from the Regla boat as "a truly patriotic effort" and claimed that they had "acted on their own without consulting anyone" to prevent their "boat from being stolen." Days later, he personally awarded them medals.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights documented the intentional attack in its Report No. 47/96, but the crime remains unpunished. No one has been tried for it.
The writer Zoé Valdés, who will present her book "Cuba, and now freedom" on July 25 at 2:00 PM at the Hialeah Library, also denounced the international impunity that has shielded those responsible for over three decades. She recalled a lawsuit filed by relatives in Madrid that did not succeed during the time Judge Baltasar Garzón was handling similar cases against Pinochet, as well as another one filed from France against Fidel Castro that was also not accepted.
"The terrible thing is that for all these years, the world has conspired to silence this," he pointed out. "But how is it possible that the lawsuit is not accepted, just as the one filed from France against Fidel Castro was never accepted? I mean, it's inconceivable."
From Miami, Valdés mentioned a father who lost his baby of just a few months and his wife in the sinking. The political scientist Julio Shiling, who participated in the discussion alongside César Reynel Aguilera, also identified Jorge García Más as the man who lost 14 members of his family in that tragedy, who passed away in Miami on June 2, 2024, at the age of 79, after three decades of fighting for justice.
Shiling described the sinking as "tremendous barbarism" and framed it as a deliberate act of state terrorism. "If anyone wants to understand the necessity of state terrorism, of a dictatorship to maintain power, it is an act like this. This type of terror seeks to subdue the population."
The political scientist connected the crime to other acts of Castroism: the massacre at the Canímar River, the Battle of San Juan Hill, and the downing of the Brothers to the Rescue planes, arguing that all reflect a consistent logic of systematic terror.
For her part, Zoé Valdés concluded her intervention by stating, "For that reason, there can be no forgiveness, in my opinion."
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