A commemorative bench was installed on Saturday at the seawall of the Ermita de la Caridad National Sanctuary in Miami, as a new permanent memorial for the 37 victims of the sinking of the tugboat "13 de Marzo" and for all Cubans who have lost their lives in the Florida Straits.
The event, organized by the Foundation for Pan-American Democracy, Patria de Martí, and The CubanAmerican Voice, brought together members of the Cuban community in exile in a solemn ceremony that combined historical remembrance, religious symbolism, and community acts in front of Biscayne Bay.
The journalist José Luis Ramos from Radio Martí read aloud the names and ages of each of the 37 victims —including 10 children— and asked for a moment of silence for all the Cubans who lost their lives at sea. Omar Vento provided a historical overview of the event based on Jorge García's book about the sinking, detailing the timeline from planning to the attack.
The communicator Ninoska Pérez Castellón recounted how the first news of the tragedy reached Miami and the impact it had on the exile community. Meanwhile, Julio M. Shiling, director of Patria de Martí, connected the date —the 158th anniversary of the Grito de Yara— with the duty to preserve historical memory. "The Grito de Yara identifies us as Cubans, and we are also connected with the victims of the Tugboat 13 de marzo; it is part of our identity," he stated.
Rosa María Payá, executive director of the Foundation for Pan-American Democracy and commissioner of the CIDH, thanked survivors and families for "the courage they showed from the very beginning to report such a heinous crime" and read words that her father, the late opposition leader Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, wrote after visiting the survivors in July 1994. In that text, Payá described how "women with children in their arms begged for mercy, but the response from their captors was to unleash high-powered water cannons against them."
The father Ángel Andrés González blessed the bench with words that captured the essence of the monument: "With the blessing of this bench, we dedicate a space to memory, silence, prayer, and hope. Those who sit here will gaze at the sea, the same sea that many Cubans once beheld while dreaming of attaining a life in freedom."
As a symbolic gesture, the attendees placed two bouquets of 19 sunflowers each next to the seawall—37 flowers for the victims of the tugboat and one additional flower for all the rafters who lost their lives at sea—before moving them inside the temple to participate in a requiem mass.
The bank thus becomes the second monument of this type installed in the Ermita in 2026: last February, another bank dedicated to Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas was unveiled there, bearing the inscription "The only option for the people is freedom."
The tugboat "13 de Marzo" set sail from the port of Havana in the early hours of July 13, 1994, with 68 people on board seeking to flee to the United States. According to consistent testimonies from survivors, Cuban state vessels systematically rammed it and used high-pressure water hoses until it sank about seven miles off the coast of Havana. The IACHR classified the incident as an intentional attack in its Report No. 47/96; the Cuban regime has historically maintained it as a maritime accident. The case remains unpunished more than 32 years later.
"That we may soon be able to say, in Cuba and in exile, never again," wrote Oswaldo Payá in 1994. His words, read this Saturday before the newly unveiled bench, closed a ceremony that the Cuban exile community turned into an act of living memory.
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