By José Luis Méndez Méndez on March 3, 2025
La Coubre
Six and a half decades have passed since the atrocious act of terror against the French ship La Coubre in Havana’s harbor, which left more than a hundred dead, hundreds wounded, in addition to the indelible scars in the historical memory of the Cuban people. Cuba continues to demand the answers accumulated in the US archives; secret documents that are waiting to be declassified to reveal the truth, so hidden.
The specialized agencies of the United States of America carried out investigations, submitted the results of their inquiries to the administration in office, and also exchanged data with their allies in Belgium and France, who also investigated to clarify the death of six French citizens, the causes of the sinking of the ship and the Belgian losses amounting to millions.
A complicit silence has accompanied the almost 28,000 days that have passed since that fateful afternoon there are plenty of US reasons for having investigated what happened that will explain the reason for the act of terror, even without the intervention in the analysis of the historical and systematic aggressive policy of successive US administrations, obsessed with overthrowing the Cuban Revolution, it is enough to analyze the facts, reflect and reach conclusions.
There was still a United States embassy in Cuba, its officials were working normally, and when they learned what had happened they must have taken an interest in the fate of Donald Lee Chapman, a lone American citizen traveling on that nationality. He was a passenger on a ship carrying military cargo among other goods. It was established that Lee, according to the findings in his belongings, was accustomed to traveling on luxury cruises. A comfort he exchanged for cramped quarters in a makeshift cabin fitted out by the ship’s captain at the insistence of the French shipping company. To make room for him two cabin boys were taken off the crew. For further clarification, his final destination was the state of Nebraska, but he would disembark in Miami.
Another reason to find out is that most of the merchandise the Coubre was destined for that Florida city. The Miller family of four would board there, two adults and two children, and the ship would unload and take on cargo in the ports of Port Everglades and Miami.
Immediately after the explosions, several curious tourists from the United States were in the port area taking photos. They were detained for questioning and the US embassy interceded in their identification and release. These procedures undoubtedly generated documents that were filed at the diplomatic headquarters and copies were sent to the corresponding agencies.
History records that the United States had refused to sell arms to Cuba, and had also exerted pressure on other countries not to supply arms to the revolutionary government, the agencies responsible for implementing the boycott should have followed the routes of the Cuban purchases, also due to the fact that the ship La Coubre had already brought Belgian arms to the island in October 1959, it was therefore a ship controlled and followed by its agents.
The effects of the accident deprived the Cuban defense of 44 tons of grenades and 31 tons of ammunition, so it would have been worth the effort to investigate who had provided this service to the country most interested in preventing this weaponry from reaching its destination, when the plan to invade the island was being planned and was approved on March 17th of that year, 1960, as part of a vast program entitled “aggression against the Castro regime.”
For further evidence of the aggressive conspiracy, on March 9, five days after the explosion, the CIA’s special group WH-4, created to structure the overthrow of the young Revolution, held a review meeting chaired by Colonel J.C. King, according to a declassified secret document, at which time the aspects arising from the event were analyzed and even the acceleration of the physical elimination of the main Cuban leaders was promoted as an alternative to achieve the proposed objectives.
From mid-1959, the representation in Cuba of that agency, also of the DIA, as well as the FBI group installed in that headquarters since before the revolutionary triumph, prioritized the search for information on Cuba’s arms purchases. The United States had pressured England not to supply new planes to the Cuban defense. The arms issue was a top priority alert within the diplomatic headquarters and its collaborators scattered throughout the country were on the lookout for any information.
In the United States there must be documents on the collection of information by its intelligence agencies on the arrival in Cuba of ships carrying weapons. The two trips of La Coubre, one in October 1959 and the other in March 1960, could not have escaped the knowledge of the network of spies located in the port of Havana, this was an intelligence priority.
In particular, there must be information in the CIA about Cuba’s efforts to acquire weapons on the international market, which was a priority at the time. To be continued…
José Luis Méndez Méndez is a university professor, writer and author of a number of books including Democrats in the White House and Terrorism against Cuba. He is a frequent contributor to Cubadebate and Resumen Latinoamericano.
Source: Cuba in Resumen