Your Ultimate Guide To Barbados

Cubana Monument

Designed by Virgil Broodhagen, the son of Barbados' best known sculptor, Karl Broodhagen, the Cubana Monument was erected at Payne's Bay, St. James on the West Coast of the island of Barbados in 1998. This monument was erected in memory of the seventy-three (73) passengers who perished as a result of an anti-Castro terrorist attack on October 6, 1976 on board the Douglas DC-8 Cubana flight 455 aircraft which left Barbados on route to Jamaica and then to Havana, Cuba. The attack was deemed the most deadly terroist airline attack of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. 

Gruesome Events

Just eight (8) minutes after taking flight from the Grantley Adams International Airport on the South Coast of Barbados, this calamitous terrorist attack occurred just five (5) miles off Barbados' West Coast in the parish of St. James.

Captain Wilfredo Perez, fifty-five (57) Cubans, eleven (11) Guyanese and five  (5) North Koreans were all on board at the time of the crash.

A trial was held in Venezuela after four men were arrested in connection with the terrorist attack. Freddy Lugo and Hernán Ricardo Lozano were sentenced to 20 years imprisonment while Orlando Bosch was acquitted. Luis Posada Carriles was held for eight (8) years while awaiting a final sentence but eventually made good his escape. He entered the United States, where he was held on charges of entering the country illegally as of December 2005 but released on April 19, 2007.

At the unveiling of the monument, Cuban President Fidel Castro, the Ambassador to Guyana of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and Guyanese Government Minister Reepu Daman Persaud were all present at this very touching occasion.

Victims Remembered

On October 6th every year, the people of Barbados remember the victims of the Cubana air disaster by laying wreaths at the Cubana Monument in memory of those who lost their lives.