Cuba: senseless deaths in aviation disasters
Cuba Archive
May 15, 2018

The recent crash of a Boeing 737 in Cuba, killing 112 of its 113 passengers, is the latest indication of the Cuban regime’s pervasive disregard for human life; it infiltrates even its civil aviation practices.
 
In Cuba’s totalitarian system, the state is both absolute owner and supreme regulator. It seeks to profit from its commercial aviation at the same time that it is charged with its safety; all the while, it is free of any accountability, as the judiciary is fully subordinated to the executive branch and an independent press as well as civil society institutions are proscribed. Absent transparency, oversight, and legal recourse, the lives of all who fly are perennially in peril. 
 
A flagrant example of the criminal negligence bred by this aberrant situation is the crash of a Cubana de Aviación flight from Havana to Managua, Nicaragua in 1985. The Soviet manufactured Ilyushin Il-18D crashed shortly after takeoff into a field at San José de las Lajas, near Havana’s international airport. 38 to 41 passengers were killed. (Cuba alternatively reported 38 to 40 victims and a U.S. citizen was known to have traveled under a false identity who would be an additional victim if he is not already in the official count under a different nationality.) The reported victims included twenty-six Cubans, ten Nicaraguans, one Guatemalan, one Costa Rican, one Mexican, and two U.S. citizens.
 
The Cuban government officially reported the crash had been accidental and owed to a mechanical malfunction leading to a loss of control. The Aviation Safety Network https://aviation-safety.net/ of the Flight Safety Foundation lists as the cause: "Possibly failure of the artificial horizon and obstruction or aileron control due to shifted cargo." Years later, high-ranking defectors of the Cuban military and intelligence services reported that Cuban authorities had ordered the plane loaded with a heavy load of armament (boxes containing AK-47 rifles, grenades, mines, and munitions) to supply the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, a practice banned from civil aviation. When the plane turned, the improperly loaded armament shifted and put pressure on the wires that cut cockpit-to-tail communication.
 
A former pilot for Cubana de Aviación has told Cuba Archive that in 1984 he had been forced to fly, until weeks before the crash, several commercial flights from Havana to Managua loaded with armament for the Sandinistas. He had not been informed or consulted and had only become aware of the nature of the cargo prior to departure; objecting, he knew, would have only resulted in his exclusion from the flight.

To erase all trace of the cause of the crash, Fidel Castro had immediately ordered 3 kilometers surrounding the area cordoned off by Special Troops, under General Alejandro Ronda, and completely cleaned of the debris and human remains. The explosion of the plane hitting the ground was so fierce that only charred fragments of the bodies were recovered. [1] 

A grand and emotionally-charged public state funeral followed. It is not known if the victims´ families received proper compensation. At that time, Cubana would have been held to the Hague Protocol of 1955 (amending the Warsaw Convention of 1929), that established a liability by the carrier of 125,000 francs for each passenger. An individual who knew one of the Cuban victims believes his family was not adequately compensated.

Two U.S. citizens were among the victims. One was the 37-year old Alexandra Pollack, a Communist activist officially visiting Cuba to deliver a speech. According to the FBI, she worked with/for Cuba supporting the activities of two terrorist organizations under the guise of international solidarity.  Also on board was a U.S. diplomat assigned to Central America traveling under an assumed identity (presumably from another country), whose real name remains unknown. As reported by a former official of Cuban intelligence, the American had been recruited by Cuban intelligence and had traveled clandestinely to Cuba to receive training in secret communications.
 
Gross negligence also seems to have recently caused many more avoidable deaths. Around noon on Friday, May 18th, a Cubana de Aviación flight from Havana to the eastern city of Holguín went down shortly after take-off, killing 112 of the 113 passengers (three women survived the crash, but two succumbed soon thereafter). To date, the sole survivor, a 19-year old woman, is fighting for her life. Five Mexicans (the crew and a tourist), two Argentines, and two Sahrawi-Spaniards died. Cuban victims included five children and ten married couples who were evangelical pastors returning from a retreat in Havana (they left many orphans). Photos of the victims and gut-wrenching stories of so many lives cut short and their stricken loved ones have filled news reports and social networks.

Negligence and neglect by state authorities have resulted in a very high number of accidents and fatalities not just in civil aviation, but also on Cuba’s roads and from collapsing structures in which people must reside. There should be no impunity for those at fault, now or in the past, for failing to safeguard human life above all other interests.

We remember the victims of the May 18 th air crash and of all accidents in Cuba that should have been avoided and call on the international community to demand that Cuban authorities respect its international commitments to civil aviation standards.