MIAMI – Sunday marked a historic anniversary in Cuban American history.
It’s been 61 years since the botched Bay of Pigs invasion.
Hundreds of Cuban exiles tried to overthrow Fidel Castro from power, and while the mission failed, their legacy lives on.
The only place fitting for this ceremony was the Bay of Pigs memorial in Little Havana.
Participants in Sunday’s ceremony read the names of each person who lost their life on that fateful mission.
Things got underway here around 5 p.m. Sunday with dozens of people packing into the square for the ceremony.
Many of them were surviving veterans from Brigade 2506, Cuban exiles who were part of a plan to attempt to take down the Castro regime.
There were plenty of horrors experienced during that fight, from witnessing fellow brothers killed to being captured by the Cuban government themselves.
The day was April 17, 1961. That’s when the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion went down.
Those men were primarily in their early to mid 20s back then, putting their lives on the line in a fight for freedom from the oppression of the Casto regime.
The Cuban exiles were trained by the American government to pull off the attack as part of a bigger plan that did not work.
The men were outnumbered in troops and firepower, and many were either killed or captured.
Those captured men were later handed over to the United States in a deal between the two governments.
Now the survivors for the most part are in their 80s.