Mexico’s Navy Secretariat (Semar) over the weekend announced that the two missing sailboats carrying “humanitarian aid” from Mexico to Cuba were found and have safely arrived in Havana.
On Thursday, two sailboats holding nine people — including a three-year-old child — were declared missing at sea after they failed to arrive in Havana on time, prompting a search and rescue operation to find the missing boats and passengers. According to the BBC, the crew is composed of nationals of Poland, France, Cuba, and the United States.
The two vessels were allegedly delivering “humanitarian aid” to Cuba as part of the “Nuestra America” convoy, a far-left initiative organized by a cohort of international Marxist politicians and activists in support of Cuba’s communist Castro regime.
According to Semar, the sailboats departed from Isla Mujeres, Quintana Roo, on March 20 and were originally expected to arrive in Cuba sometime between March 24 and 25 but failed to do so, and no communication or confirmation of their timely arrival had been received by Mexican authorities, who identified the vessels as the Friendship and the Tiger Moth.
On Saturday, Semar said the Mexican Navy had located the two vessels and established communication with both crews on Friday after a Mexican Navy Persuader aircraft spotted the sailboats approximately 80 nautical miles northwest of Cuba (148 km), confirming their identities. According to the Navy Secretariat, one of the sailboat’s captains informed Mexican authorities that the crews “were in good health” and “the delay in their arrival was due to unfavorable weather conditions, particularly adverse winds.”
“Following that call, the countries of the crew members’ nationality were informed of their discovery and good health, as well as the fact that they will be escorted by a surface vessel from the Mexican Navy to ensure their safe arrival in Cuba,” Semar’s statement read in part.
A spokesperson from the “Nuestra America” convoy told CNN en Español over the weekend that the crews were safe and the ships continued their journey to Havana. The vessels docked in Havana hours later over the weekend.
“The convoy is proceeding to complete its mission: to deliver urgent humanitarian aid to the Cuban people,” the spokesperson reportedly said.
Miguel Díaz-Canel, the communist figurehead “president” of Cuba, celebrated the arrival of the missing sailboats and their “generous contribution of necessary resources” in a social media post.
“A three-year-old girl is the youngest member of this expedition, which has arrived in Havana to remind us that Cuba is not alone,” Díaz-Canel wrote.
According to the left-wing propaganda network Telesur, the vessels were received at a dock in Havana by Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, the leader of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs), which are grassroots espionage organizations that operate on every block of every neighborhood in Cuba that snitch on dissidents and monitor citizens for any “counter-revolutionary” behavior.
Hernández Nordelo is also known for being a member of the “Cuban Five,” a group of communist spies whose actions directly led to the death of four American citizens who were part of the “Brothers to the Rescue” humanitarian organization in the 1990s. Hernández Nordelo was released from U.S. prison by former President Barack Obama in 2014. Telesur, describing the Cuban spy as a “hero,” reported that he said that Cuba “expresses its gratitude to those who bring medicine and food during times of scarcity.”
Adnaan Stumo, a spokesperson for the Nuestra America convoy, reportedly explained that the sailboats’ journey took longer than expected due to “unfavorable winds that forced them to alter the original itinerary,” and reaffirmed the international far-left movement’s “commitment to confronting the pressure tactics imposed by Washington against the Cuban people.”
According to Telesur, the convoy’s organizers announced that, after completing their stay in Cuba, they will travel to Spain to organize a new flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip — a decision that the left-wing propaganda network described as an “act of resistance” that reaffirms “the commitment of civil society organizations to maintain bridges of solidarity in areas of conflict and global humanitarian crises.”
According to the “Nuestra America” convoy’s organizers, the initiative sought to deliver “humanitarian aid” to Cuba to counter what they claim is President Donald Trump’s “strangling” of Cuba through policies against the communist Castro regime. The initiative appears to not acknowledge the well-documented role that the Cuban communist regime has had in the current state of Cuba after 67 years of continued and disastrous communist policies left the island-nation in the brink of complete collapse and its citizens forced to live in inhumane conditions of abject misery and poverty. The leftist convoy has received widespread backlash and condemnation from Cuban citizens, dissidents, and members of its diaspora.
Individuals who visited Cuba as part of the far-left “humanitarian” initiative made use of the opportunity to visit the communism-ruined country to stage a concert moments before a new nationwide blackout that did not appear to have affected the luxury hotel where some of the participants stayed. Similarly, videos circulating on social media appeared to show some of the leftist visitors to Cuba making Cuban children dance in the streets in exchange for food.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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