The Alazanes de Granma and the Gallos de Sancti Spíritus won their respective challenges today and produced a three-way tie for first place in the Eastern Zone of the 65th National Baseball Series.

On a day marked by rain, which forced three games to be suspended, the Alazanes defeated the Avispas de Santiago de Cuba for the second consecutive time — until today the lone leaders of the bracket — to reach seven victories and share the top spot.

With a score of 14-10, the eastern horses, managed by Marcos Naranjo, defeated the indómitos at the Guillermón Moncada stadium thanks to a cluster of eight runs in the third inning, in a duel marked by the offense of both teams.

Alexquemer Sánchez, Ernesto Pérez, Leonardo Alarcón and Roel Santos homered for Granma. For Santiago, Edilse Silva, Eduardo García, Harold Vázquez and Yordis Perera did so.

The Gallos, for their part, also added their seventh win by beating the Tigres de Ciego de Ávila 7-3 at the José Antonio Huelga stadium, where they played as hosts.

Reliever Daniel Reyes earned his third win without a loss, backed by the work of Leonardo Gallardo and an offense of 10 hits, including a home run by Lázaro Fernández.

On the road at the Cándido González stadium, the Leñadores de Las Tunas defeated the Toros de Camagüey 12-6 and remained in the fight for the top spots in the Eastern Zone.

Yordanis Alarcón and Henry Quintero hit the ball out of the park for the winners, the latter twice, to reach five home runs in the championship.

In the west, the Vegueros de Pinar del Río kept the lead by beating the Cazadores de Artemisa 5-3 at the 26 de Julio stadium.

Ronaldo Pérez delivered a home run with a runner on base to give his team the lead, while Yancarlos García earned the win in relief.

At the Nguyen Van Troi stadium, the Indios de Guantánamo and the Cachorros de Holguín split honors.

In the first game, the Holguín team won by an 11-1 knockout, supported by an offense of 12 hits, including a home run by Andry Agüero, who also drove in four runs.

Wilson Paredes pitched the five innings of the game and allowed only one hit, an RBI double by Carlos Suárez.

In the second game, the hosts took revenge with a 5-2 victory, thanks to a decisive home run by Yeimer Félix with two teammates on base, while Rolando Veranes hit the ball out of the park for the losers.

Finally, Villa Clara knocked out Matanzas 13-2 in the continuation of the game sealed the day before at the Augusto César Sandino stadium, with a home run by Emmanuel Sañudo.

The second game between both teams was suspended by a heavy downpour when the Matanzas team was winning 2-0 in the third inning.

The rains also prevented the game between Mayabeque and Cienfuegos at the Nelson Fernández stadium, as well as that of Industriales and La Isla at the Cristóbal Labra, where doubleheaders of seven innings will be played tomorrow, starting at 10:00 a.m.

After these results, Pinar del Río continues at the top of the Western Zone with nine wins and two losses, followed by Matanzas (6-4), Cienfuegos, Industriales and Mayabeque (5-5), Artemisa (5-6), Villa Clara (4-6) and La Isla (2-8).

In the Eastern Zone, Santiago de Cuba, Granma and Sancti Spíritus share the top with seven wins and four losses, followed by Ciego de Ávila, Holguín and Las Tunas (6-5), Camagüey (3-8) and Guantánamo (2-9).

Cuba's senior and youth Baseball5 teams opened their paths today in the Pan American Championships in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, with two victories each and arguments to defend the island's continental supremacy.

The Antillean teams made speed, offense, and effectiveness their best cards at the Bolivarian Dome, where the adults defeated Mexico and Puerto Rico twice each, while the youth teams rolled over Argentina and the Dominican Republic.

The senior squad opened its run with a 2-0 victory over the Mexicans, thanks to scores of 15-0 and 6-5, and came out victorious again in its second outing, this time against the Puerto Ricans, whom they defeated 6-1 and 10-8.

The first set against Mexico was a demonstration of strength with a shutout included, although the second demanded greater resistance and found the Cubans capable of tipping the balance by the narrowest of margins.

Then came the turn of Puerto Rico, a rival that also could not stop the push of a team backed by its status as two-time world champion, after conquering the 2022 and 2024 editions.

The seniors will return to the field tomorrow to face Venezuela, the host of the tournament, and later will have a new test against Mexico, on a day that will test their ability to sustain the winning rhythm.

The youth team also turned its debut into a declaration of intent, defeating Argentina 2-0 with scores of 14-0 and 13-1, before overcoming the Dominican Republic 13-1 and 14-0.

Cuban offensive superiority marked both commitments, in which its players limited the opponents' response options and maintained control of the games with wide margins.

The youngsters, champions of the 2023 and 2025 World Cups, are pursuing in Barquisimeto one of the four available berths for the 2027 universal tournament, an objective that turns each victory into an important step toward the next planetary event.

Peru and Venezuela will be the next opponents of the youth team, which will seek to prolong its impeccable start and move closer to world championship qualification without losing sight of the fight for the continental title.

With four victories in four games played between both categories, Cuba closed a seamless first day and made clear that its aspirations in Barquisimeto go beyond advancing past the opening round: its two teams came to compete for the crown and to keep the international prestige of Cuban Baseball5 flying high.

Fifty years ago, on October 6, 1976, Cubana de Aviación Flight CU-455 took off from Seawell Airport in Bridgetown, Barbados, bound for Jamaica and Havana. It carried 73 people: 57 Cubans, 11 Guyanese, and five citizens of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Among the passengers were 24 young Cuban fencers returning victorious, having won every gold medal at the Central American and Caribbean Championships.

They carried no weapons, nor hatred. They carried the happy exhaustion of competition, photographs of their triumph, and, perhaps, the pure eagerness to embrace their loved ones once more.

Shortly after takeoff, two bombs exploded inside the plane. The Douglas DC-8 turned into a ball of fire over the sea, and in just a few minutes, 73 personal stories were reduced to names, photographs, uniforms, passports, and questions.

On board were athletes just beginning to discover the magnitude of their dreams, as well as workers, students, crew members, and families of various nationalities. Terrorism made no distinctions; it killed them all alike, as if death could erase borders—and innocence, too.

But death could not erase their faces. The young fencers remained forever young in Cuba’s memory, frozen at the age they were that day. Empty chairs and rooms suspended in time were left behind in their homes, along with medals unable to console parents who would never hear their children’s voices again.

Each anniversary reopens the same wound: that of those who waited for a plane that never arrived, and of those who learned that a sporting triumph could be transformed—by the criminal hand of hatred—into a time of national mourning.

The crime was neither a matter of chance nor the result of a storm. It was designed, planned, and executed. Investigations and testimonies gathered over the years identified the masterminds as Cuban-born terrorists Orlando Bosch Ávila and Luis Posada Carriles, both linked to the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU).

Venezuelans Freddy Lugo and Hernán Ricardo Lozano were responsible for planting the explosives, while Pablo Gustavo Castillo Díaz—known as "El Cojo" (The Lame One)—studied Cuban flight routes and helped select the aircraft.

These names must not be confused or allowed to fade into the mists of time: those who conceived the murder, those who sought the means to carry it out, and those who planted the bombs were all part of the same criminal chain.

It was neither a freak accident nor a tragedy without perpetrators. It was a terrorist act against a civilian airliner, against defenseless passengers, and against every human being's fundamental right to return home alive.

Nor can we ignore the shadow cast by those who knew the truth yet remained silent. Declassified documents revealed that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had been aware of plots to bomb a Cubana de Aviación flight since June 1976 and had received information regarding plans to attack a Cuban plane just days before the explosion. Despite this, no timely warning was issued that might have prevented the tragedy.

History is not written solely with case files, reports, and the names of the guilty. It’s also written in a mother’s silence as she waits by the phone, in the uniform of an athlete who never again broke a sweat on the field, in an empty airplane seat, and in the question that has endured for half a century without finding rest: why were those who orchestrated that massacre able to hide behind impunity?

During the memorial service held on October 15, 1976, in Revolution Square, Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro spoke from the depths of a nation’s grief: “When a vigorous and virile people weep, injustice trembles.”

It was not merely a phrase uttered before a crowd. It was the transformation of grief into memory, of memory into denunciation, and of denunciation into an unwavering demand for justice.

Cuba remembers the victims of Barbados not to fuel hatred, but to prevent hatred from reappearing under new uniforms, new pretexts, and new flags.

To condemn that crime is to condemn all acts of terrorism—regardless of who commits them, which people they target, or what interests are used to justify them.

No political cause legitimizes the killing of civilians. No alliance can absolve those who plant bombs. No calendar holds right to bury the truth.

Fifty years later, the plane continues to fall within the world's consciousness. It falls every time impunity tries to masquerade as oblivion; every time a murderer is portrayed as a combatant; every time a victim is reduced to a statistic.

Yet the memory of those 73 human beings remains standing, and with it the certainty that the victims of Barbados did not vanish: they live on in their families' demand for justice, in the indignation of a people, and in the responsibility of those who can still call things by their true names.

For the sea may have swallowed the plane, but it could not sink the truth. And as long as a people remembers the names of its dead, the bomb will remain what it was: not merely an explosion lost over the Caribbean, but the blood-stained signature of a crime that, half a century later, still cries out for justice.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff