During the night of April 13, 1961, 61 years ago, the department store El Encanto, the largest one in Cuba, burned down as a result of the only major terrorist attack that the enemy could carry out in Havana as part of Operation Pluto—the mercenary invasion of Bay of Pigs that would start on the 17th.
Weeks before, President John F. Kennedy gave the go-ahead to covert operations in the days leading up to the invasion, namely acts of sabotage, actions by counterrevolutionary groups, assassination and attacks on stores and businesses.
In keeping with these plans, some 75 tons of explosives and 46.5 tons of weapons and other supplies were sent to Cuba by air and sea to help the terrorists, whose leaders claimed to hold military ranks and positions and even wore army uniforms to enter certain towns and cities as victors and kill revolutionaries, encouraged by CIA reports that the fall of the Cuban government was imminent.
Antonio Veciana, one of the leaders of the Revolutionary Movement of the People (MRP), confessed in an interview that his organization had recruited one of El Encanto’s employees to place incendiary artifacts on several floors of the store and set them to go off at 6:00 p.m., and the man accepted on condition that they would guarantee his escape from the country by sea.
That same night, while the terrorist was waiting to be picked up at Baracoa Beach, a militia patrol arrested him, and he soon confessed his crime and named his accomplices.
In response to this terrorist act, the mass organizations and the trade labor unions dressed in Cuban militia uniforms and vowed to protect their workplaces from any enemy action.
The information given by those involved was used to set up surveillance systems in the stores and establishments that thwarted further attacks and to catch other counterrevolutionaries in flagrante.
However, it was too late to prevent the fire at El Encanto and the death of comrade Fe del Valle, the employee who bravely went into the blazing building to save the money that she and her fellow workers had collected for the daycare centers.
Her gesture was not in vain, as it fueled nationwide rejection of these attacks and greatly contributed to popular unity in the heroic days of the victory over the mercenaries at Bay of Pigs.
