This Wednesday marks 29 years since the tragic event that took place aboard the Cruz del Mar ship. Unknown individuals who boarded the vessel armed with machine guns killed 7 fishermen, and only three survived. In memory of the deceased, the Canarian Social Organization Titeroygakat and the Altavista Neighborhood Association will hold a floral tribute and prayer this Wednesday at 5:00 PM at the Centenaria Cross of La Rocar.
Among the three fishermen who survived is Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, who is part of the Canary Association of Victims of Terrorism (ACAVITE).
Last Tuesday, ACAVITE and the General Director of Support for Victims of Terrorism of the Ministry of the Interior, José Manuel Rodríguez Uribes, met for the first time in the Canary Islands to address the recognition and aid efforts for the forgotten Canarian victims of the Sahara conflict at the Government Delegation in Las Palmas. The Association points out that those affected are almost all Canarian workers who carried out their work (operators of Foos-Bucraa and sailors of the Canarian-Saharan bank) in the midst of a conflict over territoriality in the former Spanish colony.
Thus, the fishermen with physical and psychological after-effects that persist three decades after their boats were machine-gunned, kidnapped, or destroyed, workers of Spanish companies whose facilities or vehicles were objects of attacks, and also family members of both, make up this Association.
The objective of the meeting with Rodríguez Uribes was to promote official aid to address the recognition and benefits work for civilian victims. They ask for the "equality of Canarian victims with other victims of attacks" and that "this legal, moral, and economic recognition that belongs to them, be taken out of the historical abandonment both by the authorities of the State, and by what they have also suffered from the institutions, administration, and society of the Canary Islands." Lucia Giménez, president of the Association, pointed out that Rodríguez Uribes indicated that he "will try to investigate case by case" and that there is willingness.
