Guatemala apologizes for Bay of Pigs invasion

"Today I want to ask Cuba’s forgiveness for having offered our country, our territory, to prepare an invasion of Cuba," Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom is reported to have said while visiting Havana. 

Colom, who was speaking earlier February 18 to a crowd gathered at the University of Havana, was referring to the 1961 failed invasion attempt organized by the the U.S Central Intelligence Agency. Colom is scheduled to leave Cuba today. It is not known if he will meet with Fidel Castro, as his counterparts, Argentina’s Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Chilean Michelle Bachelet, have done so in recent weeks.

April 17, 1961, the 2506 Brigade - consisting mainly of Cuban exiles and mercenaries financed by the White House in Guatemala and Nicaragua - landed in the so-called Bay of Pigs, better known in Cuba as the ‘Playa Girón’, on the southern coast of central Cuba. The US-backed forces consisting of Cuban exiles was defeated two days later.

"It wasn’t us, but it was our territory and I officially apologize as President and Head of State, and as commander in chief of the Guatemalan army," said Colom, Cuban exiles trained in 1960 and 1961 at a Finca Helvetia on Guatemala's Pacific littoral plain, receiving assistance from the U.S. military and Central Intelligence Agency and the Guatemalan government.  

The Guatemalan President made his speech on the second day of an official visit to the island, where he has also visited a refinery named after the Cuban revolutionary Camilo Cienfuegos, a project promoted by the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) that includes Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras and Dominican Republic.

Despite his nation not belonging to ALBA, Colom applauded the functioning of the plant, where also ‘petrocasas’ - low cost houses made of Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) - are produced, and noting that this "could be a good alternative also for Guatemala."