Three twenty in the afternoon
The Thirteenth of March Nineteen Fifty Seven
Brisk business in the El Floridita saloon
Tourists crowded the sidewalks thinking this was Heaven
It was just like every other afternoon
In Havana Cuba nineteen fifty seven.
Suddenly...three twenty four pm ... the assault begins
Young lives ready to be sacrificed for the cause
Bursting into the Palace they seek to end the regime
Batista must die for his betrayal of the Laws
Young lives betrayed by a culture of violence and death
The flower of Cuba's democratic youth was cut down
The palace of the president becomes a place of death
The 13 of March 1957 leaving only Castro around
To betray their memory and make Cuba his own
Three twenty in the morning
The thirteenth of July nineteen ninety four
Seventy two souls gamble for a future of their own making
Castro's apparatus decides to take them on a different tour
Betrayed by sadists who left their future hopes drowning
Seven miles from those troubled shores
Mothers held up their children begging for mercy
As the women and children cried for their lives
Agents of the regime slayed them with impunity
Young lives betrayed by a culture of violence that deprives life
The Port of Havana a headstone for a watery tomb
Forty one souls, ten of them children cut down before their time
As the tugboat, the 13 of March, was rammed and doomed
Three twenty in the afternoon
The twenty fourth of February nineteen ninety six
As they sought to save lives they sealed their doom
Young men flew through the sky searching the ocean
For scattered lives floating through the straits
Preferring to risk all to be free. A strange notion?
Two MiGs hunt them down without warning
As they sought to save lives; their lives were taken
The sadists celebrated death with macabre boasting
As they dispatched four who loved and not hated
Young lives betrayed by a culture of hate
The state of the nation is autogenocide
Is the flower of Cuba's youth lost? Is it too late?
The 13 of March will we mourn or celebrate? Decide!
Will we never stop this cycle of hate?
How much more can this young nation take?
Cuba's tragic number has always been three
Machado, Batista, and Castro
The last one; the worse of the three