Proposal to Declare the Assault Brigade 2506 Museum and...
Transcript of Proposal to Declare the Assault Brigade 2506 Museum and...
Proposal to Declare the Assault Brigade 2506 Museum and Library a
Historic Preservation Site
1. General Information:
Historic Name: The Bay of Pigs Veteran Association Brigade 2506
Current Name: The Bay of Pigs Veteran Association Brigade 2506
Present Owner: The Bay of Pigs Veteran Association Brigade 2506
Present Use
The building is being used as a Museum and Library as well as a large
classroom to teach students and visitors about the unsuccessful effort to
overthrow the communist regime in 1961 by the Brigade 2506. Additionally,
visitors learn about the continuing struggle by opponents and dissidents to
free Cuba from the oppressive and tyrannical communist regime.
Present Zoning District:
T4-R
Tax Folio Number:
0141100633030
2. Significance:
Over a period of years, members of the Brigade 2506 and members of the
Cuban community in South Florida raised money for the construction of the
building that would serve as a Museum and Library for the Brigade 2506.
The amount raised was $85,793. A small house was donated by a member
of the Brigade 2506, Raúl Masvidal, and had an assessed value of
$59,477. The city of Miami gave a contribution of $75,000. The small house
was completely rebuilt and expanded to accommodate the Museum and
Library. The architect of the building was María Elena Valls. The building is
located at 1821 Southwest 9th Street, Miami, Florida, 33135. It was
inaugurated on April 17, 1986.
On that day, President Ronald Reagan wrote a letter to Miguel M. Álvarez,
President of the Bay of Pigs Veteran Association Brigade 2506, stating the
following:
"I commend you and all other freedom fighters of the Brigade 2506 for your
great courage, love of country and devotion to the cause of liberty. For 25
years, yours has been a glory that will not fade.
The United States, as it did during José Martí's exiled here, continues to
stand as the hope and helper of free men everywhere. It is our fervent wish
that all our neighbors in Latin America and the Caribbean will be able to
breathe the air of freedom for which so many have made so many
sacrifices. We are heartened by the growing trend toward democracy in
Latin America, and we are confident that the people of Cuba will be able
someday to enjoy the blessings of the free and democratic society rather
than the suffering and oppression of the present totalitarian communist
regime. We look forward to the day when Cuba will have a government that
represents its people. Knowing the bonds of friendship between the Cuban
and the American people, we know that a free Cuban government will also
be a friendly one.
Again, I salute you. God bless all of you".
The building, which houses the Brigade 2506 Museum and Library, has an
extraordinary and exceptional historical significance for its role in the
history of the city of Miami's Cuban community. It exemplifies the historical,
political, cultural, and social life of the Cuban community as well as the
bravery of the members of the Brigade 2506 who fought against the
tyrannical communist regime to bring freedom to Cuba. On June 9, 1994,
the city of Miami Commission approved a Resolution declaring the city of
Miami the symbolic capital of the Cuban people in Exile and Little Havana
as its historical and cultural enclave.
The Brigade 2506 Museum and Library is located in the center of Little
Havana, an area of the city of Miami. The historical building has been
visited and continues to be visited by thousands of tourists from all over the
world as well as national, state, county, and city elected and appointed
leaders and prominent individuals in the nation.
The Bay of Pigs Museum and Library preserves books, maps,
proclamations, photographs, documents, letters, flags, weapons, uniforms,
and other items of the Assault Brigade 2506 soldiers, sailors, and aviators
who invaded Cuba on April 17, 1961. The Brigade Museum and Library
also includes pictures of the United States pilots and members of the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who fought along with the Cuban soldiers
at the Bay of Pigs. The soldiers of the Brigade 2506 were sent to Cuba by
President John F. Kennedy under the direction of the Central Intelligence
Agency to overthrow the tyrannical and oppressive communist regime of
the dictator Fidel Castro.
The building of the Brigade 2506 is near the Cuban Memorial Boulevard,
which is located on Southwest Eight Street and 13 Avenue. These two-
block stretch off Calle Ocho has various monuments dedicated to Cuban
freedom fighters.
The most prominent monument is the world renowned Eternal Torch in
honor of the Brigade 2506, a memorial to the 104 soldiers and pilots who
gave their lives fighting for the freedom of Cuba and to protect the national
security of the United States. An annual ceremony on the anniversary of
the invasion commemorates the soldiers who attempted to overthrow the
Castro regime. A bronze map of Cuba is dedicated to "The ideals of people
who will never forget the pledge of making their Fatherland free."
The Cuban Memorial Boulevard also features a bronze statue done by
Nestor "Tony" Izquierdo of a soldier at the Bay of Pigs. There is also a
statue of the Virgin Mary and a marker that reads "Motherhood is God's
Greatest Blessing" representing the typical Cuban family's reverence of
motherhood and deep devotion to the Virgin Mary.
The last monument is a bronze bust of General Antonio Maceo, the brave
Afro-Cuban general who died fighting for independence of Cuba during the
19th century. He was known as the "Bronze Titan" for his courage and
undying love for his country. On that same street there is the Casa del
Preso or House of the Prisoner, where former Cuban political prisoners
hold meetings.
Nearby is the Domino Club/Máximo Gómez Park at 1444 Southwest 8th
Street. This is a well known park in Little Havana where Cuban senior
citizens gather every day to play domino, drink Cuban coffee, smoke
cigars, talk politics, and reminisce about Cuba. The park is named for
General Máximo Gómez, the Dominican-born chief of the Cuba Liberation
Army. Tourists from all over the world visit the Brigade 2506 Museum and
Library as well as the monuments along the Cuban Memorial Boulevard
and the Domino Club/Máximo Gómez Park. This entire area is considered
the heart of the Cuban community in South Florida.
Another beautiful monument honoring the pilots and mechanics who fought
and died at the Bay of Pigs is located at Tamiami Airport. The memorial
has a large column with a bronze plaque with the names of the brave pilots
and mechanics who gave their lives for the freedom of Cuba. It also has an
enormous Cuban flag at the base of the monument that can only be seen
from the air covering the entire area. The memorial also includes the
pictures of the 10 Cuban Brigade 2506 pilots who were shot down while
fighting superior enemy planes. The Brigade 2506 Air Force assisted the
infantry by bombing the thousands of enemy soldiers who descended upon
the beaches and who were supported by over 40 Stalin tanks, mortars, and
heavy artillery.
The memorial displays the pictures of the four American pilots from the
Alabama National Guard who were shot down while flying two B-26s in a
suicidal mission on April 19, 1961. The memorial features a B-26 bomber
that was donated by the United States Air Force and is similar to the ones
used by the Brigade 2506 Air Force. Each year, a ceremony is also
conducted at this Memorial on the anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion.
The Miami Metro Commission has dedicated a street with the name of the
Brigade 2506.
President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan came to Little
Havana in 1980 and placed flowers next to the Eternal Torch of the Brigade
2506 to honor the Brigade soldiers, sailors, and aviators who died trying to
free Cuba. Since the return of the Brigade 2506 prisoners of war to the
United States on December 24-25, 1962, United States presidents, as well
as congressional leaders, have issued annual proclamations honoring the
members of the Brigade 2506 on April 17, the anniversary of the invasion
of Cuba. The Miami-Dade County Public Schools issued a proclamation
honoring the Brigade 2506 on the 50th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs
invasion in 2011.
The exceptional significance of the building that houses the Brigade 2506
Museum and Library has been recognized by the Historical Association of
Southern Florida which placed a bronze historical marker in front of the
building. The historical marker states the following:
Impact of the Bay of Pigs on Miami
In the early months of 1961 Cuban refugees in Miami flew from Opa-Locka
Airport to Guatemala to become part of the almost 1,500 men of the
Brigade 2506. The Brigade's Bay of Pigs invasion on April 17, 1961,
resulted in defeat with over 100 men killed and the rest imprisoned. The
invasion's failure did not destroy the dream of returning to Cuba but it did
make many look at Miami as more than a temporary refuge. At the same
time the Cuban community anxiously waited while negotiations between
the United States and Cuba secured the release of the prisoners. Two days
before Christmas in 1962, the prisoners began arriving by air at Homestead
Air Force Base and were reunited with their families at Dinner Key
Auditorium.
Two publications reported on the exceptional historical significance of the
Brigade 2506 Museum and Library. The state of Florida financed a book
entitled Florida Cuban Heritage published by the Florida Department of
State Division of Historical Resources. This publication gives testimony to
the importance of the Bay of Pigs Museum and Library as well as the
Cuban Memorial Boulevard and the Little Havana area. Additionally,
another publication entitled Greater Miami and the Beaches Multicultural
Guide, financed by the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau,
recognizes the Bay of Pigs Museum and Library and the Cuban Memorial
Boulevard as important sites to be visited by tourists.
The Bay of Pigs Invasion
The soldiers, sailors, and pilots of the Assault Brigade 2506 were trained
for more than nine months at Panama, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico,
and in different places in the United States by members of the United
States Armed Forces and CIA personnel. The American military instructors
were astounded at the passion and fervor displayed by the brigadistas and
by how quickly they learned military tactics. The invasion of Cuba took
place in the southern coast of the island at the Bay of Pigs near the Zapata
swamps.
Prior to the invasion, the Brigade Air Force, made up of B-26s, C-46s, and
C-54s, dropped supplies to support the anti-Communist guerrillas that were
fighting in the Escambray Mountains. The Brigade Navy conducted
numerous infiltrations by clandestine operation teams to bring weapons
and supplies to the members of the underground which were fighting the
communist regime. Several weeks prior to the invasion, several Brigade
2506 infiltration teams were sent to different cities of Cuba to work with the
underground. Some of these brave soldiers were killed and wounded and
the rest were captured and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. A few were
able to escape and entered Latin American embassies and were given
political asylum.
On Monday April 17, 1961, 1,474 soldiers and many pilots participated and
engaged the thousands of enemy soldiers in combat during the three days
of battle at Playa Larga, Playa Girón, San Blas, and other combat zones.
On the fourth day, the survivors of the sinking Houston fought militia
soldiers who arrived in two boats. United States CIA officials as well as
pilots from the Alabama National Guard also participated in the battle. Gray
Lynch, a CIA officer who was the first to land at the Bay of Pigs, wrote a
book in which he said that the Brigade soldiers "fought like tigers."
The invasion plan, which had been approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff
and the CIA, was radically changed by the White House a few days before
D-day. The landing site selected by the military and CIA planners was the
southern city of Trinidad. This landing site had many advantages. It was
next to the Escambray Mountains where many rebels were fighting the
communist regime. It had docks for the obsolete brigade ships to unload
the gasoline and oil for the airplanes, military, and communications
supplies.
Trinidad had an airfield for the Brigade planes. It had a defensible
beachhead and a couple of roads that led to the city of Havana. Trinidad
had a population that was dissatisfied with the communist regime and could
have joined the Brigade. It also had groceries with food and hospitals
staffed by doctors for the wounded. Changing this landing site for the one
at Bay of Pigs was one of the main reasons for the defeat of the brave
soldiers of the Brigade.
The plan also included five bombing raids using the entire fleet of the
Brigade Air Force made up of 16 B-26 bombers to destroy completely the
Communist Air Force, the heavy Stalin tanks, trucks and heavy artillery, oil
refineries, and other military targets prior to the invasion. For the operation
to succeed, the plans of the invasion had to be followed with maximum
precision and without even a small change since the communist regime
had 200,000 soldiers and militiamen who were heavily armed by the Soviet
Union as well as a large Air Force.
On April 15, 1961, eight B-26 bombers conducted a surprise air attack on
the airfields at San Antonio de los Baños, Santiago de Cuba and the airfield
at Columbia in Havana in order to destroy the Communist Air Force. The
surprise air attack, according to the approved plan by Joint Chiefs of Staff
and CIA, contemplated bombing all airfields in Cuba with all of the Brigade
16 B-26s. By presidential order, it was reduced to only eight bombers.
One B-26 was shot down in Havana killing two Brigade pilots. The
significantly reduced air attack was successful but several enemy T-33 jets,
Sea furies, and B-26s survived the limited and reduced attack.
Unfortunately, the bombing operations of the next two days and continued
during D-day were canceled by an order from President Kennedy. It was
then impossible for the small brigade to achieve victory. It was an act of
criminal negligence to send the small Brigade to death and destruction
once the airstrikes were canceled.
The invasion of the Bay of Pigs began early in the morning on Monday,
April 17, 1961. During that morning two Brigade obsolete transport ships of
World War II "Liberty" class, the Houston and the Rio Escondido, which
were carrying military supplies, food, gas and oil for the airplanes,
ammunition, and communication equipment, were sunk by Castro's Air
Force. The other ships were driven away under heavy fire.
Several C-46s dropped 177 paratroopers from the First Battalion in
different places of the Bay of Pigs area. With the exception of the survivors
of the sinking of the Houston, the rest of the battalions landed at Playa
Larga and Playa Girón. For three days, the abandoned Brigade soldiers at
the beaches fought bravely against the overwhelming number of 60,000
enemy soldiers. The Brigade soldiers and the Brigade Air Force inflicted
approximately 6,000 casualties on the enemy soldiers. After the third day of
heavy fighting, the Brigade ran out of ammunition. The soldiers retreated
into the swamps where some brigadistas continue to fight for several more
days until they were killed or captured. The Brigade lost 104 soldiers and
pilots and had more than 100 wounded in action. Approximately 1,200
soldiers were captured.
After a year of imprisonment in the Castillo del Príncipe in Havana,
Brigade soldiers were sentenced in April 1962 to 30 years of hard labor or
a ransom of money which ranged from $500,000 to $25,000 for each
prisoner. The shameful trial was in violation of the Geneva Convention
since prisoners of war cannot be subjected to a trial. While in prison, the
brigadistas were beaten and tortured, drank water with dead rats, and
suffered hepatitis and dysentery and all types of skin diseases due to the
lack of hygiene. One untreated brigadista died of hepatitis and a couple
became insane for life. The Brigade prisoners of war were denied medical
and dental treatment and medicines in violation of the Geneva Convention.
After the illegal trial, 211 Brigade prisoners of war, who each had a ransom
value of $100,000, and the three leaders of the Brigade who each had a
ransom of $500,000, were placed for seven months in complete isolation in
the worst prison in Cuba located in the Isle of Pines. They were packed into
a small room, which had a capacity for 40 people. They were denied soap,
toilet paper, toothpaste, and medicine for seven months. They had access
to one toilet and two showers, which were available to be used at different
times for 10 minutes a day. The little and inadequate and horrible food that
the prisoners were fed was often poisoned.
The prisoners were kept like sardines in a can slept on the bare floor, and
often were beaten by communist prison guards. The intolerable conditions
and abuses perpetrated to the 214 members of the Brigade as well as the
other 5,000 political prisoners in the Isle of Pines led to a hunger strike that
lasted three days. The strike was called off when the prison guards cut off
the water and several prisoners fainted and were close to death. The
foundations of the building where the brigadistas were being kept had
dynamite. They were informed by the prison guards that they would blow it
up if the United States invaded Cuba.
After 20 months of the most inhumane conditions in prison, the United
States, under the direction of President John F. Kennedy, ransomed the
prisoners of war by paying $53 million in medicines, food, and cash to the
communist regime. President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline
Kennedy welcomed the returning prisoners on December 29, 1962 at the
Orange Bowl in Miami. The president promised to return the flag of the
Brigade 2506 presented to him to a free Havana.
Who were the members of the Assault Brigade 2506?
The soldiers, sailors, mechanics, and pilots of the Brigade 2506 were a
cross-section of the Cuban population made up of whites, blacks, Chinese,
and Arabs who came from different sectors of Cuba. The members of the
Brigade represented all social classes in Cuba. Some were wealthy and the
rest belong the middle class and working class.
These brave Cubans represented all the professions and workers of the
island. Some were highly educated and others could barely read. There
were priests, cattle ranchers, farmers, medical doctors, dentists, lawyers,
engineers, bankers, businessmen, carpenters, construction workers, cooks,
actors, musicians, bartenders, barbers, military personnel, and students.
The largest group of the Brigade was made up by 240 students. All
brigadistas where united in their desire to restore the 1940 Constitution of
the Cuban Republic, the rule of law, democracy, freedom, and respect for
human rights.
The average age of the members of the Brigade was 23 years old. The
oldest was a former World War II paratrooper and a highly decorated
Cuban American soldier who fought in the Pacific theater and the youngest
was a 15-year-old infantry soldier who had to lie about his age in order to
enroll.
The members of the Brigade Air Force consisted of former military and
naval pilots, most of whom had graduated from United States military
schools. They included former airline pilots, private pilots, crop dusters, and
student pilots. The naval forces were composed of naval and merchant
marine personnel, yacht owners, and students. The frogmen (UTD) were
mostly students.
After the return of the brigadistas, 211 of them joined the United States
Armed Forces and became second lieutenants. Many of them served in the
different branches of the United States Armed Forces for a number of
years. Those who remained in the Armed Forces of the United States as a
career achieved high ranks. One became major general of the National
Guard, six colonel, 19 lieutenant colonel, 29 captain, and 64 lieutenant.
They fought bravely in the 1965 invasion of the Dominican Republic and
during the Vietnam War, where some died and many were wounded in
combat.
Other Brigade members joined the CIA and assisted our government to
fight communists in Latin America. Brigade Armed Forces officers and
Brigade CIA officers assisted several Central American and South
American countries fight communist insurgencies. Brigade 2506 pilots
fought in the Republic of Congo against the Communist Army led by Che
Guevara. Two Brigade members working for the CIA assisted the Bolivian
army in capturing and executing Che Guevara.
Other Brigade members became successful entrepreneurs, elected and
appointed leaders, professionals in a variety of fields, and highly skilled
workers. Several were elected to the House of Representatives and Senate
of the Florida Legislature. One is still serving as a Metro-Dade
Commissioner. One served as a member of the Miami-Dade County
School Board. Another one became a writer, associate superintendent and
interim deputy superintendent of schools in the Miami-Dade County Public
Schools. He also became associate professor at Florida International
University
The aftermath of the Bay of Pigs
The failure to overthrow the tyrannical and oppressive Castro dictatorship
during the Bay of Pigs invasion increased the exodus of Cuban immigrants
to the United States and specially to South Florida. More than 800,000
Cuban-Americans now live in Greater Miami. They have helped transform
Greater Miami into the prosperous and culturally diverse international city
that welcomed them. Cuban Americans can be found in all professions and
trades and they are making a valuable contribution to the city of Miami and
South Florida.
Greater Miami is today one of the most dynamic, multilingual, and culturally
diverse cities in the United States. Today, many Cuban Americans, who
made up almost 60% of the Hispanic population in the area, occupy
positions of great responsibility in government, medicine, business, labor,
science and technology, education, religion, the arts and entertainment,
and in all other professions.
Important individuals, tourists, and students who have visited to the
Brigade 2506 Museum and Library
The building that houses the Brigade 2506 Museum and Library has been
visited and continues to be visited on a daily basis Monday through Friday
by tourists, students from secondary schools, colleges and universities, and
a great number of important individuals from the United States and foreign
countries since it was inaugurated. West Point Academy and Air Force
Academy cadets have visited the Museum and Library each year.
Hundreds of visitors come to learn about the history of the Assault Brigade
2506 and the Cuban people struggle of over 55 years to free Cuba from its
oppressive communist regime.
Many important social, cultural, and anti-Communist patriotic organizations
have used this building for their meetings over the years. The Cuban
community in Miami and freedom loving individuals from all over the world
consider the Brigade 2506 Museum and Library a sacred place. Each year
Catholic priests, who were members of the Brigade, offer a mass on the
anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion. The Cuban community of South
Florida and in the United States considers the building that houses the
Brigade 2506 Museum and Library as a Freedom House and as a symbol
of the eternal struggle to free Cuba from communism. The Cuban
community believes that the building has exceptional historical significance.
The number of individuals who have come to the Brigade 2506 Museum
and Library since it opened is another indication that the building has
extraordinary historical value is. Below is a partial list of those elected and
appointed political leaders, presidents of the United States and foreign
countries, United States presidential candidates from both political parties,
well known singers, actors, authors, and writers as well as students who
have visited the Brigade 2506 Museum and Library or the Monument of
Eternal Flame :
President John F Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy
(1963). They came to the Orange Bowl in December 1963 to
welcome the 1,200 prisoners of war from the Bay of Pigs who where
liberated as a result of negotiations between the United States and
Cuba.
President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan (1980).
They came to place a floral arrangement beneath the Monument of
the Eternal Flame of the soldiers and aviators who fought and died at
Bay of Pigs on Southwest Eight Street and 13 Avenue.
Ambassador to the United Nations Jeanne Kirkpatrick (1986)
City of Miami Mayor Xavier Suarez (1986)
City of Miami Commissioner Rosario Kennedy (1986)
City of Miami Commissioner Manolo Reboso (1986)
Florida State Representative Roberto Casas (1986)
Florida State Representative Luis Morse (1986)
United States Representative Claude Pepper (1987)
United States Representative Dante Fascell (1987)
Director of Radio and TV Marti Pedro Roig (2004)
Florida State Representative Humberto Cortina (2004)
Actor Lucy Arnaz, daughter of actors Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball
(2004)
Retired United States Army Coronel Oliver North (2004)
West Point Military Academy cadets and officers (2004). These West
Point Military Academy cadets and officers conduct an annual visit.
Florida Supreme Court Justice, the Honorable Raoul Cantera (2004)
Maryland Vice Governor Michael Steele (2004)
El Salvador Minister of Defense General Romero (2004)
El Salvador Vice Minister of Defense General Abrego (2004)
El Salvador Chief of Staff General Soto (2004)
El Salvador Vice President Ana Vilma de Escobar (2004)
State Attorney Dexter Lehtinen (2004)
CEO and editor of Newsmax magazine Christopher Ruddy (2004)
Florida Governor Jeb Bush (2004)
Metro Dade Commissioner Bruno Barreiro (2005)
Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez (2005)
United States Air Force Major Doug Miller (2005)
Metro Dade Commissioner Javier Soto (2005)
Metro Dade Commissioner Netasha Seijas (2005)
South Vietnam General Nguyen Trint (2005)
United States Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (2005)
United States Representative Mario Diaz Balart (2005)
Uruguay President Luis Alberto Lacalle (2005)
Fox News contributor Ann Coulter (2005)
Dominican Republic Chief of Police Major General Manuel Perez
Sanchez (2005)
Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso (2005)
Metro Dade Commissioner and later Mayor Carlos Gimenez (2005)
Eight pilots from the Colombian Air Force (2005)
Students from Miami-Dade County Public Schools attending
Southwest Senior High (2005)
State Attorney Thomas J. Mulvihill (2005)
Metro Commissioner José "Pepe" Diaz (2005)
American Red Cross administrator Jeff Koenreich (2005)
John B. Donovan Junior, son of the late John B. Donovan, the lawyer
appointed by President John F. Kennedy to negotiate the liberation of
the Brigade 2506 from prison in Cuba (2005)
Historian and writer Humberto Fontova (2005)
Florida State Senator Skip Campbell (2005)
City of Miami Commissioner Joe Sanchez (2005)
United States Ambassador Edward Corr (2006)
United States State Department Head of the Cuban Bureau Stephen
McFarland (2006)
Metro Dade Commissioner Rebecca Sosa (2006)
Metro Dade Commissioner Javier Souto (2006)
Los Angeles Deputy Police Chief George Gascon (2006)
Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez (2006)
Class of cadets from West Point Military Academy (2006)
United States Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez (2006)
Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (2006)
Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina (2006)
United States Senator and former Florida governor Bob Graham
(2006)
United States Senator Bill Nelson (2006)
Florida Governor Charlie Crist (2006)
United States Senator Marco Rubio (2007)
Historian and writer Billy Schuss (2007)
U.S. Congressman Albio Sires from New Jersey (2007)
Metro Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez (2007)
Metro Dade Commissioner Carlos Gimenez (2007)
Metro Dade Commissioner José Díaz (2007)
Florida National Guard Colonel Hector Mirabile and Lieutenant
Colonel Harvey Jones (2007)
Governor and Republican Party presidential candidate Mitt Romney
(2007)
U.S. Senator Fred Thompson from Tennessee and Republican Party
presidential candidate (2007)
New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Republican Party presidential
candidate (2007)
U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman from Connecticut , Chairman of the
Senate Homeland Security Committee and former Democratic Party
Candidate for Vice President in 2000 (2008)
Rumanian political leader Marius Oprea (2009)
Judge Samantha Ruiz (2010)
President of Poland Lech Walesa was presented with the Assault
Brigade 2506 flag and made an honorary member of the Brigade
(2010)
Hialeah Gardens Mayor Yioset de la Cruz (2010)
Miami-Dade State Attorney Kathy Fernandez Rundle (2010)
Lieutenant Colonel Archie Kielly (2010)
U.S. Attorney General William Ferrer (2010)
Baseball player Mike Lowell (2010)
Judge Samantha Ruiz (2010)
Members of the Cuban American Veteran Association (2010)
United States Congressman David Rivera (2010)
Florida Senate President Mike Haridopolos (2010)
Florida Representative Esteban Bovo (2010)
United States Naval Academy cadet at Annapolis Christopher Blake
Lowman (2010)
Nuevo Herald newspaper Executive Director Manny Diaz, Information
Director Andres Reynold and reporters Nancy San Martin and Luisa
Yanez (2010)
Members of the press of radio, television and newspapers Oscar
Haza, Jorge Castaño, Julio Gonzalez Rebull, Luisa Yanez, Tomás
García Fusté, Soraya Galán, Marta Flores, Ninoska Pérez Castellón,
Gaby Astengo, and Carlos Lafigliola (2011)
President of the Junta Patriótica Cubana Antonio Esquivel (2011)
President of the Miami Medical Team and President of the Municipios
de Cuba Doctor Manuel Alzugaray (2011)
Singer Gloria Stefan and producer Emilio Stefan (2011)
El Salvador President Francisco Flores (2011)
Dama de Blanco Reina Tamayo, mother of jailed dissident Orlando
Zapata Tamayo who died in a hunger strike (2011)
Florida Governor Rick Scott (2011)
United States Congressman retired Colonel Allen West (2011)
United States Congresswoman and Republican Party presidential
candidate Michele Bachmann (2011)
Coral Reef Senior High School students (2011)
University of Miami students (2011)
United States Senator John McCain and former Republican Party
2008 presidential candidate (2011)
Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart (2011)
Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtenin (2011)
Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez (2011)
United States Congressman David Rivera (2011)
United States Senator John McCain and former Republican Party
presidential candidate in 2008 (2012)
United States Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtenin (2012)
United States Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart (2012)
Actor María Conchita Alonso (2012)
Teacher Laura Davis and her 100 students from Lee County Senior
High School (2012)
Miami-Dade County judge Maria Korvik (2012)
Retired United States Navy officer Larry Didonato who presented a
photo of the USS Conway, a destroyer that patrolled the area around
the Bay of Pigs (2012)
Bay of Pigs, The Perfect Failure
by
Frank de Varona
The Bay of Pigs in the words of historian Theodore Draper was "one of those rare
events in history-a perfect failure." It was one of the most traumatic foreign-policy
disasters of the Cold War.
Bay of Pigs Invasion
Map showing the location of the Bay of
Pigs
Date 17–19 April, 1961
Location: Southern coast of Cuba
Belligerents
Cuba United States
Brigade 2506
Commanders and leaders
Fidel Castro John F. Kennedy
The aftermath of the failure to overthrow the Castro regime at the Bay of Pigs
The failure to topple the communist regime in Cuba was most damaging to the United
States in the years that followed. The credibility of the United States in the world was hit
José Ramón
Fernández
Juan Almeida
Bosque
Che Guevara
Efigenio
Ameijeiras
Pepe San Román
Erneido Oliva
Strength
25,000
Cuban Army
200,000
Cuban Militia
9,000 armed
police
1,474 ground
forces of the Assault
Brigade 2506
Casualties and losses
Cuban Army:
176 killed
500+ wounded]
Cuban Militia
and Police:
c. 4,000 killed,
wounded,
missing
118 killed, 360
wounded and 1202
captured
hard. The United States appeared as an aggressor of a small nation but, at the same
time, weak and incompetent in its failure to plan a successful overthrow of the first
communist regime in the Western Hemisphere. Both President John F. Kennedy and
his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy were deeply humiliated. After the Bay of
Pigs and up to the November 1963 assassination of President Kennedy, both the
President and the Attorney General continued to try to assassinate Fidel Castro and
overthrow his regime.
The Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev believed that President John F. Kennedy was a
weak and indecisive leader as a result of the spectacular foreign-policy failure in Cuba.
When Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev met President John F. Kennedy in Vienna on
June 4, 1961, he bullied, yelled at, and threatened the president. After the meeting,
President Kennedy was shocked and admitted that he had allowed the Soviet premier
to abuse him.
During the summer of 1961, Khrushchev built the Berlin wall believing that President
Kennedy would not intervene to stop it. The following year the Soviet leader introduced
intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear weapons in Cuba, which led to the
October Missile Crisis of 1962 that almost brought World War III and a nuclear
holocaust to the world.
The Assassination of John F. Kennedy
President Kennedy with his wife, Jacqueline,
and Governor of Texas John Connally and his
wife in the presidential limousine, minutes
before the President's assassination. He was
assassinated at 12:30 p.m. on November 22,
1963 in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas.
A ten-month investigation conducted by the
Warren Commission concluded that President
Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey
Oswald, who was acting alone. The Warren
Commission also concluded that Jack Ruby
acted alone when he assassinated Lee Harvey
Oswald before he could go to trial. The findings
of the Warren Commission were initially
accepted by the majority of Americans.
However, polls conducted between 1966 and
2003 found that as many as 80% of Americans
suspected that there was a plot or cover-up.
A Gallup poll conducted in mid-November 2013 indicated that 61% of Americans
believed the president was killed as a result of a conspiracy and 30% thought Oswald
did it alone. In contrast to the conclusions of the Warren Commission, the United States
House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded in
1978 that President Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.
The HSCA found the findings of the original FBI investigation and the Warren
Commission Report to be inaccurate. While agreeing with the Commission that Oswald
fired all the shots that caused the fatal wounds to President Kennedy and Governor
Connally, the HSCA concluded that there were at least four shots fired (only three of
which could be linked to Oswald) and that there was "a high probability that two gunmen
fired at President Kennedy."
Seymour M. Hersh, a former investigative reporter from the New York Times and a
1970 Pulitzer prize winner, wrote a book entitled The Dark Side of Camelot (1997). He
explained in his book that President Kennedy stole the 1960 election with the help of the
Mafia. In chapter 10 of his book entitled The Stolen Election the author described a
meeting of the president's father, Joseph P. Kennedy, with the head of the Chicago
Mafia's Momo Salvatore or Sam Giancana in 1959. Joe Kennedy asked Giancana to
help elect his son president of the United States. In return, Joe Kennedy promised that
his son once elected will protect him from prosecution.
The Chicago Mafia Hersh pointed out also exercised "direct control over mobster and
Teamsters Union activities in Cleveland, St. Louis, Kansas City, Las Vegas, and Los
Angeles." Senator John Kennedy defeated Vice President Richard Nixon in one of the
closest election in history. Senator Kennedy won by 118,000 popular votes out of 68
million votes cast in the nation. He carried Illinois by fewer than 9,400 votes. There was
massive fraud in the city of Chicago which was dominated by Mayor Richard Daley and
the Mafia. The was also fraud in other states as reported by Hersh. After the election
the author explained "allegations of vote fraud were eventually filed against Democrats
in 11 states." Hersh pointed out that two grand juries were convened in Chicago after
the election. However, they ended up indicting only five lower-level Democratic Party
officials for vote buying and vote fraud.
After the election, both President Kennedy and his brother Robert Kennedy who was
named Attorney General, were fully aware of the Mafia involvement in the 1960
election. Nevertheless, Attorney General Robert Kennedy started to persecute Mafia
leaders across the United States. The Mafia was enraged and felt betrayed. The Mafia
was allied with Fidel Castro who was fearful that he could be assassinated by the CIA.
Therefore, my own investigation and research leads me to conclude that President John
F. Kennedy was assassinated more than likely by the bloody dictator Fidel Castro and
the U.S. Mafia. Among those involved were Momo Salvatore Sam Giancana, the Mafia
chief of Chicago, John Rosselli of Las Vegas, and Santos Trafficante of Florida, a
former syndicated chief in Havana.
Sam Giancana and John Rosselli were called to testify before Senator Church's
Committee on Assassinations. On the night of June 19, 1975, a gunman was invited to
enter Giancana's apartment and later the assassin shot him in the back of the head as
Giancana was frying sausage and peppers. After Giancana fell to the ground, the
gunman turned him over and shot him six more times in the face and neck. Giancana
was killed shortly before he was scheduled to appear before the Church Committee
investigating CIA and Mafia collusion in plots to assassinate President John F.
Kennedy.
On August 9, 1976, Rosselli's decomposing body was found in a 55-gallon steel fuel
drum floating in Dumfoundling Bay near Miami, Florida. At the behest of some
members of the Senate United States Attorney General Edward H. Levi instructed the
FBI to find out if Rosselli's earlier testimony regarding the CIA plot to assassinate Castro
may have led to his murder. Only Santos Trafficante remained alive.
The failure to overthrow the tyrannical and oppressive regime of Fidel Castro in April
1961 had terrible consequences for Cuba, the United States, Latin American and
African countries, and other nations of the world. It consolidated the communist regime
in Cuba, which has been responsible during 53 years for initiating communist
revolutions in the Western Hemisphere; collaborating with terrorist organizations from
the Middle East, Spain, and Ireland; and intervening militarily in various nations of
Africa, including Angola, Ethiopia, Yemen, Namibia, Madagascar, Congo, and Somalia.
During the Vietnam war, the communist regime in Cuba sent three officials to torture the
American pilots who had been shot down and kept in prison in Hanoi. Almost all
American pilots were subjected to torture by these three Cubans in an effort to obtain
information on the U.S. aircraft carriers and their aircrafts and provide that information to
the Soviet Union. One American pilot was killed while he was being tortured. One of
these three Cuban criminals later became a general and Minister of Higher Education in
Cuba. Senator John S. McCain, who was a victim of torture, wrote about his horrible
experience in his autobiography. Like many other crimes committed by the totalitarian
regime of Castro brothers, the death of the American pilot has not been punished.
During the 1960s, Ernesto Che Guevara led a Cuban and African army in the Congo.
Veteran pilots of Bay of Pigs fought successfully against this army in the Congo. The
largest Cuban military intervention in Africa occurred in Angola. The Cuban Army was
sent by Fidel Castro to support the communist government of Angola.
Andres Oppenheimer wrote a book entitled Castro's Final Hour (1992) where he
covered very well the Cuban military intervention in Angola. In November 1975, a few
weeks before the declaration of Angola's independence, Cuba started a large-scale
military intervention in support of the communist People's Movement for the Liberation
of Angola (MPLA). The United States supported two other liberation movements
competing for power in the country, the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) and
the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). By the end of 1975,
the Cuban army in Angola numbered more than 25,000. As the Cuban intervention
continued for many years, the Cuban army increased to 50,000 soldiers.
Oppenheimer explained in his book that communist Angolan President José Eduardo
Dos Santos asked Fidel Castro for an additional help when the 35,000 soldiers of the
National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) led by its chief Jonas
Savimbi and accompanied by 9,000 South African troops defeated the Soviet Union,
Cuban and Angolan soldiers and had to retreat to Cuito Cuanavale. By that time Cuba's
best Division General Arnaldo Ochoa was the military chief of the Cuban, Soviet and
Angolan forces. For the next 12 months the defense of Cuito Cuanavale became "Fidel
Castro's biggest obsession." The Cuban dictator was spending 80% of his time planning
each move of general Ochoa's forces. General Ochoa disagreed with Fidel Castro's
absurd orders coming from his bunker 6,000 miles away in Havana. These
disagreements and criticisms of the Cuban regime would lead to general Ochoa's arrest
for treason. After his trial, he was executed on July 13, 1989.
General Ochoa was a brilliant commander and he was successful in Angola. General
Ochoa attacked the UNITA forces with Cuban Mig-23 aircraft and eventually they
retreated. General Ochoa moved his soldiers against the wishes of Fidel Castro and
opened of a second front. As a result, negotiations between the United States, the
Soviet Union, Cuba and South Africa ended with the New York Accords of December
22, 1988. Namibia achieved its independence from South Africa and most of the Cuban
troops withdrew from Angola.
The Cuban military intervention in Angola ended in 1991. Approximately 500,000 Cuban
soldiers served in Angola during the 16 years of this useless war and many of them died
or were injured as well as tens of thousands of Africans. An unintended consequence of
this illegal Cuban Army intervention in Angola was that many young Cubans were
infected with the HIV virus in Angola and upon their returned infected thousands of
Cubans in the island.
Cuba launched another military intervention in Somalia and then in Ethiopia. The Cuban
army helped train communist guerrillas in the Congo, Namibia, Madagascar, and South
Africa.
Another great damage inflicted upon the United States by the Cuban communist regime
was the smuggling of all types of drugs to poison Americans. Andres Oppenheimer
wrote a book entitled Castro's Final Hour (1992) in which he documented the shipment
of drugs through Cuba and then to the United States. He wrote that the Cuban
communist regime collaborated with drug cartels in Colombia to introduce cocaine into
the United States. Oppenheimer pointed out the following:
"Fidel Castro and Colombia's drug barons had a long association, largely based on
political convenience... In the early 1980s, Castro had used his Medellin cartel contacts
to fly weapons to Colombia's M-19 guerrillas. The planes would fly over Cuban airspace
with no questions asked, and pick up the weapons on improvised runways in various
Caribbean islands, and occasionally in Cuba itself. Carlos Lehder, one of the Medellin
cartel's top leaders, would testify years later in a United States Court that he had met
twice with Raúl Castro, currently president of Cuba, in the island to clear these flights."
Oppenheimer explained that Jaime Guillot-Lara, a Colombian drug lord shipped at least
2.5 million pounds of marijuana, 25 million methaqualone tablets, and 80 pounds of
cocaine, much of it through Cuba. In November 1982, a United States district attorney in
Miami, Florida indicted four top Cuban officials on charges of smuggling cocaine and
other drugs through Cuba to the United States. Witnesses testified at the trial that the
Cuban ambassador to Colombia, Fernando Ravelo Renedo, received approval from
Cuba for every drug shipment to the island. The Colombian ships were cleared by the
Cuban navy. In addition to the indictment of Ambassador Ravelo, the United States
district attorney indicted Vice Admiral Aldo Santamaría Cuadrado and René Rodríguez
Cruz, a Cuban Directorate General of Intelligence official.
Oppenheimer explained that later on the Minister of the Interior, Division General José
Abrantes, and his subordinates, among them Coronel Antonio de la Guardia, were also
involved in shipping several thousand tons of drugs to the United States during the
1980s. Coronel Antonio de la Guardia and two of his subordinates were charged with
trafficking drugs and corruption. They were shot along with general Arnaldo Ochoa on
July 13, 1989. Abrantes was sent to prison and died of a heart attack soon after, many
speculate that he was assassinated because he knew how Fidel and Raul Castro were
shipping drugs to the United States.
During the 1962 Missile Crisis, the Cuban regime, with its spies in New York City,
planned to blow up the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, and other sites.
Fortunately, the FBI arrested the perpetrators of this conspiracy. The totalitarian
communist regime in Cuba successfully penetrated the Defense Department placing an
agent, Ana Belén Montes, as the official who was in charge of Cuban policy. It also
penetrated the Department of State with two spies. Cuban spies in Miami were
responsible for the death of several anti-Communist leaders and planned the shooting
of two Brothers to the Rescue private planes in international waters. Five Cuban spies
were indicted and sent to prison for planning this horrendous crime and for spying on
the United States Southern Command.
A Cuban occupation Army was sent to Venezuela to protect the communist regime of
the bloody dictator Hugo Chavez. In 2014 many students and other Venezuelans took
to the streets of many cities to protest the oppression and violence of communist regime
now led, after the death of Chavez, by the dictator Nicolas Maduro. Cuban troops shot
students in the streets of various cities in Venezuela and, as in Vietnam, they also
tortured captured students.
More recently, Cuban agents have stolen millions of dollars from Medicare by
establishing fraudulent clinics in Florida. Many of them were able to return to Cuba
before they were arrested.
Tens of thousands of Cubans, Latin Americans, and Africans died, were injured, or
became exiles as a result of the revolutions created by the Cuban communist regime in
the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. The failure of the Bay of Pigs
succeeded in helping Fidel Castro to strengthen his regime internally. The bloody
dictator's image was enhanced internationally as a David defeating Goliath.
It is for all of these reasons that a study of the major foreign-policy failure at the Bay of
Pigs is important. What lessons are to be learned? What where the factors that led to
the failure? Who was responsible for this fiasco? Should the United States have been
involved in trying to assassinate the Cuban dictator? Did Fidel Castro plan and
participate in the assassination of President Kennedy in self-defense with the help of the
Mafia?
Fidel Castro assumed power in Cuba and began his communist revolution
On New Year's Day 1959, the Cuban people learned that the dictator Fulgencio Batista
had fled to the Dominican Republic. There was great joy throughout Cuba as many
believed a new era had begun in this country.
During Christmas 1958, I had returned to my hometown of Camagüey from Admiral
Farragut Academy, a naval school in St. Petersburg, where I had been studying high
school. While waiting for the new year, I had been playing poker with my brother Jorge
and friends in my house since no New Year's parties were held due to the war going on
in the island. I remembered the great happiness of the people of Camagüey upon the
news that Batista had left. I saw the trucks carrying the rebels with long beards and
rosaries around their necks on their way to Havana. Soon there were speedy trials in
my hometown and people were shot to death.
Upon my return to Admiral Farragut Academy, I was interviewed for the first time in my
life by a reporter from the newspaper The St. Petersburg Times. I said that I did not like
Fidel Castro and his rebels because they had threatened my father who owned several
cattle ranches in Camagüey. The rebels threatened to shoot my father and his workers
after he refused to financially support the rebels led by Fidel Castro. My father was not a
politician nor did he support the Batista regime. My father believed that Fidel Castro was
a communist and, of course, he was correct. However, he was wrong in believing that
the United States would not tolerate a communist regime 90 miles away from its shore.
Although there were many groups fighting the Batista regime, Castro's 26th of July
Movement was the best known. Thus, he assumed power in Havana. Not well known
was the fact that Fidel Castro had purchased weapons from the Mafia in the United
States. After 1959, the Mafia and the Cuban leader continued their close cooperation.
The Mafia continued to sell and placed weapons in various Latin American countries
that the Castro regime wanted to overthrow. The Mafia also sold him state-of-the-art
surveillance equipment. When the CIA hired three members of the Mafia, John Rosselli
of Las Vegas, Sam Giancana of Chicago, and Santos Trafficante of Florida, to
assassinate Castro, it was unaware that the Mafia was working with Castro and none of
the plots had any chance of success.
Fidel Castro had promised when he was fighting in the Sierra Maestra Mountains in
Oriente province that once the Batista regime was overthrown, Cuba would have
democracy, respect for human rights, free elections, and the reestablishment of the
progressive democratic 1940 Constitution of Cuba. However, all the promises made by
Fidel Castro were deliberate and shameful lies. During a speech in December 1961,
Fidel Castro said "I have been a Marxist Leninist since the time I was a university
student." By that time, he had crushed his opponents and was firmly in power. Castro
cynically admitted that if he would have told the Cuban people that he was a communist
when he was fighting the Batista regime he would have never been able to get off the
Sierra Maestra mountains.
As soon as the rebels came down from the mountains, hundreds of people were shot on
the wall, first in the city of Santiago de Cuba and then throughout the island, without due
process of law. The death penalty was forbidden in Cuba since achieving independence
on May 20, 1902. However, Castro and his communist followers realized that they had
to initiate a reign of terror to prevent democratic forces in Cuba to rise against his
regime.
Fidel Castro appointed the Argentinean communist Ernesto Che Guevara, who had
personally executed some captured soldiers and peasants suspected of collaborating
with the Batista regime in the mountains, to be in charge of La Cabaña fortress in
Havana in early January 1959. It is estimated that in the first five months of 1959,
Ernesto Che Guevara supervised approximately 2,000 executions in La Cabaña. This
frightening statistic was confirmed by Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.
The Argentinean murderer recommended to Castro not to repeat the mistake of Marxist
president Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala of not shooting enough people to save his
revolution. Che Guevara had served in a minor post in Guatemala under this Marxist
president. That is why Castro implemented in Cuba the bloody reign of terror from the
very beginning to intimidate and prevent the Cuban people from rising against his
regime. This bloody reign of terror surprised not only Cubans but also Americans who
had high hopes for the new government.
Under the orders from President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA), working with Coronel Castillo de Armas and officers and soldiers in Guatemala,
had successfully overthrown this communist regime in 1954. The CIA used incorrectly
the Guatemala model in Cuba. However, the situation in Guatemala 1954 was
completely different to that of Cuba in 1961.
During the few months that Ernesto Che Guevara was in charge of the executions in La
Cabaña, he demonstrated his lack of compassion and regard for human life. Family
members who came to visit the prisoners in La Cabaña were forced to walk along the
bloody wall (paredón) where Cuban patriots, many of them children, were shot. Prior to
being shot on the wall, prisoners would yelled “¡Viva Cristo Rey! ¡Viva Cuba Libre!”
A 14-year-old boy was arrested for defending his father when soldiers came to arrest
him at their house. Che Guevara decided to shoot the boy on the wall and have his
father watch the execution. Prisoners at La Cabaña, many of them who had already
been condemned to die by revolutionary tribunals without due process of law, screamed
“Asesinos” or Assassins from behind the iron bar windows of the prison as they watched
this horrendous crime being committed to an innocent boy. Che Guevara turned around
and began firing his pistol and injured several prisoners.
In order to witness the executions, Che Guevara removed the outside wall from his
office to be able to watch the shootings of the prisoners. Frequently, Che Guevara
himself executed those prisoners who were being shot in the head. He always watched
the executions from his office or below. When the mother of a condemned prisoner
came to see Che Guevara to beg for his life, he would reply that tomorrow he was going
to be shot on the wall.
The Cuban regime, under the supervision of Che Guevara in La Cabaña, drained blood
of the prisoners before being executed in order to sell their blood to North Vietnam at
$50 a pint. Five pints of blood were taken out from those who were about to die. So
much blood was taken from those prisoners that most of them had to be taken down in
stretchers as they could not walk. Some of them lost consciousness as the result of the
loss of blood.
It is estimated that the bloody and oppressive communist regime, that Che Guevara
assisted to take power in Cuba and that has lasted for over 55 years, executed more
than 14,000 people from cities and rural areas in the island. All of these brave patriots
were shot without a fair trial or due process of law. More than 300,000 people have
been jailed and more than two million refugees were forced to leave Cuba and move to
the United States and other countries around the world. Approximately 80,000 Cubans
have died trying to cross the Straits of Florida in rafts and small boats.
Soon after achieving power in 1959, Fidel Castro began to assume dictatorial power
and began implanting a communist regime. Thousands of Democratic and freedom
loving students and people who supported the revolution against Fulgencio Batista
became disenchanted when they learned that they had changed one dictator for
another one who was much worse. From the very beginning of assuming power, Castro
began to attack the United States, even though its government suspended the shipping
of weapons to Batista in 1958, promptly recognized the new Cuban government, and
offered economic assistance.
When Castro came to visit the United States in 1959, Vice President Richard Nixon met
with him on April 19, 1959. After the 3 1/2-hour interview, Vice President Richard Nixon
wrote a memorandum to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Secretary of State Christian
A. Herter, and CIA director Allen Dulles, stating that "Castro is either incredibly naïve
about communism or is under communist discipline." Nixon thought that Fidel Castro
was "intelligent, shrewd, at times eloquent." When Nixon asked Castro why he did not
hold free elections as he had promised, Castro replied, "The people of Cuba don't want
free elections; they produce bad government." Then Nixon asked Castro why he did not
give fair trials to his opponents. Castro stated the following: "The people of Cuba don't
want them to have fair trials. They want them shot as quickly as possible."
During his 11-day visit, 32-year-old Castro told the American Association of
Newspapers Editors that he was in favor of a free press since it was "the first enemy of
dictatorship." Later, Castro told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he would
never expropriate U.S. property. He was interviewed by NBC Meet the Press and said
that he opposed communism and would side with the Western democracies. He told
students that he stood for "Cubanism" not socialism. Fidel Castro had brought many
economic advisers during his trip to the United States but ordered them not to discuss
foreign aid with American officials. He had already determined that he was going to be
an enemy of the United States, establish a dictatorship, and embrace communism.
Upon returning to Cuba, Fidel Castro's revolution initiated a period of rapid
radicalization. The Cuban dictator signed an executive order establishing the Agrarian
Reform Law on May 17, 1959. A maximum of 3,300 acres of land was set. If any
landowner exceeded this amount, his property was confiscated. The United States
complained since many of its citizens lost their properties but the Cuban regime ignored
the American government. Eventually, all land was stolen from their owners.
The confiscation of private businesses, banks, utilities, mines, and industries of Cubans
continued rapidly. All television and radio stations as well as newspapers and
magazines were taken over by the government. Private and religious schools were shut
down. The Church was persecuted and priests and nuns were deported. All political
parties, except for the Communist Party, and independent unions were ended.
Repression increased in Cuba with the establishment of a very effective secret police,
Seguridad del Estado, trained by the East German Stasi.
The result of the establishment of a communist totalitarian system in Cuba was that the
upper and middle classes were wiped out. Most of them left Cuba to seek a better life
and freedom in other countries. Cuba rapidly lost its entrepreneurial and professional
class. As Cuban professionals and workers left Cuba, the communist regime
confiscated all of their properties such as houses, furniture, automobiles, businesses,
bank accounts, and so forth.
As in other communist countries, the end of the private enterprise and free market
economy system in Cuba brought about a rapid decline in agricultural and industrial
production, disorganization, decline in the standard of living, and a worsening of the
economy. By 1961, Cubans were experiencing severe food and merchandize rationing,
which still exists today.
Cuba was among the most prosperous countries in Latin America in 1958. The Cuban
peso could be traded on one to one basis with the American dollar since there were no
restrictions in currency exchange. Cuba had no inflation. Cuba had a high literacy rate
and a developing economy with light industry. The per capita income in 1958 in Cuba
was greater than the one in Japan. Approximately 20,000 Italians had asked the Cuban
consulate in Rome to be allowed to move to Cuba to seek a better life in 1958. Today,
Cuba ranks at the bottom of the economic ladder in Latin America together with Haiti,
Bolivia, and some Central American countries.
During the first year of the revolution, numerous expeditions were initiated from Cuba
against Panama, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti with weapons that had been
purchased from the Mafia in the United States. Many Cuban diplomats were expelled
from various Latin American countries for interfering in their internal affairs.
In February 1960, Soviet Union Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan visited Cuba and
commercial and military agreements were signed between the two countries. On June
28, 1960, Castro nationalized the American oil companies. In July 1960, the Cuban
communist regime confiscated the rest of the $700,000,000 United States property.
Ernesto Che Guevara announced publicly that the revolution had found on its own the
road set by Marx.
In October 1960, the United States announced an embargo on most exports to Cuba.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower canceled the Cuban sugar quota, which gave Cuba a
higher price for its sugar than the price of the international market. When Castro
restricted the staff of the U.S. Embassy to 11 persons in Cuba, the United States broke
diplomatic relations with Cuba and withdrew its ambassador. The United States
government issued the following statement: "There is a limit to what the United States in
self-respect can endure. That limit has now been reached."
The United States decided to overthrow the communist regime in Cuba
President Dwight D. Eisenhower was determined to prevent the establishment of a
communist regime in an island 90 miles away from the United States. He ordered the
CIA to prepare a plan to overthrow the communist regime in Cuba. By early March
1960, the CIA prepared a top-secret policy paper, "A Program of Covert Action Against
the Castro regime." The plan included four points:
1.Formation of a Cuban exile organization to attract Cuban loyalties, direct opposition
activities, and provide cover for the CIA operations.
2.A powerful propaganda offensive in the name of the opposition.
3.Creation inside of Cuba of a clandestine intelligence collection and action apparatus
to be responsive to the direction of the exile organization.
4.Development outside of Cuba of a small military force to be introduced into Cuba to
organize, train, and lead resistance groups.
The Cuban exile council would serve as a cover for the U.S. action. President
Eisenhower wanted the operation to be kept secret. He did not want the hand of the
United States government to appear in the effort to overthrow the communist regime in
Cuba. This request for secrecy was also demanded by President Kennedy. However, it
became impossible to hide the U.S. involvement. This request for deniability seriously
damaged the operation.
On March 10, 1960, the National Security Council discussed ways to "bring another
government to power in Cuba." On March 17, President Eisenhower approved the CIA's
four-point military plan.
On March 11, 1960, the Frente Revolucionario Demócratico or FRD (Revolutionary
Democratic Front) was established after meetings were held in New York and Miami. It
is included representatives of several Cuban political parties and organizations. Its
name changed later to Consejo Revolucionario Cubano (Cuban Revolutionary Council).
The Swan Island radio station, an island near Honduras, began to transmit an intensive
propaganda against communism in Cuba in May 1960.
Ussepa island, near Fort Myers, Florida, was used to train the first Cubans who enrolled
in the operation as radio operators in June 1960. In mid-June 1960, 29 Cubans were
transferred to Panama to begin training in small unit infiltration. The air training program
began to get underway in July 1960 with the hiring of Cuban pilot recruits.
The CIA prepared a briefing paper for President Eisenhower in August 1960. It stated
the following:
"The initial phase of paramilitary operations envisages the development, support and
guidance of dissident groups in three areas of Cuba: Pinar del Río, Escambray and
Sierra Maestra Mountains. These groups will be organized for concerted guerrilla action
against the regime. The second phase will be initiated by a combined sea-air assault by
FRD forces in the Isle of Pines coordinated with general guerrilla activity on the main
island of Cuba. This will establish a close in staging base for future operations. The last
phase will be air assault on the Havana area with guerrilla forces in Cuba moving on the
ground from these areas into Havana area also."
The CIA plan incorporated the need to assassinate Fidel Castro. Coronel Sheffield
Edwards, director of the CIA's Office of Security, assigned the mission to James
O'Connell in August 1960, who then contacted Robert Maheu, a private investigator
who had as a client the CIA. Maheu contacted Mafia leader John Rosselli of Las Vegas
and offered him $150,000 to eliminate Castro. Rosselli had run the Mafia-controlled
Sans Souci Casino in Havana and served as its top representative in Las Vegas.
Rosselli also involved Momo Salvatore Giancana, the Mafia chief of Chicago, and
Santos Trafficante of Florida and a former syndicated chief in Havana.
Sam Giancana shared the same girlfriend, the attractive brunette Judith Exner, with
President Kennedy. Exner would later testified that she was a go-between the president
and the Mafia chief of Chicago.
Seymour M. Hersh, a former investigative reporter from the New York Times and a
1970 Pulitzer prize winner, wrote a book entitled The Dark Side of Camelot (1997). He
explained that Robert Maheu told him "taking out Castro was part of the invasion plan."
Later, Richard Bissell, CIA Deputy Director for Plans in charge of all covert operations,
stated the following: "Assassination was intended to reinforce the plan. There was the
thought that Castro would be dead before the landing. Very few, however, knew this
aspect of the plan."
Rosselli had made contact with my relative Manuel Antonio de Varona, a former prime
minister who was president of the Senate and minister of labor in Cuba and one of the
leaders of the Frente and later the Consejo, in Miami to discuss the assassination plot.
All of the plots to assassinate the Cuban dictator failed because the Mafia had become
an ally of Fidel Castro.
During the latter months of 1960, several successful maritime operations took place
infiltrating men and weapons into Cuba. However, Castro's army received 30,000 to
40,000 tons of weapons from the Soviet Union and the Cuban secret police increased
its effectiveness discovering plots and arresting and shooting opponents of the regime.
In 1960, the Guatemalan government under President Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes allowed
the United States to train anti-Communist Cubans in its territory. The CIA built an airport
at a cost of $1.8 million in 90 days in Retalhuelo for the 2506 Air Force. This airport was
high in the mountains at a location called Base Trax, where the the infantry camp was
also placed. The Base Trax was in the Sierra Madre Mountains near the Santiaguito
volcano. In the 13 days that I spend there, we experienced two minor earthquakes. In
late October 1960, the Nicaraguan government offered the CIA the use of an airstrip
and docking facilities at Puerto Cabezas, which were 250 miles closer to Cuba than the
training camps and air base in Guatemala.
The Inspector General of the CIA General Lyman Kirkpatrick was asked to analyze the
reasons for the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs. After a six-month inquiry, he wrote a report
which was highly critical of the CIA. One of his criticism was the selection of training
camps in Guatemala since plausible secrecy could not be maintained. The U.S. media
reported the existence of the training camps in Guatemala and the involvement of the
United States government in this operation.
On October 30, 1960, the newspaper La Hora in Guatemala reported about the training
camps in that country. On January 10, 1961, the New York Times wrote an article
entitled "United States Helps Train an Anti-Castro Force at Secret Guatemalan Air-
Ground Base." An exasperated President Kennedy told his press secretary Pierre
Salinger the following: "Castro doesn't need any spies in the United States, all he needs
is to read the New York Times." The U.S. media continued to publish articles stating
that the invasion of Cuba with American support was imminent. The communist regime
had spies in Guatemala and Miami and some even infiltrated the Brigade 2506.
Due to the need for secrecy, the Assault Brigade 2506 did not receive adequate
airplanes, ships, or weapons in a silly effort to hide the United States hand behind the
operation. The other changes to the plan, which eventually contributed to our defeat,
were also made in an effort to conceal that the United States hired, trained, and
equipped the members of the Assault Brigade 2506. The plausible denial ordered by
President Eisenhower and President Kennedy made the overthrow of the Castro regime
impossible.
The Soviet Union and Cuba knew about the existence of the training camps and of the
impending invasion. An intercepted Soviet cable had the exact date of the invasion.
Kirkpatrick wrote that the Cubans should have been trained in the United States to
maintain secrecy. He also criticized the illusion of plausible denial.
The president and other members of the administration had second thoughts about the
invasion of Cuba. CIA Director Allen Dulles reminded the president that they had "a
disposal problem." During the presidential campaign of 1960, Senator Kennedy had
repeatedly accused the Eisenhower-Nixon administration of allowing the establishment
of a communist beachhead in the Western hemisphere. On October 19, 1960, Senator
Kennedy stated the following: "We must attempt to strengthen the non-Batista
democratic anti-Castro forces in exile and in Cuba itself, who offer evidential hope of
overthrowing Castro. Those far, these fighters for freedom have had the surely not
support from our government."
During the famous television debates, Senator Kennedy criticized again Vice President
Nixon by saying his administration had done nothing to stop communism in Cuba.
Ironically, Vice President Nixon, who had recommended an invasion of Cuba, had to
say that Senator Kennedy had made "the most shocking reckless proposal by a
presidential candidate" by insisting a regime change in Cuba. Vice President Nixon was
furious since he was aware that CIA director Dulles had conducted a briefing with
Senator Kennedy on the invasion plans on July 23, 1960. The result was that Senator
Kennedy appeared to be a hardliner on Cuba and Vice President Nixon a weak one.
Richard Nixon became even more furious when he realized that John Kennedy
committed massive fraud with the assistance of the Mafia and stole the 1960 election.
As explained earlier, Hersh stated in his book that "the 1960 presidential election was
stolen." He explained how John Kennedy's father, Joe Kennedy, contacted Sam
Giancana, the Mafia chief of Chicago, and asked him to help his son during the election.
The Mafia would play a major role in stealing the 1960 election from Richard Nixon.
Dulles reminded the president of the "disposal problem" that he would face if the
invasion was cancelled. The Cubans would return to the United States and certainly tell
the story of betrayal by President Kennedy to every journalist that they could find. Even
though the changes in the invasion plan introduced by the president made it impossible
for the small brigade to be successful, he stated the following: "If we have to get rid of
these men, it's much better to dump them in Cuba than in the United States, especially
if that is where they want to go."
The Bay of Pigs Invasion
The soldiers, sailors, and pilots of what became the Assault Brigade 2506 were trained
for more than nine months in Panama, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, and
different places in the United States by members of the United States Armed Forces,
including Special Forces and CIA personnel. The American military instructors were
astounded at the passion and fervor displayed by the brigadistas and by how quickly
they learned military tactics. The invasion of Cuba took place in the southern coast of
the island at the Bay of Pigs, near the Zapata swamps.
Prior to the invasion, the Brigade Air Force, made up of B-26s, C-46s, and C-54s,
dropped supplies to support the anti-Communist guerrillas who were fighting in the
Escambray Mountains. The Brigade Navy conducted numerous infiltrations by
clandestine operation teams to bring weapons and supplies to the members of the
underground who were fighting the communist regime. Several weeks prior to the
invasion, several Brigade 2506 infiltration teams were deployed to various cities of Cuba
to work with the underground. Sadly, the CIA did not inform the infiltration teams of the
date of the invasion. For that reason, some of these brave soldiers were killed and
wounded and the rest were captured and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. A few were
able to escape and entered Latin American embassies that gave them political asylum.
On Monday April 17, 1961, 1,474 soldiers and many pilots participated and engaged the
thousands of enemy soldiers in combat during the three days of battle at Playa Larga,
Playa Girón, San Blas, and other combat zones. On the fourth day, the survivors of the
sinking Houston fought militia soldiers who arrived in two boats. United States CIA
officials as well as pilots from the Alabama National Guard, who had been training the
brigade pilots, also participated in the battle. Four American pilots died while providing
assistance to the infantry when their two B-26s were shot down by Castro's Jets. Gray
Lynch, a CIA officer who was the first to land at the Bay of Pigs, wrote a book in which
he said that the Brigade soldiers "fought like tigers."
The invasion plan, which had been approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA,
was radically changed by the White House a few days before D-day. The landing site
selected by the military and CIA planners was the southern city of Trinidad. This landing
site had many advantages. It was next to the Escambray Mountains where many rebels
were fighting the communist regime. It had docks for the obsolete brigade cargo ships
to unload the gasoline and oil for the airplanes, military, and communication supplies.
Trinidad had an airfield for the Brigade planes. It had a defensible beachhead and a
couple of roads that led to the city of Havana. Trinidad had a population of 20,000 that
was dissatisfied with the communist regime and could have joined the Brigade. It also
had groceries with food and hospitals staffed by doctors for the wounded. Changing this
landing site for the one at Bay of Pigs was one of the main reasons for the defeat of the
brave soldiers of the Brigade.
The plan also included five bombing raids using the entire fleet of the Brigade Air Force,
made up of 16 B-26 bombers, to destroy completely the Communist Air Force on the
ground, the heavy Stalin tanks, trucks, and heavy artillery, oil refineries, and other
military targets prior to the invasion. For the operation to succeed, the plans of the
invasion had to be followed with maximum precision and without even a small change
since the communist regime had, according to the CIA, 32,000 soldiers in the
Revolutionary Army and 200,000 in the Militia who were heavily armed by the Soviet
Union as well as a large Air Force.
On April 15, 1961, eight B-26 bombers conducted a surprise air attack on the airfields
at San Antonio de los Baños, Santiago de Cuba, and Columbia in Havana in order to
destroy the Communist Air Force. The surprise air attack, according to the approved
plan by Joint Chiefs of Staff and CIA, contemplated bombing all airfields in Cuba with all
of the Brigade 16 B-26s. By presidential order, it was reduced to only eight bombers.
One B-26 was shot down in Havana killing two Brigade pilots. The significantly reduced
air attack was successful but several enemy T-33 jets, Sea furies, and B-26s survived
the limited and reduced attack. The United States United Nations ambassador Adlai
Stevenson was not briefed on the invasion plans by the Kennedy administration. The
CIA was requested to prepare a cover story to deceive the United States and influence
world opinion.
One brigade pilot flew to Miami International Airport and said that he was a member of
the Cuban Revolutionary Air Force who along with others decided to defect and on their
way out dropped some bombs. It was a ridiculous cover story and one that the media
broke apart in less than 24 hours. When the Cuban ambassador denounced the United
States for invading Cuba, Ambassador Stevens repeated the CIA cover story and said
that the aircraft had been impounded and that Cuba would not be attacked again. When
the ambassador found out that he had been kept in the dark and another airstrike was
planned for the next day, he was furious.
Secretary of State Dean Rusk then recommended the cancelation of all future air
strikes, thus condemning the brigade to death. Unfortunately, the president accepted
Secretary Rusk´s recommendation. The bombing operations were canceled by a direct
order from President Kennedy. It was then impossible for the small brigade to achieve
victory. It was an act of criminal negligence to send the small Brigade to death and
destruction once the original landing site at Trinidad was abandoned and the airstrikes
were canceled.
Many years later, when I was a junior high school principal in Miami in my mid 30s, I
was selected as a finalist for a White House Fellows program. I flew to Atlanta to be
interviewed by a committee that was presided by former Secretary of State Dean Rusk.
Even though I had majored in political science and economics with a concentration in
Latin American studies, Rusk asked me questions only regarding Africa. He did not
even ask me one question on Latin America, which he knew had been my major in
college. He recognized my last name and knew my relative, former Prime Minister
Manuel Antonio de Varona. So he screwed me once again!
Seymour M. Hersh stated in his book the following: "Kennedy's refusal to go forward
with the essential second bombing mission-or, for that matter, simply to call off the exile
invasion-was not a military but a political decision. As Kennedy had to know, his
decision amounted to a death sentence for the Cuban exiles fighting on the ground."
Robert Maheu believed that the Kennedy administration was criminally irresponsible in
permitting the Cuban exiles to land at the Bay of Pigs without the support necessary for
survival. He told Hersh the following: "When we called off the second air raid and the
adequate air cover, we inherited the responsibility of calling off the invasion. We could
not allow those kids to hit those beaches and be destroyed by hardware that should
have been destroyed by us hours before. And as far as I am concerned, we thereby
indulged in mass murder."
Interview with two chief managers of the Bay of Pigs operation
Jacob D. Esterline, who served as Chief of the Special Cuba Task Force established to
run the Bay of Pigs operation, and United States Marine Coronel Jack Hawkins, who
served as the chief military specialist on the Cuban Task Force in charge of the
invasion, were appalled at the changes made by the Kennedy administration to the
original CIA plan. Coronel Jack Hawkins, in an interview held October 1996, stated the
following:
"My belief and hope at the time was that we would have established absolute control of
the air before we ever landing this force which I described as being absolutely
essential and that the air operations in support of our force in the Trinidad area would
be very spectacular in Cuba and inflict serious casualties on Castro's forces and
militia... Trinidad can be used at the site to establish a provisional government which
can be recognized by the United States and more than American states and be given
over military assistance. The way will then be paved for the United States military
intervention and pacification of Cuba. This will result in the prompt overthrow of the
Castro government. We should have gotten rid of that regime. I really assume that the
national governmental what it said when it said, we want to overthrow Castro.
Now, of course we had a change in administration when President Kennedy was
elected and that changed things considerably."
Hawkins also said that he went with CIA director Allen Dulles two or three times over to
White House meetings in the Oval Office with President Kennedy and members of his
cabinet. He said that Secretary of State Dean Rusk spoke out more than any other
cabinet members and that he was completely opposed to this operation and to the use
of any aircraft. He stated the following: "I don't believe that anyone was explaining to
Kennedy that you can take a thin-skinned troop transport onto a hostile beach and drop
anchor and start unloading troops with hostile fighters and bombers overhead. Nobody
in the administration at high levels seem to know that and nobody made it clear to
president that I know of."
Hawkins's boss, Richard Bissell, told him that the president had completely rejected the
Trinidad landing site because it was too "noisy" and looked too much like an "invasion."
He felt that Mr. Bissell acted unwisely in not defending the Trinidad landing site and for
later not fighting harder to preserve the air capability and particularly not to allow the
final strike to be completely canceled. The president had given him only three days to
come up with a new landing area. The Bay of Pigs was selected. However, Hawkins
made it clear to Richard Bissell that the brigade could be sent there and that this area
could hold for a little while but not for very long. Moreover, the brigade had no chance to
break out of there.
When the airstrikes were canceled by President Kennedy both Jacob D. Esterline and
Coronel Jack Hawkins went to see Bissell at his house and resigned since they knew
the invasion was going to be a disaster. Esterline stated during the October 1996
interview that "We looked at every aspect and the odds and the percentage of success
and we finally decided that we couldn't deliver on them." Hawkins stated, "I finally came
to the conclusion that this could not work and it was going to be a disaster." Hawkins
remembered Bissell saying that, as far as the air is concerned, he thought he could
persuade the president to allow us to conduct enough air operation to get rid of the
Castro Air Force. Both of them were persuaded not to resign.
When Coronel Hawkins was asked what factors led to the failure of the invasion, he
replied the following:
"We should have done it so we could succeed... No one seemed to have success in
mind. What they had in mind was is someone going to know about this. Success was
what they should have been thinking about. It was a fundamental error that was really
be underpinning all the other errors made because everybody at the political level was
trying for plausible deniability and that caused many restrictions that the operation really
could not be successful. We wanted to use enough aircraft to do what had to be done.
State Department opposed that from the very first day ever heard about it and never
stopped opposing it. They opposed the use of American pilots, they opposed the use of
American bases. That was Mr. Rusk, the Secretary of State. So the Department of State
crippled and destroyed this operation. That is my considered judgment that I thought at
the time and for many years after, and they were never blamed for anything."
Jacob D. Esterline answered the same question by stating the following: "It failed, I
guess, primarily because starting at the top of the government nobody wanted to do it
so badly that they were prepared to take the steps to ensure success."
Frank de Varona´s story of his participation in the Bay of Pigs
Shortly after midnight, our ship, the Houston, an old liberty type vessel, entered the Bay
of Pigs on April 17, 1961. There was complete silence, only the splashing of waves
against the ship could be heard. Our D-Day had arrived!
I was reminiscing and recalling that less than a month before my brother, Jorge, and I
were students at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia. When the winter quarter ended in
mid March, we both arrived in Miami and announced to our astonished parents that we
wanted to enlist in the Brigade and train in the camps of Guatemala to liberate our
country from communism.
My father allowed my brother, who was 19 at the time, to enlist but refused to allow me
to do so since I was only 17. Eventually, my father agreed and signed a consent form
since I was a minor. I was finally able to join my brother, many cousins, and other
friends in Guatemala on April 1, 1961. Fortunately, I attended Admiral Farragut
Academy, a naval academy prep school from 1957 to 1960 in St. Petersburg, Florida
where I graduated in 1960. We had military discipline and AFA prepared me to be a
soldier. Also at my father’s cattle ranch in Camaguey, Cuba my brother and I would
shoot birds so we were used to handling a rifle. In fact at the training camp in
Guatemala I was the among the best shooters in my company, I wrote a letter to my
parents stating "any enemy soldier at 300 yards is a dead soldier." My parents kept all
the letters that I wrote from the training camp in Guatemala and from prison and I have
them in my home
After barely two weeks of training, I was flown to Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua. On the
night of April 14, our five small rusty cargo ships left for Cuba. We were not allowed to
cook onboard since we were carrying gasoline for the planes and tons of ammunition,
which made our ships floating bombs. Later one of our ships, Río Escondido, blew up
after being attacked by Castro’s Air Force.
At 2:00 a.m., the Houston arrived in front of Playa Larga. I was on the deck of the ship
anxiously waiting to disembark with other soldiers from the Fifth Battalion. The more
experienced soldiers from the Second Battalion began to disembark first in the small
boats that we were carrying. The crane used to place these boats on the water made a
tremendously loud noise and soon we were under fire by the enemy on land. The
Houston had four 50-caliber machine guns which immediately began firing at the enemy
in Playa Larga.
The Barbara J, a support ship, also began to fire at the enemy. Throughout the night I
watched the illuminated tracer bullets hitting the shore. The outboard engines in some
of the small aluminum boats broke and others got lost in the dark or sank when they hit
the rocks and reefs on the beach. CIA operative Gray Lynch wrote in his book that is so
an American placing the wrong combination of oil and gasoline in the outboard motors
of the small boats. He complained but was overruled. When morning arrived, the entire
Fifth Battalion and squad from the Second were still on board the Houston.
At 6:00 a.m., we saw a B-26 flying in our direction and we all applauded. We expected
air support as we had been told that “the sky would be ours.” Much to our surprise and
despair, the B-26 opened fire on us from one end to the other of the Houston. Our
nightmare had just begun. We were repeatedly attacked by Castro’s B-26s, Sea Furies,
and T-33 jets. Several of our soldiers were killed or wounded. I saw a bomb dropped by
a B-26 so close to our ship that its explosion shook the Houston.
At about 9:00 a.m., we were hit in the stern by a Sea Fury’s rocket. The explosion made
a ten-foot hole in the bottom of the ship and damaged the rudder. Fortunately the rocket
did not explode or we would have all died. The Houston started to sink fast and its
captain, Luis Morse, beached her about a mile from the coast. I heard explosions and
saw smoke and thought that the ship was going to blow up at any moment. Soldiers
began to jump in the water but I hesitated since I had seen sharks in the water. I finally
jumped in with a knife in my hand. I had left my rifle and backpack aboard but kept 360
bullets and grenades around my chest and waist and was wearing my uniform including
my boots. With all this weight on me, I soon hit the bottom of the ocean and almost
drown. I had great difficulty reaching the surface due to the weight I was carrying. With
great effort, I discarded everything in the water except for my pants.
Together with my roommate at Georgia Tech, Eduardo Sánchez, I started to swim
towards the shore. After more than 53 years, I still vividly remember what happened on
that day. Enemy planes were shooting at those of us in the water, many soldiers were
screaming and drowning and some were being devoured by sharks. It took me about an
hour to swim to shore as I had to float to rest along the way several times. Feeling
completely exhausted, I eventually emerged out of the water. I knelt down, thanked
God, and kissed the sand. I looked around and saw desperate unarmed soldiers
begging for water, many of them wearing only underwear with their bodies covered with
oil.
Later on that sad morning our battalion commander Ricardo Montero Duque asked for
four volunteers to row a lifeboat back to the Houston to rescue the wounded soldiers
and others still onboard. I volunteered together with Mario Cabello, Jorge Marquet, and
another soldier. We rowed as fast as we could to the Houston, always looking at the sky
for enemy planes that continued shooting at us from time to time. We were able to
rescue several soldiers and some of our wounded. One of them was Dr. René Lamar, a
medical doctor who had been hit in the arm. Among the soldiers we brought to shore
were the Fifth Battalion second-in-command Félix Pérez Tamayo, Luis González
Lalondry, and Fico Rojas.
In the afternoon, we walked north bordering the beach towards Playa Larga.
Unfortunately, there were enemy soldiers at a nearby small village called la Caleta de
Buenaventura and only a handful of us had rifles. Our battalion commander Ricardo
Montero Duque ordered us to return to the area near the partially sunk Houston and to
wait to be rescued.
Without food or water I waited with the others. On Thursday, April 18, at approximately
5:00 p.m., as our priest Father Tomás Macho (who years later married me to my wife
Haydee) began to offer a mass, at the same time a boat with six enemy soldiers landed
in the area. The few of us who had rifles opened fire killing or wounding them. At that
moment, since our position was already known, we received the order to disband and
attempt to escape. But where should we go? We had no maps and we were in a swamp
area.
I was very weak and extremely thirsty. With a small group, I started to walk south not
knowing where to go. By Saturday morning, April 20, I could not speak due to the
dryness in my mouth and throat caused by extreme thirst. At about noon, I was
captured by the enemy.
During the early morning of April, 17,1961, two Brigade obsolete transport ships of
World War II "Liberty" class, the Houston and the Rio Escondido, which were carrying
military supplies, food, gas and oil for the airplanes, ammunition, and communication
equipment, were sunk by Castro's Air Force. The other ships were driven away under
heavy fire.
Several C-46s dropped 177 paratroopers from the First Battalion in different places of
the Bay of Pigs area. With the exception of the survivors of the sinking of the Houston,
the rest of the battalions landed at Playa Larga and Playa Girón.
For three days, the abandoned Brigade soldiers at the beaches fought bravely against
the overwhelming number of 60,000 enemy soldiers. The Brigade soldiers and the
Brigade Air Force inflicted approximately 6,000 casualties on the enemy soldiers. After
the third day of heavy fighting, the Brigade ran out of ammunition. The soldiers retreated
into the swamps where some brigadistas continue to fight for several more days until
they were killed or captured. The Brigade lost 104 soldiers and pilots, had more than
100 wounded in action and 1,198 soldiers were captured.
A difficult year of brutal imprisonment at the Castillo del Príncipe fortress in Havana
followed. We were packed like sardines in a can, starved, given polluted water with
dead rats in the water and beaten.
The Trial
After a year of imprisonment we were given a trial and sentenced to thirty years at hard
labor or a ransom of money which ranged from $25,000 to $500,000 for each prisoner.
The total amount was $62 million. The shameful trial was in violation of the Geneva
Convention since prisoners of war cannot be subjected to a trial. While in prison, we
were beaten and tortured, drank water with dead rats, and suffered hepatitis and
dysentery and all types of skin diseases due to the lack of hygiene. One untreated
brigadista died of hepatitis and a couple became insane for life. The Brigade prisoners
of war were denied medical and dental treatment and medicines in violation of the
Geneva Convention.
The Isle of Pines prison
After the illegal trial, 211 Brigade prisoners of war, who each had a ransom value of
$100,000, and the three leaders of the Brigade who each had a ransom of $500,000,
were placed for seven months in complete isolation in the worst prison in Cuba located
in the Isle of Pines. My brother Jorge and I were in the $100,000 group because my
father had been rich. All of our family property by then had been confiscated and we
were penniless. Each prisoner was also set a ransom of money. While in prison I
learned French, German, religion, accounting, and history, and read hundreds of books
until we ran out of toilet paper and had to use the pages of our books.
After the illegal trial, 211 Brigade prisoners of war, who each had a ransom value of
$100,000, and the three leaders of the Brigade who each had a ransom of $500,000,
were placed for seven months in complete isolation in the worst prison in Cuba located
in the Isle of Pines. My brother Jorge and me were in the $100,000 group because my
father had been rich. All of our family property had been confiscated and we were
penniless. We were packed into a small room, which had a capacity for 40 people. We
were denied soap, toilet paper, toothpaste, and medicine for seven months.
At the Presidio Modelo at the Isle of Pines, we had access to one toilet and two
showers, which were available to be used at different times for 10 minutes a day. The
little and inadequate and horrible food that we were fed was often poisoned.
We were kept like sardines in a can, slept on the bare floor, and often in the middle of
the night beaten by communist prison guards. The intolerable conditions and abuses
perpetrated to the 214 members of the Brigade as well as the other 5,000 political
prisoners in the Isle of Pines led to a hunger strike that lasted three days. The strike
was called off when the prison guards cut off the water and several prisoners fainted
and were close to death. The foundations of the building where the brigadistas were
being kept had dynamite. We were informed by the prison guards that they would blow
it up if the United States invaded Cuba.
Freedom in the United States
At last we were freed on December 25, 1962, after 20 months in the Castillo del
Príncipe and Isle of Pines prisons. My parents cried when they saw my brother and I in
Miami. My weight at the time of release was 120 pounds.
The United States, under the direction of President John F. Kennedy, ransomed the
prisoners of war by paying $53 million in medicines, food, and cash to the communist
regime. President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy welcomed the
returning prisoners on December 29, 1962 at the Orange Bowl in Miami. The president
promised to return the flag of the Brigade 2506 presented to him to a free Havana.
The week at the Bay of Pigs and the nearly two-year imprisonment made me appreciate
even more the value of freedom and those everyday privileges and comforts that we
take for granted, such as food, water, housing, cleanliness. Despite having lost our
freedom along with our home, cattle ranch, and bank accounts in Cuba and living below
the poverty level in Miami, I was certain that I was going through a transitory situation. I
was determined to achieve an education and become a successful professional in the
United States. I have had a great life in this country as an educator and writer. I am
happily married to a great woman, Dr. Haydee Prado, a school psychologist, and have a
wonderful daughter Irene, a successful sales consultant, and a handsome grandson,
Danny.
Who were the members of the Assault Brigade 2506?
The soldiers, sailors, mechanics, and pilots of the Brigade 2506 represented a cross-
section of the Cuban population made up of whites, blacks, Chinese, and Arabs who
came from different sectors of Cuba. The members of the Brigade represented all social
classes in Cuba. Some were wealthy and the rest belonged to the middle and working
classed.
These brave Cubans represented all the professions and workers of the island. Some
were highly educated and others could barely read. There were priests, cattle ranchers,
farmers, medical doctors, dentists, lawyers, engineers, bankers, businessmen,
carpenters, construction workers, cooks, actors, musicians, bartenders, barbers, military
personnel, and students. The largest group of the Brigade was made up by 240
students. All brigadistas were united in their desire to restore the 1940 Constitution of
the Cuban Republic, the rule of law, democracy, freedom, and respect for human rights.
The average age of the members of the Brigade was 23 years old. The oldest was a
former World War II paratrooper and a highly decorated Cuban American soldier who
fought in the Pacific theater. The youngest was a 15-year-old infantry soldier who had to
lie about his age in order to enroll.
The members of the Brigade Air Force consisted of former military and naval pilots,
most of whom had graduated from United States military schools. They included former
airline pilots, private pilots, crop dusters, and student pilots. The naval forces were
composed of naval and merchant marine personnel, yacht owners, and students. The
frogmen (UTD) were mostly students.
After the return of the brigadistas, 211 of them joined the United States Armed Forces
and became second lieutenants. Other brigadistas enlisted as soldiers. Many of them
served in the different branches of the United States Armed Forces for a number of
years. Those who remained in the Armed Forces of the United States as a career
achieved high ranks. One became major general of the National Guard, six colonel, 19
lieutenant colonel, 29 captain, and 64 lieutenant. They fought bravely in the 1965
invasion of the Dominican Republic and during the Vietnam War, where some died and
many were wounded in combat.
Other Brigade members joined the CIA and assisted our government to fight
communists in Latin America. Brigade Armed Forces officers and Brigade CIA officers
assisted several Central American and South American countries fight communist
insurgencies. Brigade 2506 pilots fought in the Republic of Congo against the
Communist Army led by Che Guevara. Two Brigade members working for the CIA
assisted the Bolivian army in capturing and executing Che Guevara.
Other Brigade members became successful entrepreneurs, elected and appointed
leaders, professionals in a variety of fields, and highly skilled workers. Several were
elected to the House of Representatives and Senate of the Florida Legislature. One is
still serving as a Metro-Dade Commissioner. One served as a member of the Miami-
Dade County School Board.
I became a writer and have written 21 books and hundreds of articles in newspapers
and magazines. I served in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools as a social studies
teacher, assistant principal, principal of three different schools, region director and
region superintendent, associate superintendent for curriculum, and interim deputy
superintendent of schools. Later I became associate professor at Florida International
University
The aftermath of the Bay of Pigs
The failure to overthrow the tyrannical and oppressive Castro dictatorship during the
Bay of Pigs invasion increased the exodus of Cuban immigrants to the United States
and specially to South Florida. More than 800,000 Cuban-Americans now live in Greater
Miami. They have helped transform Greater Miami into the prosperous and culturally
diverse international city that welcomed them. Cuban Americans can be found in all
professions and trades and they are making a valuable contribution to the city of Miami
and South Florida.
Greater Miami is today one of the most dynamic, multilingual, and culturally diverse
cities in the United States. Today, many Cuban Americans, who made up almost 60%
of the Hispanic population in the area, occupy important positions in government,
medicine, business, labor, science and technology, education, religion, the arts and
entertainment, and in all other professions.