The Jeffreys were originally from Texas. They did everything they could to help us. A few days later, she took my mother shopping. The next day she consoled her when my mother broke down crying. Mr. Jeffrey was a World War II and Korea veteran. He knew some Spanish, and I’ll never forget him sitting next to my grandfather. He
apologized,
in his heavy Texas twang, for what had happened at the Bay of Pigs—as if it were
his
doing, as if he hadn’t done enough for others’ freedom already.
The next day, there was another knock on the door. It was our upstairs neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Simpson. They invited us over—in their hilarious (to us) Southern drawl—to share in that mountain of chicken and burgers they were scorching on the barbeque. The Simpsons hailed from Birmingham, Alabama. To Hollywood and PBS, that’s the land of Bull Connor and fire hoses and nothing more. But the next day Mrs. Simpson knocked again and offered to drive us to school (we all spoke Spanish, but we learned English in two months because there was no bilingual education in those days). She’d also turn up holding a shopping bag full of clothes outgrown by the Simpson children. They were for us.
The next day, here came Mrs. Boudreaux from across the street. She was a native Louisianan, perpetually cheerful. She brought a big pot of gumbo and a phone number of a friend who might have a job for Grandad and—
gracias a Dios!
—speaks a little Spanish
Here we were in the very gizzard of the “bigoted” and “hate-filled” South, and our Southern neighbors turned up every day to help us out. Later, when we moved to the suburbs, another family became even more special. Years before, the lady of the house had worked at a local plant riveting the hulls on the famous Higgins boats. Eisenhower called them “the boats that won World War II.” One such boat carried her fiancé to shore at Casablanca, another took him to Salerno, and yet another took him to Omaha Beach, where a burst from a German machine gun riddled his legs. Almost forty years later, I watched him limping up the aisle, grimacing slightly with each step. Then he broke into a huge smile while handing me his daughter as a bride.
As one whose family was almost suffocated by their generosity, I’m here to tell you that the arms of Dixie opened damn wide for these foreigners. My family landed in the South, but I’ve heard compatriots relate similar stories about everywhere in America, literally “from sea to shining sea.”
Nobody called the Americans who welcomed us “the greatest generation” back then. But thousands of destitute Cubans knew them (and still remember them) as “
el pueblo que nos abrio los brazos
” (the people who opened their arms to us). We love America, and we look forward to the day when Cuba can enjoy the freedom that we’ve found from Miami to New Orleans to Los Angeles to New York.
Viva America! Viva Cuba Libre!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people helped
me with this book, but let me begin with New York talk-radio legend Barry Farber. “You gotta write that book, Humberto!” (This started almost five years ago.) “America
needs
to hear this stuff!—and they need to hear it in English, and especially in
your
English! Better yet, they
want
to hear this stuff. I hear their excited response when we discuss these things on my radio show. People are
fascinated
. This is all
news
! History may be ‘bunk,’ as Henry Ford claimed. But Cuba’s history under Castro’s murderous reign, his threats against our nation—all that isn’t really ‘history’ to most U.S. citizens. They’ve never heard it before. Our media shuns it all. So it sounds like a late-breaking story!”
It’s not like Barry himself is unknowledgeable in these matters. In January 1959, when Castro rolled into Havana atop a tank (which had never fired a shot, by the way) declaring, “I’m a democrat! I’m a humanist! A Christian! I
hate
Communism! I
hate
dictatorships! Cuban people, you have my
solemn
word!” Barry was in Havana as a reporter for NBC radio. He was the first American newsman to interview Che Guevara.
Barry persisted. “Humberto! If
ever
the overused ‘untold story’ term would fit a book, it’s for one
you’d
write about the Cuban revolution—the things we discuss on my show—and now we’ve got all this Che Guevara stuff, movies, watches, shirts, for heavens sake! Get cracking, will ya?”
Well, here it is. The information and insights in these pages didn’t just bubble up in my head spontaneously. Word got out and a throng of friends, family members, and acquaintances—some are bona fide scholars, many more are participants with firsthand roles in the Cuban drama—all rushed in to help me. A deluge of information, anecdotes, recollections, and insights rolled in.
After each session, the source usually had a friend or cousin or in-law with even more of the same, far more than I could ever put in the book. “
Pues claro, chico!
Fulano would be
happy
to help! He knew (Fidel, or Che, or Raul, or Vilma, or Celia, or Cubela, or Camilo, or Batista, or Pedraza, or Masferrer) personally. He was (in the Sierra, or at Moncada, or at the Isle of Pines prison, or at Playa Giron, or in the Escambray, or in the presidential palace, or in Angola).” Then my host looks at his watch. “Ah! Fulano is probably taking his siesta right now, but here’s his phone! Give him a call tonight! He’d love to talk!”
Then the
same
process with Fulano. (If it sounds like I’m complaining, please perish the thought. I’ve rarely learned as much and so enjoyably.)
The thing kept growing. Every bit of this deluge of info surprised me, fascinated me, enraged me, moved me—I simply
had
to put it all down. Though I specialized in Cuba while earning my master’s degree in Latin American studies at Tulane University, I had no intention of writing a textbook. Most of the information cascading in was much too juicy to fit a textbook’s soporific format.
Anyway, here’s a (probably partial) list of my aides in this project. Besides spewing forth a ton of useful information himself, Miguel Uría, who was present at many Castro-Che meetings in the early days, who plunged into the anti-Castro fight from week one, who fought at the Bay of Pigs, who was a former Castro political prisoner, and who nowadays edits the superb electronic magazine
Guaracabuya, Amigos del Pais
—this
very
busy man also assumed the role of my hunting guide, pointing me here and there to the best sources in the vast and tangled field.
Carlos Bringuier was press spokesman in the early 1960s for the
Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil,
a group one CIA analyst called “the most militant and deeply motivated of all the Cuban exile organizations seeking to oust Castro.” Carlos was also the man who outed Lee Harvey Oswald (and was almost deported back to Castro’s Cuba for the impropriety) in August 1963 (observe the date closely). Carlos Bringuier had his own two books,
Red Friday
and
Operacion Judas
, to offer me, then provided ten times as much info and insights in interviews.
What with keeping our taxes low, our nation strong and safe, and our hard-earned tax dollars away from Castro’s thieving and bloody paws, you’d think Republican congressmen Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart might have enough on their hands. Well, they also found time to help me—but always on
their
time,
not
their constituents’ time, please note!
Soon they had me in touch with their father, former Cuban senator Raphael Diaz-Balart. The senior Diaz-Balart, while recounting his relationship with the young Fidel Castro and his grapplings with U.S. State Department and CIA wizards and soothsayers, had me rapt with fascination—and convulsed with mirth. That we could all be as healthy, mentally sharp, and downright exuberant when late septuagenarians as Señor Raphael Diaz-Balart. Indeed, Señor Diaz-Balart contrasts most dramatically in these departments with his former brother-in-law, Fidel Castro.
Both for your sake, dear reader, and mine, I did my damnedest to avoid professional academics for this book. When one appeared, his arms bulging with reams of his highfalutin and always unreadable hooey, his mouth primed to spew forth the usual geyser of idiocies, I ducked into the nearest bushes. I scurried into restrooms and clambered atop a seat in a stall. If he caught me in person at home, I feigned contagious maladies.
So you can imagine my shock when I learned that Victor Triay, Juan Clark, Marta Pelaez, Manuel Márquez-Sterling, and Armando Lago all qualify as professors, yet they talk a normal language, engage a listener, and use examples of everyday situations and everyday people! Even crazier: They laugh! Crazier still, they make their
guest
laugh! Crazier even
still,
their knowledge is vast and penetrating—and avoids the asinine platitudes and stultifying political correctness that defines their profession. Somehow, these Cuban Americans’ professional training and daily labors have left their critical and intellectual faculties (and
even
their senses of humor) unatrophied. They all contributed important material to this book.
If someone has written more exhaustively or authoritatively about the Cuban people’s armed resistance to Castro-Communism than Enrique Encinosa, I’ve somehow missed him, as have most Cuban Americans. Enrique’s help in this project with his books, films, and insights has been enormous. I owe him big time (and not just for postage).
Enrique Ros is the ultimate source on the anti-Castro fight from Florida and has punched more holes in Camelot’s hot air balloon than anyone. Señor Ros’s daughter, Republican representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, continues the fight for Cuban freedom and American security (don’t forget, these are one and the same) from Congress today.
To understand—to
really
get at the bottom of—Castro’s recent shenanigans, you simply have to read Dr. Ernesto Betancourt’s column in
El Nuevo Herald
. Dr. Betancourt served briefly in Castro’s first government. Today he’s a researcher for, and the voice of, Radio Martí. Dr. Betancourt made
all
of his research,
all
of his insights,
all
of his well-informed speculations available to me. He was a tremendous help with this project.
Nestor Carbonnel might have enlightened me enough with his superb book,
And the Russians Stayed: The Sovietization of Cuba
. But no, he persisted in helping by answering my every inquiry about the early years of the U.S.-Castro face-off—motives, ploys, personalities, the behind-the-scenes jockeying and skullduggery. Mr. Carbonnel was neck-deep in it himself, and he shared his experiences and insights generously. He was a godsend for this project.
In Stalin’s Russia it was GULAG. In Castro’s Cuba UMAP stood for the same. Emilio Izquierdo can tell you about them. At age eighteen he was rounded up at Russian machine gun–point and herded into the barbed wire camps. His crime? “Active in Catholic associations” read the Castroite document. Emilio heads the Former UMAP Prisoners Association in Miami today. I was fortunate to have Emilio as a source and inspiration for this project.
Eusebio Peñalver, Angel de Fana, Ernesto Díaz Rodríguez, and Mario Chanes de Armas all served longer in Castro’s gulag than Solzhenitsyn suffered in Stalin’s. In fact, they were imprisoned three times as long. These men represent the longest-serving political prisoners of the century. They could have easily escaped such lengthy suffering by playing Castro’s little game, by agreeing to “rehabilitation” classes, by wearing the uniforms of common prisoners. Castro made the offer often.
Castro got his answer as swiftly and as clearly as the German commander who surrounded Bastogne got his. “It sounds strange, but no man in Cuba is as free as a political prisoner in rebellion,” says longtime Castro political prisoner Francisco Chappi. “We were tortured, we were starved. But we lived in total defiance.”
“Inside of our souls we were free,” says another former political prisoner named Sergio Carrillo, a paratrooper at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and a Catholic priest in America today. “We
refused
to commit spiritual suicide,” Father Carillo stresses.
For a second, let’s restrain our rage at the liberal media and Hollywood for studiously ignoring these men and instead praising their jailer Fidel. Today these ex-political prisoners head an organization in Miami called
Plantados Hasta la Libertad en Cuba
. They also helped me with this book, with their recollections for sure, but even more, with the example of their courage and fortitude. Friends, whenever
you
think
you’re
having a bad day, you might drop these men a line.
On April 18, 1961, Castro’s Soviet-trained and Soviet-led forces were getting such a stomping at the hands of utterly abandoned men they outnumbered forty to one, that at least two sources claim a frantic Fidel Castro actually soiled his pants in panic. The man largely responsible for Castro’s malodorous discomfiture that day was a Cuban military man pre-Castro, and a retired U.S. brigadier general today, Erneido Oliva. When his betrayed, decimated, thirst-crazed, and ammo-less men were finally overwhelmed (but not defeated) by Castro’s bumblers at the Bay of Pigs, Oliva snarled at his brainless eunuch of an opponent, José Fernandez (a Spaniard, technically), “The only reason
you’re
holding a gun on
us
right now, Fernandez, is because we ran out of ammo.”