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

United States Cuba Brigade 2506

Commanders and leaders

Fidel Castro John F. Kennedy José Ramón Pepe San Román Fernández Erneido Oliva Juan Almeida Bosque Che Guevara Efigenio Ameijeiras

Strength

25,000 Cuban Army 1,474 ground 200,000 forces of the Assault Cuban Militia Brigade 2506 9,000 armed police

Casualties and losses

Cuban Army: 176 killed 500+ wounded] 118 killed, 360 Cuban Militia wounded and 1202 and Police: captured c. 4,000 killed, wounded, missing

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 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.