For a second, let’s restrain our rage at the liberal media and Hollywood for studiously ignoring these men and instead praising their jailer Fidel. Today these ex-political prisoners head an organization in Miami called Plantados Hasta la Libertad en Cuba. They also helped me with this book, with their recollections for sure, but even more, with the example of their courage and fortitude. Friends, whenever you think you’re having a bad day, you might drop these men a line.
On April 18, 1961, Castro’s Soviet-trained and Soviet-led forces were getting such a stomping at the hands of utterly abandoned men they outnumbered forty to one, that at least two sources claim a frantic Fidel Castro actually soiled his pants in panic. The man largely responsible for Castro’s malodorous discomfiture that day was a Cuban military man pre-Castro, and a retired U.S. brigadier general today, Erneido Oliva. When his betrayed, decimated, thirst-crazed, and ammo-less men were finally overwhelmed (but not defeated) by Castro’s bumblers at the Bay of Pigs, Oliva snarled at his brainless eunuch of an opponent, José Fernandez (a Spaniard, technically), “The only reason you’re holding a gun on us right now, Fernandez, is because we ran out of ammo.”
During almost two years in Castro’s dungeons, Oliva and his men lived under a daily death sentence. Escaping that sentence would have been easy: simply sign the little confession (Communists just love bullshit paperwork!) saying they were “mercenaries of the Yankee imperialists.”
Neither Oliva nor any of his men signed the document. His hundreds of men stood solidly with their commander. “We will die with dignity!” snapped Oliva at a furious Fernandez again, and again, and again. To a Castroite such an attitude not only enrages but baffles. It is an honor for me to include General Erneido Oliva’s name among those who helped me with this project.
Among the many other Bay of Pigs vets who helped were Alberto “Pilo” Fontova, Fernando Marquet, and Esteban Bovo—part of a list too long to mention. Miami radio star Ninoska Perez-Castellon was also on hand, informing me, directing me, amusing me. Señora Ela Manero saved me many a trip to the library with her painstaking research.
Considering the topic, this could have been a very morose book. I like to think I sidestepped that, and did so with the help of all my invaluable collaborators. So, amigos and amigas: muchisimas gracias!
And one more thing. On the home stretch of completing this book, with my tongue hanging, with the crowds roaring, with the finish line in sight, I almost lost my life in a hideous accident. On September 11, 2004, as it turned out.
I was thrown from my bicycle and plunged off a tall bridge, bounced off sharp steel girders on the way down, and finally landed face and head first, twenty feet below on jagged boulders. I remained there unconscious and bleeding heavily for half an hour till passersby rushed to the rescue.
The result: fractured skull, subdermal hematoma, smashed eye and orbit, eight-inch gash in the forehead with cracked skull exposed, leg and hip broken in six places, five ribs broken along with arm and hand, and various internal injuries. The first few days in intensive care the speculations ran to survival. We cleared that one. Then came speculations about paralysis, life in a wheelchair (I’m a maniacal outdoorsman, not a happy prospect). We cleared that one. Then came speculations concerning severe brain damage from the horrific trauma to the head (I write and speak for a living, again not a happy prospect).
Well, to end this depressing screed, this past Christmas season, by a process not easily explained by the fine folks who removed prayer from schools and mangers from courthouses, I found myself not just merrily celebrating the holidays along with this book’s completion, along with my dad’s seventy-eighth birthday, along with my twenty-sixth wedding anniversary, along with my parents’ fifty-fifth anniversary, along with my daughter’s engagement—but dancing at the multifarious and raucous celebrations!
And I’m talking everything from the Hustle and Bump to the Boot-Scootin-Boogie and Cha-Cha-Cha! I was on a crutch and wearing an eyepatch—so, okay, I wasn’t exactly John Travolta. But STILL!
So that takes care of the physical recovery, you say. Now how ’bout that brain damage? Well, these rollicking festivities also found me as engaging, witty, erudite, sparkling, talkative, boisterous . . . Oh hi, honey. (My darling wife often reads over my shoulder, making helpful suggestions.)
“A bit wordy, Humberto. Just write as ‘obnoxious as ever.’ ”
“Thanks, honey!” You get the point, amigos. Thanks to a chorus of prayers, thanks to a positively suffocating avalanche of moral (and physical) support from my family, and a crowd of—not fair-weather, by any means—friends (led by Chris and Cindy Keys, along with the Raymond family) I find myself firmly back in the saddle. And this book is the result.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
SPANISH LANGUAGE SOURCES
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All the following source books published by Ediciones Universal, Miami, Florida
Aguirre, Rafael. Amanecer (Historias del Clandestinaje/ la lucha de la resistencia contra Castro dentro de Cuba), 1996.
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WEBZINE SOURCES IN SPANISH
www.aguadadepasajeros.bravepages.com/
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ENGLISH LANGUAGE BOOKS
Abel, Elie. The Missile Crisis. New York: Bantam Books.
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Arenas, Reinaldo. Before Night Falls: A Memoir. New York: Viking, 1993.
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Azicri, Max. Cuba: Politics, Economics and Society. London: Pinter Publishers, 1988.
Batista, Fulgencio. Cuba Betrayed. New York: Vantage Press, 1962.
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Beschloss, Michael. The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960–1963. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.
Bethel, Paul. The Losers. The Definitive Report, by an Eyewitness, of the Communist Conquest of Cuba and the Soviet Penetration in Latin America. New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1969.
Blasier, Cole and Carmelo Meso-Lago, eds. Cuba in the World. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1979.
Blight, James G. and Dav
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Blight, James G. and Peter Kornbluh., eds. Politics of Illusion: The Bay of Pigs Invasion Reexamined. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998.
Bonachea, Ramón L. and Marta San Martín. The Cuban Insurrection: 1952–1959. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1974.
Bonachea, Ramon and Nelson P. Valdes. Cuba in Revolution. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1972.
Bonsal, Philip W. Cuba, Castro, and the United States. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972.
Bourne, Peter G. Fidel: A Biography of Fidel Castro. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1986.
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Brigada 2506. La Sentencia: Brigada de Asalto 2506. Habana: n.p.
Brown, Charles L. and Armando M. Lago. The Politics of Psychiatry in Revolutionary Cuba. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1991.
Brugioni, Dino A. Eyeball to Eyeball: The Inside Story of the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: Random House, 1991.
Calzon, Frank. Castro’s Gulag: The Politics of Terror. Council for Inter-American Security, 1979.
Cantor, Jay. The Death of Che Guevara. New York: Vintage Books, 1983.
Carbonell, Nestor. And the Russians Stayed: The Sovietization of Cuba. New York: William Morrow and Co., 1989.
Castro, Fidel. History Will Absolve Me. London: Jonathan Cape, 1968.
———. My Early Years. New York: Ocean Press, 1998.
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