CIA agents organized murder in central and western Cuba
Konstantin Pugh
from http://www.granma.cu/cubademanda/ingles/demanda4-i.html
* Revelations of horrific acts by armed bands in the so-called Las
Villas Northern Front directed by U.S. agent Lucas, together with
similar actions in Matanzas
* Fresh charges expand details of crimes against children and the death
of 14 persons in Pinar del Río
* Clarification in relation to over 500 murders
THE third day of gory revelations concerning anti-Cuban activities
organized by the U.S. government during the 1960-1965 period continued
with the presentation of evidence which included crimes committed by
the so-called Las Villas Northern Front, similar acts in Pinar del Río,
the murder of children and U.S. participation in counterrevolutionary
bands.
The first of those armed bands to be captured in the country (September
1959), operated under the command of Fernando Pruna Bonet, in
Consolación del Sur, Pinar del Río, the island’s westernmost province.
But in fact, he was not the sole or real leader. The band had been
organized and commanded by two U.S. citizens: Austin Young and Peter
John Lambton, according to a detailed account from Retired Colonel
Nieves Castillo Vázquez.
A first lieutenant at the time and assigned to the fight against
bandits in the western region, Castillo took part in the capture in
combat of U.S. citizen Austin Young.
"Austin and Peter, carrying false passports and posing as tourists,
traveled directly to Varadero from the United States. They were
transported to Havana in a car belonging to the head of personnel at
the Internacional Hotel."
They met up with Pruna in the house of Euclides Cabrera. Pruna was an
old friend of Austin’s. "They became friends in prison, because the
U.S. pilot had already been imprisoned on the island for illegal and
counterrevolutionary acts, trying to get Batista’s henchmen out of the
country. For that reason he was detained and then deported to the
United States."
Austin Young had returned, for the second time in one year, with a new
mission and a new recruit: Peter John Lambton. Theirs was no personal
adventure. They came prepared and directed by the CIA to set up a
counterrevolutionary band and use it for a propaganda campaign. They
were carrying documents, weapons, money and cameras.
The enclave chosen in that case was not in the mountains, but in a
central area which would allow them to move around and subsequently
direct the counterrevolutionary actions in the western part of the
island.
The group barely lasted one week. "In its initial operation, where
revolutionary combatant Manuel Cordero lost his life, almost all of
them were taken prisoner in Lechuza cave, near Herradura junction."
There, Castillo found a notebook containing various data, including the
names of the two U.S. citizens, for whom a search was immediately
organized. Austin was caught the next day. After being interrogated, he
voluntarily handed over his "brand-new Thompson machine gun, which he
had brought from the United States," the witness recounted.
Another witness to appear on the third day of the hearing, Gervasio
Sánchez Robaina, likewise referred to Young’s participation in those
actions. At the request of the 26th of July Movement, Sánchez
participated in the organization and training of Pruna’s band.
He recounted that Young traveled from Havana to Consolación del Sur to
take charge of the counterrevolutionary band. When this group was
caught, 12 pairs of boots, M-1 rifles and Thompson machine guns, all of
U.S. manufacture, were seized, he stated.
Shortly after Young’s arrest, rolls of film and photos to be sent to
the United States, in order to circulate details of the band’s work and
thus obtain funding, were confiscated from him, together with weapons
and supplies for these and other bands he intended to set up.
However, that was not the only U.S.-armed band linkup in Pinar del Río,
as Castillo Vázquez disclosed to the court. This was demonstrated in
the operation mounted by the high command to capture the last existing
band, led by Pedro Celestino Sánchez. Protected by and dispersed
throughout a certain mountain area, this group was difficult to locate.
Thus a simulated "American Command," made up of 12 combatants from the
Ministry of the Interior and the Revolutionary Armed Forces, was set up
under the leadership of René Noval. Disguised as U.S. citizens in terms
of appearance, clothing and weapons, they faked a landing in the area
where the bandits were hidden. "The next day the counterrevolutionaries
made contact with them and the band
was liquidated within one week."
Luis Rodríguez Hernández, initially head of state security in Trinidad
and subsequently head of the fight against bandits in that and other
central regions of the island, described numerous details and personal
experiences to the court concerning some of the deaths of a total of
549 victims of armed actions throughout the country.
One of the most important events described by that witness was the
death of Comandante Manuel (Piti) Fajardo, a medical doctor and one of
the most loved revolutionary heroes. Wounded in one of those
confrontations on November 29, 1960, he died the following day.
Rodríguez denounced the role of U.S. agent and counterrevolutionary
Julio Reyes (known as agent Lucas), at the head of the so-called Las
Villas Northern Front opened in that area in July 1961. The objective
was to extend the armed bands’ activities so as to reduce pressure
against other bands operating in the Escambray.
With direct links to the United States virtually from the moment it was
formed, the front was characterized by extreme violence, murder, and
acts of terrorism, the former officer confirmed.
For example, in September of that year, led by Arnoldo Martínez, the
band stormed the town of El Aljibe, attacked a social center where a
party was taking place, shot at participants and provoked civilian
injuries.
"Later," he explained, "members of this band attacked the Perea asphalt
mines, killed Orestes Bravo Rabí, a militia guard there, and then
pumped bullets into his body.
"Afterwards they attacked a cooperative in Las Llanadas, where they
killed two people, José María Padrón, the administrator, and Manuel
Solís, head of the militia; burned down the town store, the social
center and campesinos’ homes. Arnoldo Martínez eliminated anything that
had a whiff of development in the campesino areas."
He affirmed that this band’s links with the United States "were
evident" and made reference to two counterrevolutionaries - still
involved in acts of terrorism against Cuba from that country - named
Yayo Estévez and Antoñico El Isleño. The latter subsequently took part
in the murder of Cuban security agent Antonio (Tony) Santiago.
According to Rodríguez, also killed during that period were Elpidio
Rodríguez, a people’s militia member who led his battalion to fight in
the U.S. invasion at the Bay of Pigs; and campesino Fidel Claro and his
wife, whose house was totally shot up, "as well as multiple crimes and
setting fire to rural cooperatives."
The former officer also described the activity of bands in Matanzas
province where, due to a lack of hills and mountains, "the bandits
employed the technique of living underground in holes dug beneath their
collaborators’ houses. They would emerge, commit their crimes and
return underground."
Rodríguez stated that horrendous crimes also occurred here, like the
case of the children Yolanda and Fermín, who were murdered in January
1963 in Bolondrón. Another child was injured, as were his parents.
Likewise, counterrevolutionary bands captured and killed two Communist
Party of Cuba (PCC) officials in Ceiba Mocha and Cabezas. In Jagüey
Grande they set fire to a sugarcane plantation, killed two police who
arrived at the scene and wounded others, the witness related. In San
José de Los Ramos, they attacked a police unit, killed two soldiers and
a civilian and wounded others.
From 1961 to 1965, Lázaro Gómez González belonged to state security’s
armed band section, was also in its legal section and was head of Pinar
del Río’s armed bands bureau until 1965.
He gave evidence on, among other things, the bands headed by Esteban
Vásquez, who organized a Western United Front in Pinar del Río with
subdivisions in Havana, Matanzas and the Isle of Pines; plus the bands
headed by Cara Linda, Orlando González and Francisco Robaina, alias
Machete.
Gómez González viewed Machete as one of the most dangerous bandits
operating in his area. "He was a U.S. army instructor and fought in
Korea. In Pinar del Río he committed atrocities, his specialty was
lashing campesinos to palm trees and using them for target practice."
As part of his functions, he took part in hundreds of interrogations of
bandits and collaborators and thus, thanks to one of them, was able to
locate Alberto del Busto, who regularly smuggled in arms via Cabo San
Antonio.
"That operation," he recalled, "was directed by Captain Eliseo Reyes
San Luis, and was highly successful, as we were able to locate an
extremely large cave where they had deposited the weapons, Browning
pistols, M-1 and M-2 rifles, grenades and radio equipment."
In that context, he also mentioned a radio operator called Pedrito who,
on being captured after his infiltration - armed and dressed in khaki -
admitted that he was a CIA agent and spoke of his training in the
United States.
Another witness, Manuel Trinidad Olivera Rivera, participated in the
capture of the Clodomiro Miranda band, also in Pinar del Río; and that
of Pedro Celestino Sánchez, the last to be eliminated, and one of whose
most outstanding acts was the attack on the small garrison at Cinco
Pesos, where its members murdered three young men, a boy of 13 and a
girl of six.
According to witness statements, the impact of those
counterrevolutionary attacks in Pinar del Río, always directed at
defenseless persons, is an indelible one.
A TRUCK FULL OF ARMAMENTS MADE IN USA
"The airdrop of U.S.-made armaments fell practically on my head, in
Cabaiguán: .60-caliber shells, bazookas, pistols, M-1 rifles, Thompson
machine guns," Gelasio León Alonso, who joined the fight against the
bandits in 1960 and was sector head of the area of the Escambray
mountains.
There were so many armaments that they believed that had dropped it on
a band and in fact it was intercepted by the revolutionaries. "We
filled up a huge truck with them," said Alonso.
In the six years in which he was involved in that mission, Alonso
participated in the capture of the bands headed by Cheito León, Perico
León, Noel Peña (who murdered a campesino named Ibañez), Porfirio
Guillén, Jesús del Real and others. In one of the sectors, there were
about 12 bands, he explained.
The day that Osvaldo Ramírez was captured, recalled the witness, who
has knowledge of countless crimes and abuses committed against a
defenseless population, "We found a pregnant 13-year-old girl who was a
great treat for that bandit.
"We don’t have the slightest doubt, we are convinced that it was the
U.S. imperialists who organized, financed and armed the
counterrevolutionary bands in Cuba. They used those servile
individuals, but their hand was always behind everything," he
concluded.
THE REVOLUTION’S HUMANITY
They began to shoot at the house at night. That was how they
ascertained that there were no weapons inside, and there was also no
militia member: only Juan Bautista, a son and daughter-in-law with
their many offspring (the oldest was eight years old). It didn’t
matter; Tandiúlos’ band pulled them all out. They killed the old man
and took the money he had in his pocket (700 pesos) and then did the
same with the son. They held young Genoveva by gunpoint in front of the
children while the bandits ransacked the house. As the killers left
they threatened that if the house wasn’t vacated by the next day, they
would set it on fire and kill the children.
Maximiliano Toledo didn’t find out about this until 11 days later. He
was in Camagüey, chasing other bandits. It’s still hard for him to talk
about what happened: the tears run down his face against his will. He
had to stop several times during his testimony. "The old man was our
father and mother, he raised us by himself from the time we were
little."
When he heard the news, he and his brother went straight to the
cemetery where they were buried, and he swore not to come back until he
had done all the bandits in.
Genoveva never recovered. She’s crazy to this day.
Maximiliano asked to tell the court something more: "The Revolution
never denied the relatives of the killers any material aid; they helped
them for a long time. What’s more, when there were wounded on both
sides, they would treat the members of the armed bands before the
militia members. Those were the principles followed by us and by the
Rebel Army in the Sierra Maestra."
Another witness. Ibrahim Mederos, head of the battalion fighting the
bandits in the Las Villas region, talked about the sadism demonstrated
by the counterrevolutionary band members in their confrontations with
the militia. Mederos recounted the murder of militia member Félix Celso
near Aguada de Pasajeros.
After being wounded during an operation, Celso asked his comrades for
help, but it was impossible for them to get to him. As the
counterrevolutionaries were leaving, they passed by where he was on the
front line and said, "You want a little help?" Then they shot him to
death.
"The Revolution also had a very benevolent attitude toward the
relatives of the counterrevolutionaries who died, helping them
monetarily afterwards," Mederos said.
The witnesses preceding Mederos showed the court the physical marks
left by the fight against the bandits. Luis Ibarra was ambushed and
wounded in the chest, and Elio González lost an eye while pursuing a
gang in Niña de Placetas, Matanzas province.