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| How the Bay of Pigs invasion began - and failed |
Johnny López
de la Cruz feels deprived of air. Locked up in a lorry with more than 100 other
prisoners, he can barely breathe.
Inside the
vehicle, the detainees are getting desperate. They sweat. Several faint.
Some remove
the buckles from their military belt to perforate the car's ceiling and allow
some air in. They are buying time. But most expect to be executed as soon as
they arrive in Havana.
The vehicle
arrives at its destination seven hours later. Military personnel opens the
doors. Several bodies fall into the asphalt. Nine detainees died during
the trip.
There are more
prisoners besides those arriving in the "lorry of death". In total,
spread out across several vehicles, there are nearly 1,100 detainees.
They are the
survivors of the 2506 Brigade, an army of 1,400 youths who hours before had failed
in their attempt to invade Cuba, crushed at Giron beach by Fidel Castro's
forces.
Most are Cuban
exiles who, following Castro's victory, were recruited and trained by the CIA
to overthrow the island's revolutionary government.
Fidel Castro
had reached power slightly more than two years before, on 1 January 1959, when
his forces brought down the government of Fulgencio Batista, whom they accused
of being authoritarian and corrupt.
Despite
substantial popular support for Castro, many Cubans did not agree with his
revolution and left for exile.
The Bay of
Pigs invasion of 1961 was doomed to fail even before the first shot was fired.
The Brigade still blames Washington.
From the White
House, US President John F Kennedy canceled at the last minute the US
airstrikes that would have neutralized Castro's aviation.
He did so
because he felt the United States could not appear to be behind the invasion.
Being seen as such would not only damage its international reputation but would
also give an excuse to the Soviet Union, which at that time was consolidating
its position as a key ally of Castro, to respond and provoke an unprecedented
nuclear conflict.
Under these
circumstances, the attack by the determined but inexperienced youths who
dreamed of "liberating Cuba from Castro" lasted less than 72 hours.
They landed at dawn on 17 April 1961. By the afternoon of 19 April, they had already been defeated.
The survivors
of the 2506 Brigade were released more than a year later, in late 1962,
following intense negotiations.
The surviving
members of the invading force are still waiting in exile for the fall of the
Cuban socialist government.
Cuba, in turn,
commemorates every 19 April the defeat, by a small nation, of an army of
"mercenaries" funded by the world's most powerful country.
It has been 60
years.
This is the
story of how the invasion plan was hatched, why it failed, and how it has
marked the life of its protagonists.
Why I stopped supporting Fidel and joined the invasion
Johnny López
de la Cruz, now 80 years old, is the current president of the Association of
Veterans of the 2506 Brigade. He was part of a paratrooper battalion that
participated in the invasion of the Bay of Pigs. This is his story:
My eyes were
opened the day Sergeant Benitez was killed.
He was from
Batista's police, a good friend of the family who never left Cuba because he
believed he had done nothing wrong.
In the
beginning, I supported Castro. He never said he was a Communist. If he had done
so, nobody in Cuba would have supported that.
But soon
afterward, people started to be executed. Properties and lands were seized and
nationalized.
One day, two
of Castro's men arrived and took Benitez away to put him on trial. I was there,
to support him.
It lasted less than half an hour. He was not even allowed to speak. He and four other men were
declared guilty and were taken to an abandoned cemetery outside of town.
They were
executed and thrown into a common grave.
I woke up. I did not understand how you could order the execution of people without allowing them to defend themselves. That was an abuse of authority.
Then I started
to participate in counter-revolutionary activities.
We would
distribute pamphlets and write "Down with Fidel" on walls.
But then, two
members of my group were arrested. People close to me told me that I was next.
So I went with three friends to Havana and flew out to Miami with fake papers.
When I arrived
in the US in 1960 I already knew that other exiles were being trained by the
CIA in Guatemala to invade Cuba. I made my way over there a few days later.
Between 1959
and 1960, thousands of anti-Castro youth such as Lopez de la Cruz concluded
that their only options were exile or taking up arms against the government.
Most ended up
in the US, a country willing to fund Castro's overthrow.
The nationalization of American industries and businesses as well as Castro's increasing ties with the Soviet Union soon led to a souring of relations between Cuba and the US.
He had become
a real threat to the regional influence of the world's most powerful country.
The CIA, the
Pentagon, and the White House, under the administration of US President Dwight
Eisenhower, decided to liquidate the revolutionary leader.
And they found
in a group of Cuban exiles the perfect army to execute the plan.
In total, some
1,400 men were recruited.
In the
meantime, Cuba adopted preparations as it suspected an imminent invasion.
'Hero of the Fatherland'
Jorge Ortega
Delgado fought on Fidel Castro's side during the invasion. When he remembers
those days, his eyes sparkle. Sitting down on the porch of his house in Havana,
Ortega, who is now 77 years old, told the BBC how he joined the militias.
The US started
to intervene and try to attack Cuba. In October 1959 the Revolutionary Militias
were founded.
I joined and
trained between 1959 and 1960. Towards the end of October 1960, Fidel Castro,
the Commander in Chief, arrived at a training session. He asked to talk to all
the militias. We were almost 1,500.
He asked those
under 20 years of age to join the anti-aircraft artillery forces. That
afternoon I asked my parents for permission to go with them. They agreed.
I was sent to Battery Number 30. That was where we started getting trained in anti-aircraft artillery.
The plan
The original
plan designed by the CIA and the Eisenhower administration was to have the
exiles leave Puerto Cabezas, in Nicaragua, and land near the city of
Trinidad, in southern Cuba.
The main objective was to occupy the zone and resist for enough time to establish a rival
government by exiled leaders that would later be supported by the United States.
Trinidad is
near the Escambray mountain, where there were already members of an anti-Castro
group, that would join the invading troops, and, if necessary, would organize a
guerrilla warfare campaign similar to the one successfully conducted by Fidel
Castro in the Sierra Maestra mountains a few years before.
To facilitate the landing, 16 aircraft would previously bomb Castro's main airports, destroying his air force and gaining an advantage over the Cuban skies.
But plans
changed radically when Kennedy became President in January 1961. He agreed to
continue with the plan, but not under those conditions. He thought that
invading Trinidad in broad daylight was too brash.
"Kennedy wanted to deny any participation in the invasion. It had to be
done covertly. Landing in Trinidad in broad daylight demonstrated too much
power, [it would show] that the US was
behind", Peter Kornbluh, director of the Cuba Documentation Project at the
US National Security Archive.
"The operation had to be as secret as possible and Kennedy gave the CIA
three days to re-elaborate a plan that had been under preparation for a whole
year", the expert adds. Kornbluh managed to obtain the declassification of
a report on the failed military action that remained secret for 37 years.
Kennedy
reduced the aircraft from 16 to 8 and urged the CIA to modify the zone and time
for the landing.
In this zone,
coastlines are hostile. It is a swampy region with impenetrable mangroves and
razor-sharp "dog's teeth", as reefs are known in Cuba. A difficult
scenario to carry out a landing with stealth and speed.
Near the Bay
of Pigs, there was an airport, key for the refueling of the invaders' aircraft.
The bombardment … 15 April
Jorge Ortega
Delgado completes his first anti-aircraft cannon exercise and anxiously waits
to have his day off on 15 April. He has spent several months in military
training.
But at daybreak, on that same day, the combat alarm rings. Invading aircraft have bombed two airports in Havana and another one in Santiago.
"We went out immediately. They ordered us to take out the cannon and were
deployed to a beach. When we arrived they told us that on daybreak, 15 April,
mercenary aircraft had attacked our airfields and killed seven of us",
Ortega remembers.
"All of the youth there, we felt very strongly against this. We could not
believe it. We were willing to do anything necessary to defend the
fatherland", the former combatant says, his voice still ringing with
emotion.
The 15 April
1961 bombardment was the first one that Kennedy had authorized to destroy
Castro's aircraft before the landing, scheduled for 17 April.
The eight aircraft left on the morning of 15 April from the base at Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, and dropped their bombs over the airfields of Santiago de Cuba, in the country's east, and over Ciudad Libertad and San Antonio de los Banos, both in Havana.
Despite
causing seven deaths, they only damaged a few Cuban airplanes, some of them
which were already out of service.
Castro's Air
Force was left almost untouched, besides, they managed to shoot down one of
the invading aircraft.
After the
bombardment, a plane with Cuban insignia landed in Key West, Florida. Its pilot
said he was a deserter from Castro's armed forces.
In reality, he
was part of the CIA's plan to avoid involving the US in the attack.
This way, it
would look as if a domestic anti-Castro uprising had started in Cuba, rather
than an action promoted by the US.
"But the story about the deserter lasted only a few hours. Although The US denied it, all the world learned that the aircraft was American and that
they wanted to pretend that the attack had been executed by Cuban
deserters", Kornbluh explains.
With
suspicions aroused over US participation, Kennedy canceled the rest of the
airstrikes, landing a devastating blow against the objectives of the 2506
Brigade, which was left with insufficient air support.
"I always say that the war was lost before it had begun", Lopez de
la Cruz laments.
But at that
moment, none of the invaders knew it.
The landing
17 April 1961. It is 1:00 in the morning. The invading boats approach Larga
beach, at the end of the narrow Bay of Pigs.
They do not
want to make noise. Surprise is the key to the plan.
But for months
Castro has been suspecting aggression is coming. He knows that a war against
the US is like a David-Goliath confrontation, and he is well prepared.
"They had militias patrolling practically every beach of the island", Kornbluh explains.
One of these
patrols hears noises. They turn on their flashlights and open fire.
The invaders
respond. They manage to capture a few of the militias, who have had time to
sound the alarm. The surprise factor is gone.
Castro's
troops mobilized to repel the invasion and there are still many invaders
waiting to land.
'Paper boats'
Humberto López
Saldaña is 83 years old. In 1960 he left Cuba for exile in Miami. Soon after he
joined the Brigade. He was in one of the invading boats.
We had a lot
of difficulties. We started to fight too soon. This delayed the landing.
Besides, our
boats were all too small. Every time they hit one of the reefs they ended up
practically destroyed. Many sunk.
The landing continued until early in the morning. We were waiting for the tide to go out to see better and avoid the reefs. From the coast, they threw us a rope to reach land.
At around 6:00
in the morning, Castro's aviation appeared. Bombs fell right next to us. Our
boats shook like they were made of paper.
Soon after a
bomb hit my boat, the Houston.
Panic ensued.
Several comrades died. The captain threw the Houston against the reefs to help
everyone else reach dry land.
Besides
disabling Houston, Castro's aircraft also sunk the Rio Escondido. We had a lot of munition and tonnes of aircraft fuel on those boats. Everything was lost.
'When you start to shoot, you become enraged and you lose fear'
Jorge Ortega
and his anti-aircraft battery arrived at the province of Matanzas, where the
Bay of Pigs is located, at around 5 pm on 17 April.
There, he
found out he would fight against 1,200 men who had managed to disembark in
Cuba, besides the paratrooper battalion that had been airdropped in a nearby
zone.
Another group
of brigade members stayed at the rear guard, without moving.
"On 16 April we had closely listened to Fidel's speech honoring our seven
compatriots fallen during the bombardments. On our way to Havana, the people
would come out to the street with flags, asking that we defeat the enemy",
Ortega remembers.
It was in that
speech that Castro declared for the first time the socialist nature of the
revolution and he called on the people to repel the mercenaries.
On the morning
Of 18 April Ortega detected enemy planes. It was the first time he fired a
cannon.
"You feel restrained. We all feel afraid. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. But you look at the person next to you and you see the rest of the men are firm and resolute. When you start to shoot, you feel enraged and you lose to fear", Ortega recalls.
That same day,
his battery went in with more troops near Larga beach, laying siege to a substantial part of the exile army.
"On the morning of 19 April, we saw how one of the aircraft, shot down by
our battery, fell into the sea. Another airplane fell into a sugar cane field.
The co-pilot burned to death but the pilot jumped in his parachute and tried to
escape. He died in combat with our troops", the ex-combatant tells.
With the
cancellation of the airstrikes previous to the landing, the B-26 aircraft that
accompanied the invasion were easy prey for Castro's practically intact air
fleet.
The boats
carrying aircraft fuel had been lost and the invading planes could not use the
airport near Giron beach, as they had planned.
They now
needed to fly four hours round trip to the base in Nicaragua to refuel. Each
time they returned to Cuba, they had less than an hour to carry out the
bombings.
The crews
removed one of the machine guns from the airplanes, to make them lighter. But
that left them more vulnerable.
Twenty-four
hours after the 17 April landing, the invaders had already lost two of their
six ships and half of their air fleet.
The rest of
the vessels retreated to the open sea, to avoid more damage from Castro's
forces.
On 19 April,
four American flight instructors based in Nicaragua flew in to support the
Brigade members who had been left to themselves. Fidel's forces shot them down.
"They did not have to die, but they felt they had to support us. It was a
great gesture", Lopez de La Cruz laments.
Consummated failure … 19 April
Castro knows
the enemy is facing difficulties. He orders a full advance to bottle them up
against the coastline and prevent them from escaping.
His troops
arrive in waves: lorries with more men, armored carriers, mortars, and airplanes.
It is
complicated to estimate the exact number of deaths from the invading side.
"There was naval personnel in the boats that sunk and we lost count
there", De La Cruz explains.
The president
of the Veterans Association calculates that there were 103 deaths and another
100 wounded.
He thinks the
casualties were very low, taking into account that the fighting went on for
three days.
On Cuba's
side, one of the commanders who led the resistance, Jose Ramon Fernandez said
in a book about the invasion he co-authored with Fidel Castro that they had incurred 176 deaths.
An act of arrogance
"The invasion of the Bay of Pigs was a tremendously arrogant miscalculation by the CIA", Kornbluh says.
The
intelligence agency's leaders were convinced that Castro's revolution was
unpopular and that all that was needed was a military invasion by opponents to
spark a popular uprising against him.
"But the truth was that Castro was very popular in that area. He had
given them electricity and agricultural aid. The CIA started from false and
poor premises to carry out the invasion. Also, it was not that difficult to
imagine that tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers would quickly defeat 1,400
invaders", Kornbluh argues.
Some 1,100 men
of the 2506 Brigade were captured and sent to prisons in Havana.
In prison
Humberto López
Saldaña tells BBC Mundo what he experienced after being captured:
Before they sent us to prison, Che Guevara arrived. He asked us what we used to do for a living before leaving Cuba. He seemed very calm, but I always thought that at any moment he could shoot me.
They moved us
in several lorries. One of them was too crowded. It was sealed hermetically.
Nine of my colleagues died inside that vehicle.
My lorry had
its windows open. While we were being moved, people shouted at us in the
street: "Mercenaries! Sell-outs! We will execute you!"
Later, in
Havana, we were locked up in the Castillo del Principe prison. We were not
treated well.
Some prison cells
were over-crowded and you had to sleep on the floor
Getting
cigarettes was very difficult. Some prisoners resorted to smoking orange
peelings.
When we were
taken out to walk in the courtyard, a guard would poke us with a bayonet, if we
did not keep up the pace.
We were around
150 detainees in every prison corridor, but we only had one toilet for all of
us.
We were given
a cup of coffee that in reality was dirty water. Many times they would spit on
it before handing the cup to us. The bread we were given was hard as a rock.
They would throw it to the ground. You had to dip it in water to be able to
chew it. Food was very scarce.
The exchange
López de la
Cruz spent three months in solitary confinement because he tried to escape and
was designated a dangerous prisoner.
Because of
that, he was sent on the very last plane that took prisoners back to Miami.
It was
Christmas 1962.
Kennedy had
sent a famous lawyer to negotiate with Castro.
His name was
James B Donovan, who in February 1962 had already facilitated a prisoner exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union.
He went to Havana for the first time on 30 August 1962. On the next day, he met with the Cuban leader for four hours.
During the
following months, Donovan held several talks with Castro.
Negotiations
were approached as a process of "indemnification", rather than as a
humanitarian exchange, "something which Castro demanded from the beginning
because he wanted Cuba to be compensated for the expenses of the
invasion", Kornbluh explains.
Months before
their release, the prisoners had faced a public trial for treason.
Many believed
they would end up facing a firing squad, but they were sentenced to 30 years in
prison. The court also established that a sum that totaled $62 million US
dollars would need to be paid to secure their release.
By the end of
December 1962, Donovan agreed with Castro the release the prisoners in
exchange for $53 million US dollars in medicines and food to be distributed
among the Cuban people.
As the provisions began arriving in Cuba on 23 December, the first flights from Pan American Airlines started to take the prisoners to Miami, where they were met by a welcoming crowd of 10,000 people at the Dinner Key Auditorium.
In the
meantime, Cuba celebrated the "second victory at Giron beach", as
they described having won "the battle for indemnification".
Lopez de la
Cruz remembers being on the last Pan American flight, looking out of the
airplane window and thinking that it would be very difficult to return to his
country.
"People say that they exchanged us for cans of baby food, but we did not
feel humiliated. Because of our release, Cuba received a lot of clothing, food,
and medications that the government distributed there", Lopez Saldaña said.
Neither of the
two exiles has ever been back to Cuba.
'They will always be enemies of ours'
Jorge Ortega,
a former Cuban combatant, tells BBC Mundo:
Would I be
able one day to sit with one of them and have a drink together? I think it
would be very difficult, because of all my comrades who fell or ended up
mutilated.
The people of
the Brigade are mercenaries because they sold themselves to a country that
hired them. They will always be enemies of ours.
They have never
stopped being so. To this day, from Miami, they influence and try to decide,
supporting this [US] blockade against our Fatherland.
It is true
that [former US President Barack] Obama was in Cuba some time ago and he called
for dialogue. But he also called to forget history.
History is
never forgotten. We always have it present.
Traitors in Cuba, heroes in Miami
The invasion of the Bay of Pigs is seen in Cuba as aggression by traitors who sold out to the US.
Every 19 April
there is a celebration with military parades, commemorating what the Cuban
government calls the "first defeat of imperialism in Latin America".
Ninety miles
away, however, the feeling is very different.
Nostalgia
about what could have been running through the streets of Miami. Monuments,
museums, and parks commemorate the heroes of the 2506 Brigade.
Today, 60
years later, the survivors don't like to talk about how many Cubans from the
other side were killed during the invasion.
"The truth is that I would rather not say. We knew we were going to war,
but nobody will ever tell you that we enjoyed killing people. Deep down, we
were all brothers", Lopez de la Cruz says.
"You go to kill or be killed. Today it seems different. It is true that we were all Cubans. But at that moment we only thought of liberating Cuba from all the horror that was happening", Lopez Saldaña insists.
The veterans
of the Brigade still, dream about seeing the fall of The Cuban government in
their lifetime.
There are two
US presidents whom they find difficult to forgive: Kennedy and Obama.
"Kennedy was not up to it. It was an act of stupidity. Although he wanted
to protect the US, it was easy to see that they were involved. Years later, I
understand his decision, but the truth is that many people feel betrayed and
disappointed for what he did", Lopez de la Cruz tells BBC Mundo.
The veterans
are even more critical of Obama.
"He wanted to ingratiate himself with the Castro regime and negotiate,
but he was naïve. Cuba opened the doors without changing anything. It was a
disastrous policy", Lopez Saldaña insists.
A substantial
part of the Cuban exile community in Florida still supports a hard-line policy
against the island. They venerate the former brigade members as heroes in exile.
"We have tremendous satisfaction. We fulfilled our duty even though we
did not reach our objective. Here in Miami, people respect us a lot. Donald
Trump himself met with us several times. In fact, in September 2020 he invited
us to the White House. We are very proud", López Saldaña remarks.
BBC News
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