CUBAN REFUGEE ACTIVISTS IN DISARRAY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000600060006-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 16, 1999
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: September 17, 1967
• Content Type: NSPR

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Ex es Since Thai Day -iai 1962
By Riirlturd Harwood
-n,' IAMI-The heat and the special
11 i brilliance of the sunlight matehed
the ,mood of the huge crowd of, Cuban
exiles in the Orange Bowl on Dec. 29,
1962..
The cadenced roar from 40,000
throats was like a heavy surf beating
in the great stadium:
"Guerra (war)! Guerra! Guerra!"
They were caught up in an emo-
tional frenzy touched off by President
John F. Kennedy, who 'had, a moment
earlier, received the only thin.-, of
?value the survivors of the Bay of Pigs
invasion attempt had to give-the flag
of Brigade 2506.
Deeply moved, the President de-
clared: "I can assure you that this
flag will be returned to this brigade
in a free Havana!"
To the Cubans, that impulsive prom-
ise was a liberation pledge. It gave
birth to extravagant hopes. But those
hopes, the brigade's -biographer,
Haynes Johnson, has written, began
to die when Mr. Kennedy died. The
process was accelerated by America's
preoccupation with Vietnam. Today,
the hopes have all but vanished, like
? the Brigade itself. The exile commun-
ity is splintered, leaderless, disillu-
sioned and impotent.
J.S. as Aclveisary
THE FEW REMAINING activists for
.j:_ the most part now regard the Gov-
ernment of the United States more as
an adversary than as a friend.
V/ Felipe Rivero, who drank scotch
with a beer chaser on the beach at
the Bay of Pigs, is in jail in Miami
awaiting action on charges of plotting
"violent acts against Cuba."
V Orlando Bosch, head of the Insurrec-
so. Jorge as, an `intellectual bomb-
thrower who runs the largest of the
extant exile organizations-RECE (Cu-
ban Representation of Exiles)-broods
in a windowless back room on West
?Flagler Street over the hostility of
American officialdom.
"They give Castro a sanctuary," 'he
complains bitterly. "But they harass us.
They seize our boats and our guns.
Their agents (from the Immigration
and Naturalization Service) spy on us
all the time."
Ramon Donestevcz, a chtzbby boat
builder who dreams of a "sail-in" to
Havana to plead for the release of
f. .
political prisoners, is threatened with
a five-year prison sentence if he car-
ries out his plan. Government agents
follow him 24 hours a day to frustrate
his scheme.
y does your government perse-
cute me?" he asks. "We have waited
eight years for them to get our pris-
oners released and they have failed.
Are they afraid we will make them
ridiculous if we show them how to get
the prisoners out?"
A Dismal Roster
' rHE MORE SUBSTANTIAL figures
associated with the Bay of Pigs-
many of them military heroes-have
dropped out of sight. At least two
were committed to mental hospitals.
Others have been discredited by time
tional Movement for Revolutionary
Recovery, is under indictment for at-
tempted piracy of ships in the Cuban
trade, attemp ::,:. ;; -running and con-
and events.
Manuel Ray, who was to have been
the Minister of Sabotage ;and Internal
Affairs if the Castro regime had fallen
in 1961, lost face and influence in 1964
when. he botched a new Invasion
scheme. Manuel Artime, civilian leader
of the Bay of Pigs contingent, suffered
spiracy to blo\flidls1Fovd. F4
Eloy Guttierez Menoyo, a guerrilla
warfare theoretician, was captured and
jailed in Cuba when he attempted to
translate his theories into practice
against the Castro government.
#e Only Erneido Oliva, second in coal-
maad of Brigade 2506, retains his old
prestige. But he is no longer active
in.the exile organizations. He has his
own dreams of military conquest,and
they do not involve the United States
directly.
An American diplomatic official,
surveying the disarray, compares the
Cubans now to the Polish exiles in
London. "The Poles," he remarked,:
"have three separate 'governments' in
exile. That's the history of all exile.
j movements. They break up into splin
to groups like the Cubans, who have
no effective leadership and no ability
to work together."
Another officer of the Federal bu-
reaucracy who is engaged in what is'
known as "intelligence work" is equal-'
ly? harsh and equally clinical in his
,judgments;
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