Five decades after one of the worst U.S. military defeats, two lags are kept strictly equal erect on the shores of the Straits of Florida, pathetic symbols of a fratricidal battle in the maelstrom of the Cold War. Air Force Base in San Antonio de los Banos, near Havana, is exposed to one of the B-26 bombers used by the forces of Fidel Castro defeated the Brigade 2506.
Some 450 miles north, Tamiami Airport, south of Miami, another B-26 piloted by Cuban exiles were also reminded those three days in April 1961. Twins are kept at a distance. The memories of the deeds are diametrically opposed, as was the ideological opposite of the men who piloted the two bombers.
Even for them, even the name of the battlefield is different: tell Havana Bay of Pigs. In Miami he is called Bay of Pigs. The funny thing is that both are correct, because the Bay of Pigs is one of the beaches at Bay of Pigs. The use of names has become an indicator of political-ideological position, something like a line drawn in the sand that makes the difference between "Castro" and "anti-Castro." The invasion was a project designed for the administration of President Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961).
The confrontation between the two countries worsened as a result of the process of economic reforms that Fidel Castro began with the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January first 1959. It was a process that from the beginning turned aggressively toward the U.S. companies, the overnight, were found responsible for all the tragedies of Cuban society then.
In less than a year, Castro nationalized U.S. oil companies when they refused to refine oil that began to arrive from the now defunct Soviet Union. Washington, which was the main trading partner of Havana, the overnight stopped buying sugar - the main Cuban economic category - and within months gradually enacted an economic embargo that lasts until today.
Meanwhile, on the grounds that the island was leaning towards communism and was sinking into the clutches of the Comintern, "the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) began to sponsor dozens of exiles infiltration on the island, attacking economic targets, social and political. Created dozens of counterrevolutionary organizations that made virtually every day exploit all kinds of artifacts in various Cuban cities until early 1960, consensus began to emerge within the U.S.
administration had to take stronger measures. Nobody knows who first came up to invade Cuba if the White House or the Pentagon. The truth is that the lead the CIA took from April 1960 opened a recruiting office in the heart of Little Havana then emerging in Miami, $ 250 per week enrolled about 2,000 men and sent them established training camps in Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala, with the consent of the dictators in power, after transfer of a few million to his private accounts in Switzerland.
Although born under the auspices of Eisenhower, the invasion occurred under the administration of John F. Kennedy inherited the project without much enthusiasm but decided not to cancel. JFK shared the revulsion felt by Castro and Eisenhower agreed with their policies. The plan was simple.
It was landing on the southern coast of Cuba, at Playa Giron and Playa Larga - inside the Bay of Pigs - in an area surrounded by swamps, called the Zapata Swamp. Moreover, geographical location, the idea was to cut the island in the middle to prevent the movement of Cuban troops. Having secured a beachhead and occupied a nearby airstrip, then come by air a group of Cuban exile leaders who would make up a "national government" whose first choice would be to seek help from the U.S., which would come immediately to the call troops and reinforcements.
They even had selected a "president", the first prime minister of the revolution Castro, José Miró Cardona. And so the exile brigade march "triumphant" to Havana to "end communism and restore democracy." The exiles' invasion brigade was called 2506 because that was the identification number of its first casualty, a soldier who died in a crash during practice in Guatemala, called Carlos Rodríguez Santana.
But if one side of the CIA planners believed that access to the swamp it was difficult for the Castro forces, on the other denied that Fidel Castro's troops were not only numerous as were weapons of Western Europe and also had the elemental caution to redistribute the country air forces, which were the first white invaders.
The invasion actually began on April 15, 1961 with the bombing of the major airports in the country by the B-26 piloted by exiles, like the one now in the Tamiami Airport. Managed to partially destroy the Cuban fighter planes but not all. The powerful American fighter jet T-33 and British propeller SeaFury (inherited from the previous government) survived and gave Castro the supremacy in the air.
It was at the funeral of the victims of these bombings that Fidel Castro decreed "the socialist character of the Revolution." As the Cuban writer Norberto Fuentes, "given the chance, it was time and took advantage." At 00:00 pm on April 17 to begin calling at Bay of Pigs, the first boatloads of brigade, led by a group of divers led by two officers of the CIA.
From that moment, the collapse began. From the beginning, the landing of the troops was complicated by, among other reasons, because the boats began to have engine problems and one of them ran aground on a coral reef whose existence was not in any letter or maritime intelligence information CIA.
When the brigade first arrived at the seashore, about 3 am, they discovered they were not alone. The expected four militants in patrol, but were driven away by the firepower of 50-caliber machine guns, gave the first warning sign of the landing. Castro was awakened at 3 and a half in the morning and took two decisions: moving toward the front of the cadets of the school of militia in the city of Matanzas, north of Bay of Pigs, and ordered the departure of their aircraft.
At half past 6 in the morning came the first Cuban jets and in the subsequent hours in fierce fighting, managed to sink two ships that carried the brigade and blew a third full of ammunition for 30 days of fighting. With these "fireworks" was sealed the fate of Brigade 2506. During the days 17, 18 and 19 April, Cubans of the same blood but on different sides shot at each other without mercy, with all the cruelty and heroism that were able to collect.
Until one side went silent. Not because they all died, but because they ran out of ammunition. "We are fighting on the beach and we have no ammunition. Please send help. I have to do battle. We're going to the mountains", was the last message that the head of the Brigade 2506, José Pérez San Román, sent to their heads at the CIA before destroying the field radio.
Three days earlier, on landing, San Román not resist the temptation to kneel and kiss the sand in your country. For exiles depletion of ammunition is the key to failure of the landing. Since then almost all of them said that the U.S. had promised air support to the brigade but it never appeared.
An absence that qualify as a "betrayal" of Kennedy that since then, is hated for it in the heart of Little Havana. "The betrayal of the Kennedy administration's what I remember most. How do you train a group of men, give them guns, transported to another country to fight an army and then abandon them? Until today I could not understand," says Juan Evelio Pou, who is now 74, who was the official browser of the Second Battalion of Brigade 2506.
Historians and researchers have not found a clear answer for the lack of air support and the subsequent defeat of the brigade, when from the coast of Cuba, Castro's soldiers could be seen clearly on the horizon an aircraft carrier and four frigates of the United States. Although some people believe that air support to the brigade was not really planned because Kennedy never wanted to get involved much in the project, it is likely that the outcome was not the consequence of the number of errors of a president without experience military.
The initial plan was approved by Eisenhower, former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II, and watched several requirements that were discarded later by Kennedy and his advisers. First, Kennedy changed the location of the invasion of Trinidad near to farther west in the Bay of Pigs.
The big problem there was that the narrow shape of the bay, a withdrawal would be difficult if not impossible, as it happened, and that the sinking of vessels sealed invaders out to sea. Then went for a night landing, always risky, and reduced the bombing plans for airports to destroy Castro's air force.
Initially, the plan called for 38 attacks, which were reduced to 22, then 16 and finally to eight. On the other hand, the internal resistance Castro, who is to undertake a survey in coordination with the landing was never advised of the impending landing, because the CIA had agents who feared that the Cuban government had penetrated.
In the historical controversy that has been installed since then, some researchers argue further that the landing was premature because it was not fully organized and should have been delayed or suspended. But that never happened, perhaps because the exiles were eager to carry out, or because Americans knew that Castro had sent about 100 Cuban pilots to be trained in Czechoslovakia in the management of MiG fighters and were about to return to the island.
Some also think that JFK had hoped to finish by the CIA to assassinate Castro and make it take the island to collapse. But, whatever the reason, the fact is that retired Col. Jack Hawkins, who led the CIA's paramilitary personnel in the invasion, thinks Kennedy's decisions were "a shameful betrayal of the Cuban combatants." "What I remember most is not the battle or lost, but the Kennedy administration's betrayal when I realized that would not have the air support we were promised," said Andres Manso, 75, and belonged to the Sixth Battalion infantry.
As soon in April 1960 the CIA opened the recruiting office in Miami, the agents of Fidel Castro in the city reported to Havana what was happening. And as war does not kill soldier warned, the Cuban military defense preparations began. Plans were also simple. The troops were distributed throughout the country.
The Argentine guerrilla Ernesto Che Guevara was responsible for the defense of Pinar del Rio, west, now President Raul Castro ordered him to do the same in the east, and diplomats and comparators were dispatched to Czechoslovakia, Soviet Union, Belgium and England and ask to buy arms, while the political rhetoric of the Revolution was exacerbated.
It was when introduced in the Cuban political vocabulary the word "mercenary" to define the brigade. Castro was able to mobilize the people. Though some argue that at that time his popularity was declining, the nationalist discourse finally mobilize the masses began to receive military training at an accelerated pace.
It created the National Revolutionary Militias where the majority of the population was framed and eventually play a key role in the fighting. Meanwhile, the security services were identified and arrested 100,000 people suspected of belonging to the internal resistance and confined in closed stadiums curtailing any possibility of movement, disrupting the plans of the CIA to support the invasion of an internal uprising.
Weeks before, the CIA agent Felix Rodriguez was infiltrated into the island to help coordinate the landing, but hours before the start of operations had to escape out of hiding and seek asylum in a Latin American embassy, when a patrol of militiamen appeared suddenly in front of the apartment where he was hiding for his arrest.
Rodriguez became famous years later when he participated in the capture operation of Che Guevara in Bolivia. "It was a disaster. I was part of a team of infiltration into Cuba before the invasion began. My mission was to help the resistance to help the brigades, but Fidel all arrested before the landing.
During the invasion, I heard a radio transmission from the CIA to everyone who listened on the island. He said: 'This is the moment that all patriots should stand up and peel for a Free Cuba. " I replied: 'All patriots are in prison, thanks to his cursed invasion,' "said Jose Basulto, 70, who founded the 80 Brothers to the Rescue, which was dedicated to saving water sharks in the Strait Florida for thousands of people fleeing Cuba on rafts on the island.
For three days there were fierce clashes in the Zapata Swamp. still remember the name of the town of San Blas, where he undoubtedly the toughest battle of the confrontation because there were fired last cartridge. "It was a slaughter. It was hard because we Cubans on both sides, but had to defend themselves.
It was kill or be killed you, "says Eli Caesar, 74, who was the second leader of the Third Battalion of the brigade. The 2506 squad was broken up in less than 72 hours. The survivors, some 1,200 exiles, were taken prisoner, courts and subjected to public scorn for nearly two years, after which they returned to Miami where they were greeted by President Kennedy, who was at the hands of San Román the Cuban flag with the brigade landed at Playa Girón and promised to return it " in a free Cuba.
"In a mass trial, broadcast live on television, the brigade members were sentenced to 30 years hard labor, which were exempted from compensation if paid juicy. A San Román and two of his aides were asked to half a million dollars and the other between 100,000 and $ 25,000, according to the hierarchy in the brigade.
Ultimately, several American private institutions and corporations seeking tax exemptions paid the bill, which also included sending approximately $ 53 million in medicines and compotes for children. In the brigade had four Spanish. All priests who, once arrested, said they were there to give "spiritual support" for the brigade.
The most pathetic case was that of Ismael de Lugo, of the order of the Capuchins, who in a televised news conference said he could not do anything to save lives because "people were voluntary." In August 1961, at a meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Punta del Este, Uruguay, Che Guevara approached the Secretary of the White House, Richard N.
Goodwin and handed a note to Kennedy. He said: "Thanks for Playa Girón. Before the invasion, the revolution was weak. It is now stronger than ever." It was the final blow in a war between brothers. 
Some 450 miles north, Tamiami Airport, south of Miami, another B-26 piloted by Cuban exiles were also reminded those three days in April 1961. Twins are kept at a distance. The memories of the deeds are diametrically opposed, as was the ideological opposite of the men who piloted the two bombers.
Even for them, even the name of the battlefield is different: tell Havana Bay of Pigs. In Miami he is called Bay of Pigs. The funny thing is that both are correct, because the Bay of Pigs is one of the beaches at Bay of Pigs. The use of names has become an indicator of political-ideological position, something like a line drawn in the sand that makes the difference between "Castro" and "anti-Castro." The invasion was a project designed for the administration of President Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961).
The confrontation between the two countries worsened as a result of the process of economic reforms that Fidel Castro began with the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January first 1959. It was a process that from the beginning turned aggressively toward the U.S. companies, the overnight, were found responsible for all the tragedies of Cuban society then.
In less than a year, Castro nationalized U.S. oil companies when they refused to refine oil that began to arrive from the now defunct Soviet Union. Washington, which was the main trading partner of Havana, the overnight stopped buying sugar - the main Cuban economic category - and within months gradually enacted an economic embargo that lasts until today.
Meanwhile, on the grounds that the island was leaning towards communism and was sinking into the clutches of the Comintern, "the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) began to sponsor dozens of exiles infiltration on the island, attacking economic targets, social and political. Created dozens of counterrevolutionary organizations that made virtually every day exploit all kinds of artifacts in various Cuban cities until early 1960, consensus began to emerge within the U.S.
administration had to take stronger measures. Nobody knows who first came up to invade Cuba if the White House or the Pentagon. The truth is that the lead the CIA took from April 1960 opened a recruiting office in the heart of Little Havana then emerging in Miami, $ 250 per week enrolled about 2,000 men and sent them established training camps in Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala, with the consent of the dictators in power, after transfer of a few million to his private accounts in Switzerland.
Although born under the auspices of Eisenhower, the invasion occurred under the administration of John F. Kennedy inherited the project without much enthusiasm but decided not to cancel. JFK shared the revulsion felt by Castro and Eisenhower agreed with their policies. The plan was simple.
It was landing on the southern coast of Cuba, at Playa Giron and Playa Larga - inside the Bay of Pigs - in an area surrounded by swamps, called the Zapata Swamp. Moreover, geographical location, the idea was to cut the island in the middle to prevent the movement of Cuban troops. Having secured a beachhead and occupied a nearby airstrip, then come by air a group of Cuban exile leaders who would make up a "national government" whose first choice would be to seek help from the U.S., which would come immediately to the call troops and reinforcements.
They even had selected a "president", the first prime minister of the revolution Castro, José Miró Cardona. And so the exile brigade march "triumphant" to Havana to "end communism and restore democracy." The exiles' invasion brigade was called 2506 because that was the identification number of its first casualty, a soldier who died in a crash during practice in Guatemala, called Carlos Rodríguez Santana.
But if one side of the CIA planners believed that access to the swamp it was difficult for the Castro forces, on the other denied that Fidel Castro's troops were not only numerous as were weapons of Western Europe and also had the elemental caution to redistribute the country air forces, which were the first white invaders.
The invasion actually began on April 15, 1961 with the bombing of the major airports in the country by the B-26 piloted by exiles, like the one now in the Tamiami Airport. Managed to partially destroy the Cuban fighter planes but not all. The powerful American fighter jet T-33 and British propeller SeaFury (inherited from the previous government) survived and gave Castro the supremacy in the air.
It was at the funeral of the victims of these bombings that Fidel Castro decreed "the socialist character of the Revolution." As the Cuban writer Norberto Fuentes, "given the chance, it was time and took advantage." At 00:00 pm on April 17 to begin calling at Bay of Pigs, the first boatloads of brigade, led by a group of divers led by two officers of the CIA.
From that moment, the collapse began. From the beginning, the landing of the troops was complicated by, among other reasons, because the boats began to have engine problems and one of them ran aground on a coral reef whose existence was not in any letter or maritime intelligence information CIA.
When the brigade first arrived at the seashore, about 3 am, they discovered they were not alone. The expected four militants in patrol, but were driven away by the firepower of 50-caliber machine guns, gave the first warning sign of the landing. Castro was awakened at 3 and a half in the morning and took two decisions: moving toward the front of the cadets of the school of militia in the city of Matanzas, north of Bay of Pigs, and ordered the departure of their aircraft.
At half past 6 in the morning came the first Cuban jets and in the subsequent hours in fierce fighting, managed to sink two ships that carried the brigade and blew a third full of ammunition for 30 days of fighting. With these "fireworks" was sealed the fate of Brigade 2506. During the days 17, 18 and 19 April, Cubans of the same blood but on different sides shot at each other without mercy, with all the cruelty and heroism that were able to collect.
Until one side went silent. Not because they all died, but because they ran out of ammunition. "We are fighting on the beach and we have no ammunition. Please send help. I have to do battle. We're going to the mountains", was the last message that the head of the Brigade 2506, José Pérez San Román, sent to their heads at the CIA before destroying the field radio.
Three days earlier, on landing, San Román not resist the temptation to kneel and kiss the sand in your country. For exiles depletion of ammunition is the key to failure of the landing. Since then almost all of them said that the U.S. had promised air support to the brigade but it never appeared.
An absence that qualify as a "betrayal" of Kennedy that since then, is hated for it in the heart of Little Havana. "The betrayal of the Kennedy administration's what I remember most. How do you train a group of men, give them guns, transported to another country to fight an army and then abandon them? Until today I could not understand," says Juan Evelio Pou, who is now 74, who was the official browser of the Second Battalion of Brigade 2506.
Historians and researchers have not found a clear answer for the lack of air support and the subsequent defeat of the brigade, when from the coast of Cuba, Castro's soldiers could be seen clearly on the horizon an aircraft carrier and four frigates of the United States. Although some people believe that air support to the brigade was not really planned because Kennedy never wanted to get involved much in the project, it is likely that the outcome was not the consequence of the number of errors of a president without experience military.
The initial plan was approved by Eisenhower, former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II, and watched several requirements that were discarded later by Kennedy and his advisers. First, Kennedy changed the location of the invasion of Trinidad near to farther west in the Bay of Pigs.
The big problem there was that the narrow shape of the bay, a withdrawal would be difficult if not impossible, as it happened, and that the sinking of vessels sealed invaders out to sea. Then went for a night landing, always risky, and reduced the bombing plans for airports to destroy Castro's air force.
Initially, the plan called for 38 attacks, which were reduced to 22, then 16 and finally to eight. On the other hand, the internal resistance Castro, who is to undertake a survey in coordination with the landing was never advised of the impending landing, because the CIA had agents who feared that the Cuban government had penetrated.
In the historical controversy that has been installed since then, some researchers argue further that the landing was premature because it was not fully organized and should have been delayed or suspended. But that never happened, perhaps because the exiles were eager to carry out, or because Americans knew that Castro had sent about 100 Cuban pilots to be trained in Czechoslovakia in the management of MiG fighters and were about to return to the island.
Some also think that JFK had hoped to finish by the CIA to assassinate Castro and make it take the island to collapse. But, whatever the reason, the fact is that retired Col. Jack Hawkins, who led the CIA's paramilitary personnel in the invasion, thinks Kennedy's decisions were "a shameful betrayal of the Cuban combatants." "What I remember most is not the battle or lost, but the Kennedy administration's betrayal when I realized that would not have the air support we were promised," said Andres Manso, 75, and belonged to the Sixth Battalion infantry.
As soon in April 1960 the CIA opened the recruiting office in Miami, the agents of Fidel Castro in the city reported to Havana what was happening. And as war does not kill soldier warned, the Cuban military defense preparations began. Plans were also simple. The troops were distributed throughout the country.
The Argentine guerrilla Ernesto Che Guevara was responsible for the defense of Pinar del Rio, west, now President Raul Castro ordered him to do the same in the east, and diplomats and comparators were dispatched to Czechoslovakia, Soviet Union, Belgium and England and ask to buy arms, while the political rhetoric of the Revolution was exacerbated.
It was when introduced in the Cuban political vocabulary the word "mercenary" to define the brigade. Castro was able to mobilize the people. Though some argue that at that time his popularity was declining, the nationalist discourse finally mobilize the masses began to receive military training at an accelerated pace.
It created the National Revolutionary Militias where the majority of the population was framed and eventually play a key role in the fighting. Meanwhile, the security services were identified and arrested 100,000 people suspected of belonging to the internal resistance and confined in closed stadiums curtailing any possibility of movement, disrupting the plans of the CIA to support the invasion of an internal uprising.
Weeks before, the CIA agent Felix Rodriguez was infiltrated into the island to help coordinate the landing, but hours before the start of operations had to escape out of hiding and seek asylum in a Latin American embassy, when a patrol of militiamen appeared suddenly in front of the apartment where he was hiding for his arrest.
Rodriguez became famous years later when he participated in the capture operation of Che Guevara in Bolivia. "It was a disaster. I was part of a team of infiltration into Cuba before the invasion began. My mission was to help the resistance to help the brigades, but Fidel all arrested before the landing.
During the invasion, I heard a radio transmission from the CIA to everyone who listened on the island. He said: 'This is the moment that all patriots should stand up and peel for a Free Cuba. " I replied: 'All patriots are in prison, thanks to his cursed invasion,' "said Jose Basulto, 70, who founded the 80 Brothers to the Rescue, which was dedicated to saving water sharks in the Strait Florida for thousands of people fleeing Cuba on rafts on the island.
For three days there were fierce clashes in the Zapata Swamp. still remember the name of the town of San Blas, where he undoubtedly the toughest battle of the confrontation because there were fired last cartridge. "It was a slaughter. It was hard because we Cubans on both sides, but had to defend themselves.
It was kill or be killed you, "says Eli Caesar, 74, who was the second leader of the Third Battalion of the brigade. The 2506 squad was broken up in less than 72 hours. The survivors, some 1,200 exiles, were taken prisoner, courts and subjected to public scorn for nearly two years, after which they returned to Miami where they were greeted by President Kennedy, who was at the hands of San Román the Cuban flag with the brigade landed at Playa Girón and promised to return it " in a free Cuba.
"In a mass trial, broadcast live on television, the brigade members were sentenced to 30 years hard labor, which were exempted from compensation if paid juicy. A San Román and two of his aides were asked to half a million dollars and the other between 100,000 and $ 25,000, according to the hierarchy in the brigade.
Ultimately, several American private institutions and corporations seeking tax exemptions paid the bill, which also included sending approximately $ 53 million in medicines and compotes for children. In the brigade had four Spanish. All priests who, once arrested, said they were there to give "spiritual support" for the brigade.
The most pathetic case was that of Ismael de Lugo, of the order of the Capuchins, who in a televised news conference said he could not do anything to save lives because "people were voluntary." In August 1961, at a meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Punta del Este, Uruguay, Che Guevara approached the Secretary of the White House, Richard N.
Goodwin and handed a note to Kennedy. He said: "Thanks for Playa Girón. Before the invasion, the revolution was weak. It is now stronger than ever." It was the final blow in a war between brothers.
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