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Why the invasion via the Ciénaga?
Angel Fernández
Vila (Horacio) (*)
WITH
the approval of President Ike Eisenhower, and as
part of the strategy against the Cuban Revolution,
government agencies and the CIA in particular,
developed a military operation to prevent the
consolidation of a “communist government” in the
U.S. backyard.
After Eisenhower’s National Security Council
instructions approved on March 17, 1960, plans were
initiated for what was subsequently known as
Operation Pluto, the name given to preparations for
the mercenary Brigade 2506 invasion.
One
of the important tasks was to decide where the
invasion of the island could be effected with the
greatest possibility of success, in order to
establish a beachhead and maintain it for the time
needed to transfer an already constituted
counterrevolutionary government to Cuba and ask for
the recognition and support of the Organization of
American States (OAS).
Various options were discussed: the Isle of Pines
(now the Isle of Youth), the western extreme of
Pinar del Río province, the city of Trinidad in
southern central Cuba and, in Oriente province
(eastern Cuba) the city of Baracoa, etc. All of them
presented favorable characteristics for the
counterrevolutionary operation, as well as
unfavorable ones, which had to be taken into account
and evaluated.
As a
result of this study the option of the southern area
of the country’s central region as the theater of
military operations was considered. Positive factors
were that the area had a mountain range, the
Escambray, where the CIA had already established
counterrevolutionary armed groups. To the west of
these mountains lay the Zapata Peninsula, with the
Ciénaga de Zapata wetlands in its center, stretching
from the terra firma of south central Cuba to the
southern coast of the Zapata Peninsula, and a place
of very difficult access.
This
extensive area extending from Jagüey Grande in the
west and Cienfuegos in the east, contained large
sugarcane plantations, cattle ranches and lumber
estates, as well as important sugar mills, the
latter linked to the economy of the Ciénaga through
its supplies of charcoal, railroad ties and
firewood.
For
example, the famous possessions of the Morales,
"Marquises of the Royal Charter," known in the area
as "the Marquises of Yaguaramas," who boasted of
touring their land from Cienfuegos to Güines; the
extensive sugarcane plantations and mills and
pedigree cattle ranches of the millionaire Gregorio
Escajedo, whose hobby was to drain and steal land
from the northern coast of the Ciénaga de Zapata;
the large timber estate of the attorney Castellanos,
related to the upper echelons of Batista’s army and
who, moreover, also imposed his capricious will that
only single campesinos could live on his 13,728
hectares. Others included the heirs of Pedro
Vázquez; and the Fernández brothers with the Sur de
Cuba timber company, proprietors of vast tracts of
land and forests in the Zapata peninsula where, in
addition to establishing "cuts" for the extraction
of charcoal, ties, and firewood, also owned all the
installations, equipment and means of transport,
including La Víbora schooner, the only
maritime transport existing in the Peninsula, which
entered and left the wetland navigating the
Hatiguanico river and its Gonzalo and Rojo
tributaries.
Aguada de Pasajeros municipality, which in the
political-administrative division of the time was
the largest in the country, included the Zapata
Peninsula and covered virtually all of the territory
selected by the CIA as a possible theater of
operations for the invasion being prepared.
According to certified data held by the Aguada de
Pasajeros municipal administration in 1960, at that
time the territory had 330,000 hectares of arable
land, of which only 3,600 hectares, representing
1.15% of the total, were in the hands of small
farmers. These, as holdover tenants, sharecroppers,
tenant farmers or small sugarcane plantation
growers, had farms which normally did not exceed 37
hectares in size.
THE
OWNERS OF THE CIENAGA
Two
years before the mercenary invasion, the Cuban
Revolution, through the work of the National
Institute for Agrarian Reform (INRA), was
implementing the recently approved Agrarian Reform
Act, through which the process was underway of
expropriating more than 313,000 hectares of land,
the property of large landowners and foreign
enterprises, much of which had been illegally
registered or stolen from the Peninsula government,
in order to benefit campesinos, cooperatives and
state farms.
The
municipal administration’s own data reveals that
those principally affected by the Agrarian Reform
Act in this territory, given their ownership of more
than 13,000 hectares of land, were voracious
enterprises and wealthy landowners, such as:
·
Sur de
Cuba Lumber Company 27,000
hectares
·
·Pedro
Vázquez’ heirs
25,000 hectares
·
Gregorio
Escajedo (Perseverancia Sugar Mill) 24,300
hectares
·
Falla
Gutiérrez
15,000 hectares
·
Devesa
family
15,200 hectares
·
Marquises
of Yaguaramas
14,400 hectares
·
José
Castellanos
14,150 hectares
·
Zayas-Bazán’ heirs
14,100 hectares
·
José Arias
Pérez
13,200 hectares
These were some of the “Aguada de Pasajeros
campesinos affected by the communist laws of the
Revolutionary Government,” as the propaganda
utilized to justify the military aggression claimed.
The
Zapata Peninsula was a determining factor in the
selection of the location of the CIA-organized
invasion.
It
covered an extensive area between Ensenada de La
Broa to the west and Yaguaramas to the east. Its
western access was through Jagüey Grande, via a
narrow-gauge railroad belonging to Australia sugar
mill, only usable in the dry season, which crossed
the wetland and ended at Playa Larga on the southern
coast, deep within the Bay of Pigs. The other
access, via the east, left Covadonga, also by a
narrow-gauge railroad only usable during the dry
season, which linked the Covadonga sugar mill with
the village of San Blas on the southern coast of the
Ciénaga. Access to the Peninsula was possible
further east in Cienfuegos province, again during
the dry season, via the road that left Yaguaramas,
crossed the narrowest portion and continued to the
San Blas crossroads.
The
Ciénaga de Zapata, land often flooded by the changed
course of the Hanábana river, with a surface of
195,000 hectares, fills the entire space between the
Peninsula’s northern and southern coasts. Around
2,500 inhabitants eked out an existence here, making
charcoal, cutting railroad ties and gathering
firewood in conditions of semi-slavery, groups of
single men or families with the marked cincidence of
polyandry, illiteracy, poverty and poor health.
This
was the geographical-military and social situation
of the Zapata Peninsula before the triumph of the
Revolution.
When
the enemy intelligence was studying this area as a
possible theater for the military operation being
prepared, the Revolution had created access to the
Zapata Peninsula via three causeways, already
transformed into highways running from north to
south and another interior one which linked them
following the southern coastline.
These new highways covered the following routes:
—From the Australia sugar mill, passing through
Pálpite village to Playa Larga, with a 31-kilometer
length.
—From the Covadonga sugar mill, passing through San
Blas village and crossroads to Playa Groin on the
southern coast, with a 36-kilometer extension.
—From Yaguaramas village on the southern circuit to
the San Blas crossroads, with a 30-kilometer length.
—A
fourth highway, covering rocky ground, linked Playa
Larga with Playa Girón, following the coastline,
36-kilometers long.
Two
small villages for charcoal makers and woodcutters
who lived in appalling conditions on the Peninsula
before the Revolution, had already been built there:
Cayo Ramona and
Caletón de Buenaventura.
Three vacation resorts had been completed: Playa
Larga, Playa Girón and Aldea Taína.
Playa Girón airport was finished.
The
causeway running from Caletón Buenaventura Cove
across the Ciénaga from east to west to the El Maiz
cut, toward Ensenada de la Broa, giving access to
multiple “cuts” and lumber areas previously isolated
and inaccessible, was under construction.
It
wasn’t difficult to imagine the scenario described
above converted into a theater for a military
operation of relative magnitude.
Everything seemed to indicate that this was the
area of the country where the operation would have
the most likelihood of success.
THE
CIENAGA: ONE OF THE CIA’S PRINCIPAL THEATERS
As
soon as the invasion project was approved, at the
end of the Eisenhower administration, CIA
specialists worked hard on its operative aspects,
both abroad and in Cuban territory. For example:
•
The INRA research department, headed by former
Batista dictatorship officers who, given their
better military training, had been selected to
undertake these tasks, sent one of its
functionaries, Captain Erneido Oliva at the time, to
investigate a complaint made by the landowner
Gregorio Escajedo concerning the INRA’s “improper
treatment” of the cattle that he owned until his
property was nationalized by the head of the Zapata
Peninsula Development Area. This "investigation"
allowed Oliva to visit the area three times and
spend several weeks there acting as if he wERE
working on the complaint. Oliva deserted, returning
12 months later as second in command of the
mercenary expedition which invaded the island via
Playa Girón (Bay of Pigs).
•
Octavio Velozo de Armas, chief engineer of the works
at Playa Girón, worked in the area for 18 months,
left the country and returned in April 1961 as a
member of the mercenary engineer corps.
It
is clear that the CIA made a silent and covert study
of the terrain for the theater of operations, by now
selected and approved, for the execution of
Operation Pluto.
In
May of 1960 we were attending an event during which
land titles were given to campesinos in Development
Area L.V.17, in Aguada de Pasajeros, presided over
by Comandante Félix Torres, when we were interrupted
on the rostrum by a member of the Rebel Army who
informed us that there was news of an enemy landing
at Playa Girón. We immediately asked the area
military chief, present at the event, to contact the
Covadonga Rebel Army Command Post, and the garrison
on the beach, in order to verify the information
received. Twenty minutes later he informed us that
the news was false.
Nevertheless, having analyzed this event after the
mercenary attack in April of 1961, we can suppose
that there was enemy activity prior to the invasion
and that episode was probably due to some leaked
information concerning the CIA plans.
Right in the midst of the execution of Operation
Pluto, the CIA urgently transported members of the
counterrevolutionary government located in the
United States to the U.S. Opa-Locka naval base, in
order to transfer them to the area occupied by the
mercenary forces as soon as this territory was
secured by the invading troops. It was a necessary
prior step in order to subsequently request OAS
intervention, and with that, U.S. Army troops.
That
puppet government waiting to be transferred to the
territory occupied by mercenary forces included, as
minister of agriculture, Gregorio Escajedo, the
powerful landowner in the area of operations
selected by the CIA for the invasion. It has not
been possible to investigate whether a member of the
Morales family, boasting the title of “Marquises of
Yaguaramas", owners of vast tracts of land in the
south of the provinces of Las Villas and Matanzas,
was also part of the "government in exile." If that
were the case, these powerful landowners,
long-established members of the nobility, would
doubtless have authorized the mercenaries to cross
their “royal” lands without any difficulty, at least
to the village of Güines, as part of their
triumphant march on the capital of the country.
While the study of the military theater of
operations undertaken by the CIA in the area
selected for the invasion was accurate in
geographical-military aspects, it suffered from the
defect of an erroneous evaluation of the social
situation and the response of the population of the
Ciénaga, which, far from supporting the invasion, as
U.S. intelligence had assured, was always on the
side of the Revolution.
The
area selected by the CIA as the scene of the
operation, was a territory where the Revolution had
worked intensively to develop from the very
beginning in order to liberate the charcoal makers
and woodcutters from the inferno of exploitation and
ignorance to which they were subjected by the
landowners and exploiters who had illegally
appropriated land in the Zapata Peninsula. •
(*) The author was area development
director of the National Institute of Agrarian
Reform (INRA) in Aguada de Pasajeros.
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