The Corporation

An Epic Story of the Cuban American Underworld

T. J. English

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780062568960
• eBook ISBN: 9780062568977
• Subtopic: Biografías de ciencias sociales

“A mob saga that has it all—brotherhood and betrayal, swaggering power and glittering success, and a Godfather whose reach seems utterly unrivaled. What a relentless, irresistible read.” —Don Winslow, New York Times bestselling author of The Border

A fascinating, cinematic, multigenerational history of the Cuban mob in the US from "America’s top chronicler of organized crime"* and New York Times bestselling author of Havana Nocturne.

By the mid 1980s, the criminal underworld in the United States had become an ethnic polyglot; one of the most powerful illicit organizations was none other than the Cuban mob. Known on both sides of the law as "the Corporation," the Cuban mob’s power stemmed from a criminal culture embedded in south Florida’s exile community—those who had been chased from the island by Castro’s revolution and planned to overthrow the Marxist dictator and reclaim their nation.

An epic story of gangsters, drugs, violence, sex, and murder rooted in the streets, The Corporation reveals how an entire generation of political exiles, refugees, racketeers, corrupt cops, hitmen, and their wives and girlfriends became caught up in an American saga of desperation and empire building. T. J. English interweaves the voices of insiders speaking openly for the first time with a trove of investigative material he has gathered over many decades to tell the story of this successful criminal enterprise, setting it against the larger backdrop of revolution, exile, and ethnicity that makes it one of the great American gangster stories that has been overlooked—until now.

Drawing on the detailed reporting and impressive volume of evidence that drive his bestselling works, English offers a riveting, in-depth look at this powerful and sordid crime organization and its hold in the US.

Part I

Traición/Betrayal

1

Brigade 2506

JOSÉ MIGUEL BATTLE SR. SAT WITH HIS MEN. THEY WERE SPREAD OUT AROUND THE hull of a boat, some staring out to sea and others looking up at the night sky. There were few clouds to obscure the deep blue canvas above, which revealed a dazzling amalgam of celestial asterisms and constellations—the Big and Little Dippers, Corona Borealis, Orion, the Milky Way. The moon provided the only light; it glistened off the surface of the ocean, illuminating a path that led due north.

Aboard Battle’s vessel were nearly two hundred men with rifles. They hardly spoke. Quietly pondering the nature of the cosmos seemed an appropriate state of being for the undertaking at hand. Battle knew the drill: he and the other soldiers had been training for this mission for months. Now, sailing under a canopy of stars and planets, they consigned their fate to the gods.

They were on their way to Cuba to reclaim La Patria, which they felt had been unjustly seized from them by a silver-tongued despot with a scraggly beard and a prodigious cigar.

Battle’s boat was one of six vessels, each filled with hundreds of men who comprised an invading army known as the 2506 Brigade. The ships had set sail from Puerto Cabeza, on the coast of Nicaragua, at 2 A.M. the previous day. The various boats traversed the Caribbean Sea through slightly different routes, so they would not be easily detected. They sailed through the dark, watched the sun rise, continued throughout the following day, saw the sun set, and then all boats converged under cover of darkness forty miles off the coast of Cuba.

At thirty-one, Battle was older than many of the men in the brigade, a motley army of soldiers who ranged in age from sixteen to sixty-one. Though José Miguel was stout, bordering on overweight, he was a born leader. His reputation as a tough vice cop in Havana preceded him, and while training for the invasion he had distinguished himself enough to be given the rank of second lieutenant and designated the leader of a platoon. His unit would be among the first to go ashore once the flotilla reached Cuba.

The date was April 16, 1961. The brigade was scheduled to land at an area of the island known as the Bay of Pigs, Bahía de Cochinos, on the southern coast in the province of Matanzas. The landing site had been changed at the last minute. In fact, though the men had trained hard and were more than ready to fight, the battle plan for the invasion had been sucked into a political vortex of compromise and indecision.

Plans for the attack had begun years earlier under the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. It was a covert operation of the Central Intelligence Agency. In 1961, upon assuming office as the newly elected president, John F. Kennedy inherited the plan. It was controversial, to say the least. The U.S. government could not be seen as sanctioning the invasion in any way. As an undeclared act of war, it would be in violation of international law.

Within the Oval Office of the White House, Kennedy voiced doubts about the plan, but he had boxed himself into a corner. During the 1960 presidential campaign, Kennedy had taunted his opponent, Vice President Richard M. Nixon. He declared that the Eisenhower administration, in allowing Fidel Castro to gain a toehold in Cuba, was soft on communism. Now Kennedy could not squelch the invasion without appearing hypocritical and cowardly. Instead, what he did was systematically chip away at aspects of the plan, all in the interest of minimizing the appearance of U.S. military involvement in the operation.

There were many questionable decisions along the way, including the order to call off preinvasion bombings of Castro’s air force. The original plan had been to take out Cuba’s warplanes before the brigade landed. But after only one bombing raid, in which only a small number of planes were disabled, President Kennedy, fearing that the United States would be implicated, ordered a halt.

The men of the 2506 Brigade had no idea that President Kennedy was in the midst of a Hamlet-like internal struggle over the invasion’s propriety and prospects for success. What mattered most to these men was their own morale, which was high. Many had left behind wives, children, and decent lives when they volunteered for the mission, and they did so with single-minded dedication. The overriding motive was vengeance, the desire to get revenge against Castro and reclaim Cuba.

How could they lose? They had been trained and were being guided by officers of the U.S. military, the most powerful fighting force on the planet. Many, upon joining the brigade, had never heard of the Central Intelligence Agency, but that hardly mattered. Their desire for victory and their blind faith were an emotional balm, a sedative that inoculated them from the reality that as they sailed the Caribbean Sea toward their homeland, their mission was shifting below them.

On board the command ship Blagar—Lieutenant Battle’s boat—some of the men played cards to bide their time. Battle loved to gamble, and poker was his game. He played cards with members of his platoon. None of these men had been told that the plan to wipe out Castro’s air force had been scrapped. It was supposed to be a surprise attack; these men were expecting to meet little or no resistance. They had no idea that the invasion had been compromised before they landed. They were sailing toward their doom.

FROM THE LONG VIEW OF HISTORY, A COMMON MISCONCEPTION ABOUT THE MEN OF THE 2506 Brigade is that they came from the upper classes in Cuba and from those in partnership with the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. The idea that the invasion was undertaken by people who were philosophically opposed to the revolution is not entirely true. Many brigadistas were men who had at one time been tolerant if not supportive of various dissident groups that emerged in 1950s Cuba. Some had even fought in the Sierra Maestra with Castro’s 26th of July Movement and had risked their lives on behalf of the revolution.

The organizers of the invasion—both supervising agents with the CIA and members of the anti-Castro leadership in the United States—had made a deliberate point of not including known Batista sympathizers in the brigade. They did not want the invasion to be interpreted as an attempt by the dictator to reclaim power. Along with recruiting and training an invading force of soldiers, the organizers put together a “kitchen cabinet” of political figures who would assume power once the invasion was successful and Castro was overthrown. None of these men had ties to the Batista government.

Like José Miguel Battle, some in the brigade had an axe to grind. They had lost jobs and property. Some had been forced off the island in the most humiliating manner possible; they had been stripped of their belongings, their assets seized by the government. Many were shocked to hear of the political executions ordered and carried out by a revolutionary council led by Che Guevara. Others had gone through a sustained process of disillusionment. As the Castro government undertook a series of steps that revealed the new regime to be communist, they felt betrayed. They had been hoodwinked into believing the revolution represented positive social change, not just a case of trading one dictatorship for another. Personal aggrievement, political and philosophical outrage—these were potent motivators. The men of the brigade were driven by a powerful sense of venganza.

Soon after the counterrevolutionary force had been assembled, training began at a secret camp high in the hills of Guatemala. A force of approximately fifteen hundred men was secretly transported to Base Trax, the primary camp, where they lived and trained for six months. In a sweltering tropical jungle, they were bedeviled by snakes, spiders, and exotic insects. During drills and training exercises, some men succumbed to heat exhaustion and collapsed. They were isolated from the outside world; there were no newspapers, television, or radio. The men absorbed their training with the devotion of a scholastic Jesuit studying for the priesthood.

Boot camp was overseen by the CIA and officers of the U.S. Army and Air Force. The trainees lived at the encampment and went through physical and military training every day. Physically and psychologically, the routine was rigorous. Not everyone who had signed up for the brigade was able to pass the physical training.

Each man who passed was given a number. One of those men died during training; in honor of his sacrifice, the entire force was bestowed with his number—2506—and thus the men were officially christened the 2506 Brigade.

Among the members of the brigade were the Fuentes brothers, Fidel and Ramon. Like many who wound up in the platoon led by José Miguel Battle, they knew the former cop from their days in Havana. Fidel Fuentes met Battle at a meeting of the Freemasons. Both men were members of the secret Protestant organization that had existed in Cuba since 1763, when British and Irish settlers first came to the island. Over time, the organization developed a certain prestige among some noteworthy figures in Cuba. The revered patriot and poet José Martí had been a Mason, as was, allegedly, Fidel Castro, who is believed to have taken refuge at a Freemason lodge during violent student uprisings at the University of Havana in the late 1940s.

At a Masonic lodge in the 1950s, Fidel Fuentes and José Miguel Battle first stood in a circle and locked arms in the traditional ritual of the Masons. It was a bond that would come into play years later, when Fuentes found himself aboard the Blagar, along with his brother, sailing toward Cuba as a member of Battle’s platoon. Of his platoon commander, years later Fidel Fuentes would remember, “He was a strong leader. There was no boss or chief as simpatico as Battle.”

Just four months earlier, the Fuentes brothers had left their lives in Cuba to join the fight against Castro. Their father, who had been in the Cuban military, arranged for a twenty-six-foot sailboat—a mother ship—to be moored far out at sea. On the night of December 27, 1960, Fidel, age twenty-three, Ramon, age twenty-one, their father, age forty-eight, and sixteen others made their way to the mother ship via rowboats that carried four or five people at a time. In small installments, the human cargo was less likely to be detected by authorities. After each rowboat reached the sailboat, its passengers boarded the mother ship and the rowboat was sunk.

Of the nineteen people who boarded the vessel, eight were members of the Fuentes family. The engine-powered sailboat navigated the rough Florida Strait and arrived at a secret location near Key West. Within days of touching down on U.S. soil, Fidel, Ramon, and their father headed toward Guatemala to join the fight against the dictator.

The 2506 Brigade was comprised of four battalions, each with approximately 255 men. Each battalion was comprised of four platoons. Battle was the leader of a platoon that was part of the Fourth Battalion, the initial battalion to come ashore at Playa Girón in the Bay of Pigs. Fidel Fuentes and his brother remembered it well.

“It was ten minutes to midnight when we disembarked,” said Fidel. “The first thing we noticed was that we’d been dumped into water that was up to our necks and in some cases over our heads.”

They heard the voice of Battle: “Don’t let the machine guns get wet!”

The Fuentes brothers and the other soldiers held their rifles and machine guns high over their heads and tried to navigate their way to the beach. That was made difficult by the large rocks and jagged coral reef that lined the shore of Playa Girón, cutting their feet through their boots as they stumbled on the reef, arriving at the beach exhausted and soaking wet.

Everything about the brigade’s arrival on Cuban soil was unexpected and disorienting. For one thing, Castro knew they were coming. The Cuban government had numerous spies and informants in the exile community in the United States who had relayed rumors and information about the assault. And if that weren’t enough, just three days before the invasion there had been a front page article in the New York Times noting that rumors of an invasion were rife and that it was only a question of when and precisely where the force would attack.

Members of the brigade were not aware that they were expected; if they had been, perhaps they would not have been startled to find that when they landed at Playa Girón, they were met with klieg lights and incoming fire. The Cuban army was waiting for them.

Said Fuentes, “Anyone who was there will tell you, it was a bad situation from the moment we came ashore.”

Even so, the soldiers of the brigade were there to fight. They traded gunfire with the enemy from the moment they arrived. Trucks, tanks, and artillery of the brigade disgorged from a separate boat; more were scheduled to arrive later by air.

The plan had been for the various battalions to assemble at Playa Girón and Playa Larga, thirty miles to the north. The landing zones were designated as Blue Beach and Red Beach. Astride both of these beaches was Ciénaga de Zapata, a massive swampland that stretched sixty-five miles from east to west and twenty miles north to south. The Zapata swamp was comprised of dense hardwood trees and mangroves growing out of porous marshland.

The Fourth Battalion, which included Battle’s platoon, were supposed to set up a command post at the village of San Blas, ten miles inland. Their primary mission was to secure the small airport near San Blas as a means for supplies—food, communications equipment, additional artillery, and other supplies—to be offloaded by plane. Their secondary mission was to secure the hospital at the nearby town of Yaguaramas.

It would take the battalion a full day and night to reach San Blas. Along the way, they encountered fire, including heavy artillery and bombing from the air. The brigade soldiers were stunned. “As far as we knew,” remembered Fuentes, “Castro’s air force had been wiped out. We were not expecting to encounter such ferocious resistance from the land and by air.”

Before the brigade had even gotten its bearings, something occurred that the men would remember for the rest of their lives. As they made their way through the darkness toward San Blas, amid the sounds of rocket fire, airplanes, and the occasional bomb, there came from the shoreline an explosion so loud and powerful that it shook the earth below their feet. The men turned and saw a massive mushroom cloud rising into the sky.

“Coño (damn),” said a member of the platoon. “Does Castro have an atom bomb?”

Later, the men would learn that one of their primary supply ships, the Río Escondido, loaded with fuel tanks and artillery, had been hit from the air and ignited in a thunderous ball of flames. But at the time it shocked the men; they didn’t know what it was, leading them to surmise that whatever they were up against was more massive and destructive than anything they had imagined.

The road to San Blas was littered with vehicles and artillery abandoned by the Cuban military. There were swamps on both sides of the road. They approached a sugar mill near the village of Covadonga. It had been nearly twenty-four hours since the platoon first came ashore; the men we...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Introduction
• Prologue
• Part I: Traición/Betrayal
• Part II: Venganza/Revenge
• Part III: “Lo Hecho, Hecho Está”/“What Is Done, Is Done”
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix: The Racketeering Enterprise
• Notes
• Sources
• Index
• Photos Section
• About the Author
• Praise
• Also by T. J. English
• Copyright
• About the Publisher