The Corporation

by T. J. English

  For three days they struggled to survive. Because there was no water, they drank their own urine. They ate leaves from the trees. Turkey vultures circled in the sky above. Already the carnivorous vultures had been feasting on the carcasses of the dead. Battle and his men threw stones at the birds, trying to scare them away so that they would not alert the enemy of their whereabouts.

  On the fourth day, as they came out of the swamps and into the woods, they discovered a well that contained fresh water and some small crabs. The men cracked opened the crabs and ate the raw flesh. It tasted good, but soon the men were overcome with fever and diarrhea.

  Their enemy knew they were out there. Patrols drove by on the roads and military helicopters zoomed overhead. Castro’s militia knew that the “mercenaries,” as they called them, were starving, and so the helicopters sometimes dropped chocolate candy into open areas and hovered overhead. Remembered Fidel Fuentes, “If one of our men went for the chocolate, he would be shot dead.”

  Battle, the Fuentes brothers, and the others hunkered down in an area near the well, but they knew that by doing so they were risking capture. They constructed an igloo out of rocks so that they could hide inside and not be detected from the air. Under cover of darkness, they made periodic runs for water from the well.

  On one of those water runs, a soldier from their own camp betrayed them. He crossed over to the other side and told Castro’s forces where the men were hiding.

  “We know you’re in there,” shouted the leader of a large platoon of milicianos. “Come out. We’ll give you food, condensed milk, water.”

  “Be quiet,” Battle told his men. “Don’t say a word.”

  Castro’s soldiers moved in and flushed out what remained of Battle’s platoon, who were weak and starving.

  As the men were rounded up, Battle saw a Castro soldier whom he recognized. It was his cousin. The two men’s eyes met—a look of recognition and acknowledgment—but there were no smiles. The cousin sneered at Battle. Loudly, so that the other soldiers could hear him, he said, “If I’d known it was you, I’d have shot you in the head.”

  THE INVASION WAS AN INTERNAL FAMILY STRUGGLE, CUBAN VERSUS CUBAN. IT WAS not unusual to have family members on opposite sides, brothers fighting brothers, cousins fighting cousins. Battle had once been a powerful man in Cuba, an officer of the law. But now he was a captured prisoner of war, or, as the Castro government preferred to call the fallen brigadistas, traitors, mercenaries, or gusanos (worms).

  Their capture and imprisonment would be another sorry chapter in the humiliation of Battle and his men. Castro and his armed forces had achieved victory on the battlefield, and now they had a major propaganda coup in their hands. The first order of business was to make sure the men of the brigade were fully aware that they had lost, to put the boot on their esophagus and press down with all the weight of Cuban history.

  The prisoners were gathered together at Playa Girón, the site of their initial landing. They were to be loaded onto trucks, buses, and rastras (trailer trucks) and transported to Havana. In the first rastra, an inordinate number of men were forced into the back of the truck, a tightly sealed, unventilated cargo space. Osmany Cienfuegos, Cuba’s minister of public works, oversaw the loading of the truck. At one point, one of his underlings said to him, “Sir, we can’t put any more in there; they will die.”

  Loudly, so that everyone could hear, the minister said, “Let them die. It will save us having to shoot them.” He called for “forty more gusanos” to be loaded on the truck.

  One hundred forty-nine captured men were transported on an eight-hour drive that one of the survivors later described as “like Dante’s inferno.” Packed so tight that they were unable to move or breathe, some of the men called out, “I have no air! I’m going to die!” The men banged and clawed at the aluminum walls of the truck. The heat was so intense that the condensation of moisture caused the walls and ceiling of the truck’s interior to sweat, so that the men marinated in their own bodily juices. Later, one of the men said, “When you are going to die, the first is a very deep sleep. If you sleep, you die.” If the men saw one of their brothers doze off or pass out, they jostled him back to life. Some sank into unconsciousness and could not be revived.

  By the time the truck reached Havana, the men were too numb and depleted even to cry out for their lives. When the door was opened, they fell out like rag dolls, lifeless and drenched in sweat. Nine men had been asphyxiated to death on the drive. Another died shortly thereafter. It was a higher casualty total than many of the battles that had taken place during combat.

  Eventually, 1,019 captured brigadistas were herded into the Palacio de los Deportes, Havana’s Sports Palace, an arena normally used for such events as boxing and basketball. For the next twenty days, the men were held at the facility under primitive conditions. They were not allowed to bathe, shave, or change clothes; the stench of battle and days of survival in the swamps led to skin diseases and body odors that made them gag. Their names were called out one by one, and they were separated according to battalion. The men did not yet know who among them had survived. At one point, they were given food, but it was laced with jalap, a powerful purgative that made them violently sick, causing them to defecate uncontrollably. Firehoses were brought in to wash away the feces. The men were allowed only three hours of sleep a day upon soiled mattresses that were laid out in the center of the arena under bright klieg lights.

  After a few days at the Sports Palace, Fidel Castro himself appeared. A master of psychological manipulation, Castro spoke to the men in the paternalistic tones of a schoolmaster. He told them that they had been used by the U.S. president, Kennedy, and that they had fought valiantly in an ignoble cause. He said that he had every right to shoot them as traitors, but that the revolution would be fair with them. He would spare their lives.

  Over the next few days, the prisoners were paraded before television cameras from around the world as symbols of defeat. After that, they were transferred to the Castillo del Príncipe, an eighteenth-century stone Spanish castle that had been converted into a prison, located on the eastern edge of Havana, on a plateau across the harbor from Habana Vieja (Old Havana). From there the prisoners could occasionally see the great city that so many of them had left behind years ago when they first left their homeland.

  In late March 1962, in an open courtyard at Príncipe, the show trials began. Each day the men were made to sit in their yellow prison fatigues and watch a tribunal take place, at which they were condemned for their actions and found guilty of the charge of treason. A five-man commission of Cuban government ministers imposed a fine—what they called reparations—ranging from $25,000 per man up to $500,000, depending on the person’s role in the invasion. After everyone had been individually convicted, they were separated, with 114 of the prisoners transferred to the notorious prison on the Isle of Pines off the southern coast of Cuba.

  Among those transferred to the Isle of Pines was José Miguel Battle, who at trial had been fined $100,000. As a former member of Batista’s notoriously corrupt police force, and a second lieutenant in command of a platoon during the invasion, he held a special place as a gusano of distinction. He was placed in a section of the prison called the Squares, the punishment cells, where he was incarcerated with, among others, his fellow platoonmates Fidel and Ramon Fuentes.

  At the Isle of Pines prison, Battle was also reunited with paratrooper Raul Martinez, whom he had rescued along with his men on the road to San Blas.

  It was an emotional moment for Martinez. He told Battle, “Thank you for saving my life. You showed tremendous courage that night.”

  Battle said, “Gracias,” but he did not brag or boast about his actions. “He seemed like a humble type of guy. If he was admired—and he certainly was—it was because of his actions, not his words, because he did not try to make himself out to be a hero.”

  It was at the Isle of Pines prison that members of 2506 Brigade began to develop a bond for which they wou
ld eventually became famous among Cuban Americans. Back at Base Trax, before the invasion, they had been trained separately as battalions; during the invasion they had been deployed as specialized units and were often unaware of how things had been going for other units; during capture and imprisonment, they were kept in separate cells. It was only now in their incarceration that they were reunited with fellow platoon members and allowed to circulate together as one large group.

  For Martinez, who was to turn twenty-one during his time at the prison, it was a revelation. He got to know Battle, who was ten years his senior. They sat in the prison and talked about life. “We talked about whorehouses in Havana. He was an expert on that. We talked about our sexual initiations and the initiation of all our buddies in Havana. He said, ‘Yeah, we had a lot of fun.’ Everyone knew that the police under Batista had been corrupt; he didn’t have to tell me that. I hadn’t yet learned that he had been a bagman for [Santo] Trafficante or anything like that, but that wouldn’t have surprised me. He was that type of guy. I’m sure that amongst underworld figures, he was very trusted.”

  What made Martinez sense that Battle could or might have been a power broker among all types was the ease with which he assumed control at the Isle of Pines prison. Battle took over the role, or had been acceded the responsibility, of the man who controlled access to the prison patio. It was a prestigious position. The patio was the only location where the men were able to take in the fabulous Caribbean sunshine. The space was limited and therefore access needed to be regulated. The prison guards allowed the inmates to police themselves in this regard, and Battle was the man in charge.

  At the lieutenant’s side during his time as guardian of the patio, Martinez noted, was Angel Mujica, who Martinez learned had been a member of Battle’s vice squad in Havana and during the invasion had been a part of his platoon. Battle was fat, and Mujica was thin. To Martinez, they reminded him of the famous Hollywood movie duo El Flaco y El Gordo (Laurel and Hardy). At the Isle of Pines prison, they were inseparable.

  THERE WAS NO GLASS IN THE PRISON’S BARRED WINDOWS; CARVED OUT OF THE STONE walls, they were open to the air. The prison was surrounded by hills comprised largely of iron ore. During torrential tropical storms, the iron deposits attracted lightning; the noise from the thunder and lightning was so loud that men covered their ears with their hands for fear of damage to their eardrums.

  As with any extended period of incarceration, the days were mundane and filled with boredom. The men sought to use their time productively by holding classes on Cuban history and aspects of Cuban culture. They held English classes. Among the imprisoned brigade members were a number of Catholic priests who held mass on Sundays. During the week, the prisoners recited poems and sang songs together.

  No visitors or letters were allowed in the punishment cells at the Isle of Pines prison. The prisoners held in them communicated with the others through Morse code, a skill they had all learned during their training at Base Trax. By spelling out words and phrases by waving a cloth, and receiving responses in similar fashion, the prisoners in the punishment cells gained information. In October 1962, via the code, they received news of an extraordinary event that was descending upon their narrow, cloistered little world like an ominous tropical storm.

  To the outside world it became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis and was viewed as an extension of the Cold War. Earlier that month, U.S surveillance planes had discovered that Russian missiles were being stockpiled in Cuba, which the Kennedy administration viewed as a hostile act. Castro had covertly authorized the placement of the Soviet missiles in the wake of the Bay of Pigs invasion. Tense negotiations followed between JFK and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. For a time it seemed that the fate of both countries and perhaps the world hung in the balance.

  Since there were no newspapers or radios or television at the Isle of Pines prison, the inmates only knew what they were able to glean from visitors. Information spread through the prison as gossip and speculation. During the period of negotiation between the U.S. and Soviet governments, Cuban B-52s and MIG fighter jets flew low over the prison, which the brigade survivors took as a show of force to warn them that if the U.S. were to invade the island, it was going to be all-out war.

  An incident during the crisis caught the attention of many prisoners. One afternoon, the commander of the Isle of Pines garrison—not the head of the prison, but rather the general of the Cuban troops stationed on the isle—came to the patio. The general was a good friend of one of the brigadistas, Albert Fowler, who came from a wealthy family that had owned sugar mills in Cuba. Back in the 1950s, the general and Albert Fowler had been in the Sierra Maestra together fighting against Batista.

  The other prisoners were aware that the general and Fowler had once been fellow revolutionaries, and they made room for the two to sit together and talk. Many inmates nearby attempted to eavesdrop on the conversation. The general seemed to sense as much; he spoke loudly so that others could hear.

  “Albert,” he announced to his old friend, “I want to tell you something. You are my brother from the Sierra Maestra. We became brothers fighting against the dictator Batista. But, unfortunately, I have an order from the commander in chief to shoot all of you the minute an American lands here. You understand? If an American paratrooper happens to land on this isle, I personally am going to come here and kill all of you.”

  There was a long silence, and then Fowler said to his old friend, “General, don’t be a lambe culo (ass kisser). If the Americans land, come with us. We’ll protect you. Because they are our friends and will do as we say.”

  Many of the men laughed, in a display of gallows humor.

  Within days, the crisis was over. Premier Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles from Cuba. An international disaster was averted.

  What the prisoners did not know at the time was that President Kennedy, as part of the bargain with Khrushchev—and by extension, Fidel Castro—had guaranteed that there would be no more invasions or acts of military aggression by the United States against the Castro government. Later, when this detail became known to veterans of the 2506 Brigade, some saw it as yet another example of JFK’s selling them out behind their backs.

  WITHIN WEEKS OF THE SOVIET MISSILES BEING REMOVED FROM CUBA, THE PRISONERS began to hear an astounding rumor. In letters from loved ones in the United States, they learned that Castro and the Kennedy administration were in negotiations that could bring about their release. This rumor was confirmed by Berta Barreto, the mother of a prisoner who had become the liaison with an organization in Washington, D.C., called the Cuban Families Committee and who was allowed into the prison on a semi-regular basis to give the prisoners updates on negotiations.

  The United States would not pay cash to the Cuban government in exchange for the prisoners; this would have been viewed as paying ransom. Instead, they were offering to meet Castro’s demand of $ 62 million by furnishing the equivalent amount in tractors and farming equipment, medical supplies, and other “necessities” that were in short supply on the island. There had already been ups and downs in the negotiations, with the mercurial Castro making unrealistic demands, and the U.S. negotiators sometimes making promises they were not able to keep.

  “I want to caution you,” Berta Barreto informed the prisoners. “The process has been slow and difficult, but we will continue until every prisoner is set free.”

  The men were hopeful. Recalled Raul Martinez, “All of the men wanted to gain access to the patio so they could get a suntan, in the event that we were released.”

  The weeks passed, and the rumors persisted. By December, the word was that they would be released in time for Christmas, which seemed too good to be true.

  On December 22, a Saturday, the men were taken out, shaved, and given haircuts, shoes, and fresh uniforms. They were offered a lavish meal with fresh meat. The men devoured the food. Throughout the months of incarceration, their prison diet had been so poor, so devoid of nutritional value and taste, th
at their stomachs had shrunk. Now, as they gorged themselves, some became sick. That night, in expectation that freedom was near, few of them slept.

  The following morning, the men were awakened early. They were taken from the prison and flown to San Antonio de los Baños Airfield in Havana province. There, they were met by the other prisoners from Príncipe Castle. The men were given new clothes and allowed to rest on brand-new cots.

  Even though by now it appeared they were being released, some of the men could not believe it. Said Raul Martinez, “It wasn’t until we were transported to the airport that I really believed what was happening. We saw the plane with the Pan Am logo, and then we knew: we were returning to the United States.”

  The men were flown to the Air Force base at Homestead in South Florida. They disembarked at 6:45 P.M. and were met by a throng of media people and by immigration officials and volunteers from the Red Cross. Two more flights filled with prisoners arrived that night.

  The entire brigade was taken to Dinner Key Auditorium in downtown Miami, where they were reunited with their families and treated to another banquet-style meal.

  The sudden return to civilization was jarring. Some of the men found it difficult to be in the company of their families, preferring to huddle with fellow members of the brigade. Though family members were understandably thrilled to see their loved ones, it was mostly a solemn gathering, with many of the newly freed men struggling to take it all in.

  They had shared a singular experience; now there were mixed feelings of shame, pride, loss, and defiance. These men had been dragged through a process of defeat that was designed to crush their spirit. Though they were surrounded by family members and others in the community who had suffered along with them and had tirelessly advocated for their release, they knew that no one could possibly comprehend what they had been through except their fellow brigadistas. They had survived by banding together. Now they would be united by their shared legacy of what had taken place on the battlefield and as prisoners of war. It was a legacy that would, for better or for worse, shape their lives and the lives of those around them for generations to come.