The Corporation

by T. J. English

  During World War II, like many prison inmates in the United States, Torres was offered a deal in which he could join the military and in exchange would be given an early pardon. He joined the U.S. Army to get out of prison. When his division arrived on a U.S. warship in the Caribbean, he went AWOL and returned to Cuba. It was there that Ernesto Jr. was born in 1952.

  In mid-1967, Ernesto Sr. decided to return to the country of his birth. He more or less kidnapped his son from his mother and took him to Madrid, where he intended to groom Ernestico as a young hoodlum.

  By the time the Battles arrived in Madrid, Ernesto Sr. had once again gotten into trouble with the law and been imprisoned in Spain. Ernestico, only nineteen years old, was basically living as an orphan.

  Both José Miguel and Pedro Battle formed an immediate bond with Ernestico. The relationship with José Miguel was more of a patriarchic connection, with the elder man serving as a replacement for Ernestico’s own absent father. With Pedro (who in Madrid went by the name of Raymond) the bond was more of a brotherly relationship.

  As a Cuban street urchin in Madrid, Ernestico was a seductive character. He was a teenage con man and hustler who could take care of himself in the criminal world, but he was also sickly and vulnerable. He was thin to the point of being gaunt, and he suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, which caused him great pain.

  Antonia Izquierdo was a young woman who met Ernestico during this time. He became infatuated with her. One year later, she became the mother of his first and only child, an occurrence that also brought the young hoodlum even deeper into the realm of the Battle family.

  When Antonia met Ernestico, she was working as a domestic servant for a general in the army of Francisco Franco. It was a full-time job. She lived in the general’s home but had been given time off to sit in on flamenco guitar classes two days a week. At her very first class, Ernesto Torres walked in. He was friendly with Antonia’s friend and asked to meet her. He said to Antonia, “I want to get to know you better. If I have a party and invite you, will you come?”

  Antonia said that she would. But when Ernestico had his party, she didn’t show up. At the next guitar class, Ernestico confronted her. “Do you have something against me?”

  She said no but that she had a job that kept her busy much of the time. Ernestico asked if on her day off he could take her dancing, and she agreed.

  They went to a small club. Now that they were alone together in an intimate setting, Antonia felt the chemistry. A song by a Spanish pop group called Los Angeles came on the jukebox. The song was “Monica,” a lush love ballad with swelling strings and sentimental lyrics. Ernesto said, “Forever after, this song will remind me of you. In fact, from now on I’m going to call you ‘Monica.’ ”

  A week later, Ernestico told her, “I want to be your man, and I want you to be with me. I don’t want you working for that general anymore.”

  “Are you going to take care of me?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he answered.

  They moved together into an apartment in the center of Madrid. Antonia quickly understood that her new boyfriend was a hustler who conned people out of money, but somehow that only made the situation more romantic. After a few months living with Ernestico, she became pregnant.

  At the same time this was happening, Ernestico had become tight with the Battles and other Cubans from New Jersey who had formed their small community on the lam in Spain. Not everyone was enamored with Ernestico. Isleño Dávila, for one, believed that the young hoodlum was a hopeless case. One night, when the Cubans were all gathered together at a party, Isleño saw Antonia with Ernestico, and he said to her, “You’re too good to be hanging out with this guy.” Ernestico heard that and went crazy. He pulled out a knife that he always carried and threatened to kill Isleño. Others who were there separated the two men before it escalated into a physical altercation.

  By mid-1971, Ernesto and Pedro Battle had become so close that when Antonia gave birth to their child, the father asked Pedro if he would be the godfather. Said Pedro, “Of course, Ernestico. I would be honored. You’re like a brother to me.”

  The child was baptized in a majestic Catholic cathedral in Madrid. Pedro was there to serve as godfather, along with a female friend of Antonia who served as godmother. Having a rebel spirit, Ernestico did not want to give his son the traditional name of Ernesto Torres. He wanted to name the kid Ringo, after Ringo Starr of the Beatles. However, this being Spain under Franco, a Catholic traditionalist, the church would not let him baptize his child as Ringo, and so the child was christened, inevitably, as Ernesto Torres.

  Fatherhood did little to tame Ernestico. He remained impulsive, with a self-destructive streak that defied logic.

  One day, José Miguel Battle was explaining to the young Cuban that a man was coming to see him. The man owed him $10,000 but was coming to explain that he did not have the money. It was Battle’s intention to terrify the man so that he would realize that he could not trifle with José Miguel Battle, the Cuban Godfather from America.

  Ernestico listened carefully and took it all in. Later that day, the guy arrived in a Madrid taxi, black with a red stripe along the side.

  Battle was inside the apartment on Calle Jaime Conquistador. He heard Pop! Pop! He went outside, and there was the guy in the back of the cab, shot twice in the head, Ernesto standing by with a gun. “You’ll have no more problems with this guy,” said Ernesto.

  Battle was astonished. “What do you mean? Are you crazy?”

  “Let this be a message to your enemies.”

  “You just cost me a lot of money. You are crazy. Get this body out of here.”

  Battle pulled out some cash and handed it to the driver. “Go. Disappear. We’ll take care of it.”

  The driver took the money and split.

  Battle looked at Ernestico, both stupefied and somewhat impressed. It says a lot about Battle that he looked at the dead body, and at Ernesto, knowing that this was an outrageous act, but also perhaps the thought entering his consciousness that he could use this kid.

  Aside from Ernestico’s impulsive acts of violence, Battle and the other Cubans in Spain had a wonderful time. They traveled together to the ruggedly beautiful area of Costa Brava, on the north Mediterranean coast, and all stayed at the same hotel. Spain was the motherland, the maternal womb for all Latinos, and together they could squint their eyes and almost believe they were back in the fatherland, La Patria, Cuba. They were able to speak in their native tongue every day. The weather was similar to La Isla, hot and humid. And the cuisine was close enough to remind Battle of his home province of Oriente. It was a time of fantasy in vacationland, a place where the men with three letters—FBI—could not bother them. For a while, it seemed like paradise.

  However, by September 1972, Battle had been in Spain for nineteen months. His fellow bolita banker, Isleño Dávila, had a saying: “El circo está cerado, pero los leones siguen comiendo (The circus is closed, but the lions are still eating).” There were mouths to feed back in New York. By then, Dávila and Joaquin Deleon Sr., who were not facing criminal charges, and his brother Pedro, had returned to the United States. Ernestico, for whom Battle saw so much potential, had also departed to the States. José Miguel was mostly alone with his wife and Miguelito. He was getting restless. You could only neglect the bolita business for so long before it fell apart, or into the hands of someone else.

  In early September, Battle sent his wife and son ahead on a flight to Newark. On the twenty-fifth of that month, Battle himself boarded a plane in Madrid under a false passport. The flight was destined for Costa Rica and then Miami.

  Apparently someone tipped off authorities in the United States, because when Battle landed at Miami International Airport, he was immediately arrested by federal agents.

  While stewing in custody, El Padrino pondered his predicament. He was facing two substantial charges, the gambling case in New Jersey, and now the charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

 
He was soon transferred to a federal facility in New Jersey. There, he huddled with his lawyers, who decided that it was best for him to avoid trial. In exchange for his pleading guilty to both charges, the lawyers would attempt to work out the best deal they could.

  It was a sweet deal. By pleading guilty, Battle received a sentence of just eighteen months. At the Isle of Pines, eighteen months had seemed like an eternity, but for Battle, who had been expecting a longer sentence and would be serving his time at the federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, this eighteen months would be a piece of cake.

  BATTLE ARRIVED AT DANBURY CORRECTIONAL FACILITY WITH A BOUNCE IN HIS STEP. Once he got settled in, he was a minor celebrity among the mafiosi, who had heard he was a “friend of the family.” To the Cuban American inmates, he was a major celebrity, El Padrino, a war hero from the Bay of Pigs.

  Whatever notoriety Battle might have had, however, was overshadowed by the arrival of some new celebrity inmates—the Watergate burglars, otherwise known as “the Plumbers.”

  The infamous Watergate burglary had occurred while Battle was in Spain; the arrest of the burglars had riveted Battle’s attention, as it did many Cuban émigrés in the United States. Most Americans followed the evolving scandal as it related to the administration of President Richard Nixon—whether or not the break-in at Democratic Party National Headquarters in the Watergate hotel and office complex in Washington, D.C., had been authorized by Nixon’s people, and was being covered up by Nixon himself. Most Cuban Americans saw the story as a home movie. A number of the burglars were Cuban exiles, and four were former members of the 2506 Brigade. Also involved were retired CIA agent E. Howard Hunt, who had been a crucial organizer of the Bay of Pigs invasion, and Frank Sturgis, a recurring character in recent counterrevolutionary history whom Castro’s mistress claimed to have seen in Dallas, in the company of Lee Harvey Oswald, days before the JFK assassination.

  Battle knew most of these men, and he was excited to have them in his presence. Five of the seven Watergate burglars had come into Danbury prison at the same time the Senate Watergate hearings were playing out on national television. Unlike Howard Hunt and some of the others, the Cubans in the group had refused to cooperate with the Senate committee and had been sentenced to thirteen months in prison. They saw themselves as prisoners of la lucha, or prisoners of war.

  Battle’s interpretation of the Watergate scandal was, as with most Cuban exiles, different from that of the average American citizen. The exiles saw the Watergate caper as a continuation of the struggle against Castro. And for them it was deeply rooted in the Bay of Pigs invasion.

  The burglars had been recruited by Hunt, who was putting together a team of political saboteurs to work on behalf of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP). Hunt had met with Eugenio Rolando Martínez, Virgilio González, Bernard Barker, and Felipe de Diego at the Bay of Pigs monument on SW 8th Street, Calle Ocho, in Little Havana. His pitch was simple. Hunt explained that Nixon was reigniting the U.S. government’s secret war against Castro. Becoming involved with the Plumbers, a unit dedicated to committing subversive acts against communist sympathizers and other political enemies, was the first step in this renewed effort. “Do the Watergate caper, and then we go after Fidel,” was how it was presented to the Cubans.

  Rolando Martínez, Gonzalez, and Barker had all worked as part-time agents for the CIA. Martinez in particular had in the early 1960s taken part in numerous maritime sabotage activities against the Castro government, all sponsored by the CIA. According to Agency records, he was placed on a retainer of $100 a month and not taken off the books until the day he was arrested for the break-in.

  Battle, like everyone else in America, was learning about the details of the Watergate story as it evolved in the public arena, first in the Washington Post and then through the dramatic, televised public hearings of the Senate Watergate Committee. But he knew more than the average citizen about the bona fides of the burglars.

  At Danbury, Battle greeted Martinez and the others as patriots and war heroes. Just as he had once presented Luis Posada Carriles with the gift of a gun, in honor of his efforts on behalf of La Causa, the Cause, Battle presented a brand-new expensive watch to Rolando Martínez. He was able to get the gift into the facility by paying off some guards.

  “This is for your integrity, your principles, and your track record in combating Castro,” Battle told Martínez.

  The ex-CIA operative knew Battle from when he was a cop in Havana, though they were not close friends. Upon receiving the watch, Martínez said, “Battle, thank you for the watch, but, coño, we can’t use this in here. Estamos jodidos (We’re screwed).” They both laughed at their mutual predicament.

  Doing time with the Watergate burglars was something Battle would never forget. It somehow ennobled his criminal efforts, and added meaning to his time in prison. These men were fellow brigadistas, fellow anti-Castro warriors, and the fact that their drama was playing out on such a grandiose national level was awe-inspiring.

  As the saga unfolded, the legacy of the Bay of Pigs invasion seemed to lurk in the shadows. During the hearings, it was dramatically revealed that Nixon had secretly taped many of his conversations in his office in the White House. Eventually, those tapes were transcribed and released to the public, and it was made clear that Nixon, who as vice president had been an early enthusiast of the invasion, saw the legacy of that disaster as a means to an end. In attempting to blackmail the CIA director into dropping the Watergate investigation, he warned that it would dredge up “the whole Bay of Pigs thing.” Nixon was using the Bay of Pigs as a metaphor to reference Operation Mongoose; perhaps the JFK assassination; and other secrets that sprang out of covert efforts to kill Castro. Nixon was using the dark legacy of the Bay of Pigs invasion as a club to intimidate whomever he could.

  On August 9, 1974, Nixon was forced to resign as president of the United States, a monumental event in U.S. history.

  It was also personally monumental for Battle and his friends watching the news unfold on television at Danbury prison. The legacy of the invasion—the brigadistas’ own personal history—and the ongoing efforts to undermine Castro and reclaim Cuba were now in the bloodstream of the body politic. The personal history of the exiles had become a living history of the United States, and it made Battle and those who were caught up in this history feel as if, on some profound and near-cosmic level, they were part of an ongoing political narrative that was still being written.

  At Danbury prison, as Battle’s release date approached, he might have been asked, “Padrino, when you get out of here, what are you gonna do?”

  The answer was predictable, burned as it was into the man’s DNA: “We’re gonna go get that bastard, Castro, and take back La Patria.”

  IN THE DECADE OR SO THAT BATTLE HAD BEEN GROWING HIS BOLITA BUSINESS, THE months on the run in Spain, and, later, while he was serving time at Danbury—through it all la lucha, the struggle, lived on, and the dream never died. With the assassination of JFK bringing about the discontinuation of Operation Mongoose, the anti-Castro movement had broken open like a piñata, spewing forth a generation’s worth of CIA-trained spies, killers, and covert operators. The Mafia was no longer involved, but the relationship between the militant exiles and the CIA had become, if anything, even more entangled.

  A primary player in this alliance remained Luis Posada Carriles, Battle’s poker buddy and friend from the army base at Fort Benning. Like the Watergate burglars, Posada was a dedicated combatant in the secret war against Castro. But unlike Rolando Martínez and the others, he remained on the front lines as a CIA operative, active in South Florida and in various anticommunist efforts throughout Latin America. In Miami, Posada was one of the cofounders of a paramilitary organization called Alpha 66, which was created to carry out anti-Castro terrorist bombings, political assassinations, and other counterrevolutionary acts.

  In 1965, Posada took part in what became known as “the Alejos conspiracy.” In an elaborate plo
t to stage a coup d’état in Guatemala, the CIA devised a plan to infiltrate operatives and a huge cache of weapons into that country. Posada was one of numerous Cuban exile conspirators who were apprehended in the United States and forced to turn over guns, ammunition, and explosives to U.S. Customs. At the same time, Posada was active in Mexico, where he became part of an anti-Castro cell that intended to blow up some Russian ships in the port town of Veracruz.

  Posada’s partner and primary financier on the Mexico operation was a 2506 Brigade veteran named Jorge Mas Canosa. At the time, Mas was active in the anti-Castro underground; in later years, he would become a prominent figure aboveground as the president of the Cuban American National Foundation, the most influential Cuban American political lobbying group in the United States.

  Posada, for his part, remained firmly underground. Since leaving the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company and preparing for the Bay of Pigs invasion, he had opted for the life of a covert operator. The failure of the invasion, and the fact that so many of his compadres had spent time in Castro’s prison, had instilled in him a sense of mission that would keep him occupied for many decades to come.

  As Posada engaged in various clandestine operations and began to leave a paper trail within classified files of the CIA, his internal evaluations were laudatory. One report noted:

  His performance in all assigned tasks has been excellent . . . It is [my] observation that although A/15 [Posada] is dedicated to the overthrow of Castro, he is acutely aware of the international implications of ill planned or overly enthusiastic activities against Cuba.