Legacy

Its 1967 and Cuban refugees are making it to our shores in droves.  The cold war with Russia is in full bloom.  Fidel Castro and Russian missiles in Cuba feed the frenzy.  Cubans desperate to flee Cuba take extreme chances.  They come by overloaded boats, many of which sank before getting to a safe place. Some even tried to paddle a hundred mile or more in an inner tube.  Many ways were tried, few succeeded, but those few still added up to a lot of people.

Our coast guard rescue was kept busy 24/7.  However a more sophisticated way of getting important Cubans out safely was hatched by one Juan Castillo.  Important were those who were educated and or had information valuable to the United States Government.

Juan spent the fortune; that he had hidden from the Castro Government to make it all work.  Many airport officials and baggage handlers were either patriotic to the cause of freeing Cuba or receptive to fat bribes.

At this point Cuba was on the no visit list and you couldn’t go there on a American passport.  However you could with a British passport.  So a few sympathetic British operatives were part of the plan; as they could come and go to and from Cuba as they pleased. They didn’t have to go far as Bermuda is a British Protectorate.

There were many meetings getting all the details worked out.  But worked out they were.  It took many months before someone actually noticed that the Airline flights from Havana to Bermuda always had one more passenger disembark than was on the passenger list.  Boarding lists were always checked closely, but no one paid much attention to how many disembarked.

Now Cuban Cigars are made of the finest of tobaccos and are prized the world over.  American cigar smokers were not happy when the United States State Department banned the import of Cuban Cigars.  That was a negative to the Cuban economy.

So when the baggage handlers would take a crate to an airlines cargo hold that was marked cigars, all were happy, as the more cigars exported the better it was for Castro’s economy.  In fact Castro encouraged officials to be cooperative and helpful in expediting cigar exports.

The thing is, the crate didn’t hold Cigars, it held a person.

After the airliner was in route, the person would unlatch the crate from the inside make his way to the rear of the cargo hold go up a short ladder and open up an access hatch and climb out into the regular part of the airliner.  Unseen of course since this hatch was to the rear and a bit offset from the restroom. They would then close the hatch and look for an empty seat.

Upon arrival in Bermuda the person would then disembark.  Go to a predestinated place to be greeted and picked up by a sympathetic party, who then would outfit them with a British passport for boarding a different flight headed to the Miami airport.  A different sympathetic agent would take delivery of the now empty crate as no one wanted crates to accumulate and cause question.

This is how a great many educated professional, and skilled Cubans escaped Cuba, leaving Castro with a brain drain of able people. This process was repeated many times each day successfully for several years, then the practice was abandoned as someone in the know let it be known that someone had betrayed them.

No one was ever arrested, not even within Cuba itself. It’s been rumored that Castro was a little more than simply miffed about it.  Poor  baby.

So, if you are so inclined, as you read this, feel free to sit back and enjoy a good cigar.