Biz of Pigs: Five Cuban-American Show Business Intersections with Deep Politics

 

I Love Lucy star Desi Arnaz, who immigrated to the US from Cuba in 1933, “always supported the Cuban cause,” attested President of the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association Felix Rodríguez Mendigutia in 2004, adding: “Anything against Fidel Castro, he supported.” [1] Though Arnaz kept his contributions secret, veterans of the doomed CIA-backed anti-Castro operation related that “the late Cuban-American entertainer […] helped finance the freedom of hundreds of Bay of Pigs fighters captured by Cuban government forces” [2]. Rodríguez Mendigutia and Bay of Pigs veteran Nilo Messer told The Miami Herald that “Arnaz also provided seed money for several exile organizations, including one headed by the late Jorge Mas Canosa that preceded the Cuban American National Foundation.” [3] Mas Canosa, among other anti-Castro ventures, was involved in the CIA-sponsored Radio SWAN, which broadcast propaganda into Cuba [4].

Arnaz’s connections with Frank Sinatra and racketeers Mickey Cohen and Nate Stein also link him tangentially to the Kennedy assassination nexus. A 1962 FBI report relates the following anecdote:

Stein in late 1958 or early 1959 visited at the Sands Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada, and while at the hotel had everything on the house. Stein was given much freedom in the hotel and walked inside the pits without being challenged.

Stein on one occasion was joined by Desi Arnaz in gambling at the crap table at the Sands Casino, and Arnaz lost the sum of $26,000.00. Stein went to the casino cashier’s cage at the Sands and obtained, without note or marker, the sum of $5,000.00. Stein then went to the Tropicana Casino and within fifteen minutes had won the sum of $15,000.00, which he gave to Arnaz. Stein stated that this was the last time he would do Arnaz such a favor. [5]

An FBI asset “was informed by Stein that Joseph Stacher was the real owner of the Sands Hotel, Las Vegas.” [6] “Joseph ‘Doc’ Stacher,” writes Meyer Lansky biographer Hank Messick, “would become one of Lansky’s most valuable aides in the control of international casino gambling and would be deported to Israel when an old man.” [7] Intriguingly, as Mickey Cohen biographer Brad Lewis describes, Arnaz was also acquainted with Sirhan Sirhan:

Sirhan was friends with well-known horse trainer Frank Donneroumas, who introduced him to Desi Arnaz, who had a fancy horse-breeding ranch in Corona, where Sirhan worked. Arnaz was always on good terms with Mickey [whose Santa Anita racetrack also employed Siran], as well as with Sinatra, despite the embellished public confrontation over [Desilu-produced] The Untouchables television show [which cast Chicago organized crime figures as villains]. Donneroumas was former criminal Henry Ramistella, a middle management racketeer from New Jersey who disappeared west after being banned from the East Coast tracks. FBI investigations linked Ramistella, Sirhan, and Arnaz to Mickey. [8]

Gloria Estefan, who as a member of Miami Sound Machine achieved breakthrough success with the 1985 hit “Conga”, “was born Gloria María Fajardo in Havana, Cuba, on September 1, 1957, the daughter of Gloria and José Manuel Fajardo,” relates biographer Michael Benson: “The Fajardos did not remain on the island of Gloria’s birth for long, however. Her father was a driver and bodyguard for the Cuban president, Fulgencio Batista, and his family.” [9] Following Castro’s revolution, Benson continues:

The Fajardo family fled via Pan Am jet across the ninety miles of ocean between Cuba and the United States, and settled in Miami, Florida. […]

Along with many other Cubans in exile, the Fajardo family moved into a ghetto near Miami’s Orange Bowl. They had been fairly well off financially in Cuba, but they faced adjustments in a new country where they had no money coming in. […]

The Fajardos had been in Miami for only a brief time when Gloria’s father left the city to train for a secret military mission. The good news was that he was getting paid for the job. The bad news was that it was going to be very, very dangerous.

José Fajardo had joined other Cuban exiles and the US Central Intelligence Agency in a move to invade Cuba and try to win back control of the country from the new leadership, which had become openly communist. “My father went off to the Bay of Pigs and left my mother a note. That was the only reason she knew. He didn’t tell her where he was going.” The April 1961 invasion at the Bay of Pigs, on Cuba’s southwestern coast, failed. Although José survived the battle, he was captured and sent to a Cuban prison.

José finally returned to Miami a few days before Christmas 1962, when US President John F. Kennedy made a deal with Cuban leader Fidel Castro. In exchange for the release of the Cuban prisoners, the United States gave Cuba millions of dollars of food and medicine. [10]  

In 2011, Estefan helped “honor her father, José Fajardo, and the fellow veterans of the famed Brigade 2506 by singing the Cuban national anthem at a dinner to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the invasion at the DoubleTree Miami Mart Airport Hotel & Exhibition Center” – an event that was also attended by her fellow Cuban-American celebrity Andy Garcia [11], who had joined Estefan in protesting the repatriation of Elián González to Castro’s Cuba eleven years earlier [12].

Cuban-American actor Steven Bauer, most famous for his role as Tony Montana’s friend Manny Ribera in Brian De Palma’s Scarface (1983), was born Esteban Ernesto Echevarría Samson in Havana in 1956, emigrating to the US in 1960. In using the name Bauer, one of his maternal grandfather’s surnames, for his screen work, he chose to emphasize the Jewish portion of his heritage [13], presumably an advantage in getting work in Hollywood. His father, Esteban “Bebo” Echevarría, Sr., was a Cubana Airlines pilot, and his 2014 obituary also reveals that he was a “defender of democracy, a true patriot, had a deep abiding love for his country of birth, Cuba”, and served as “a member of Brigade 2506 and flew several missions before and during the Bay of Pigs invasion.” [14] It is entirely possible that Echevarría’s association with the CIA lasted past the sixties. His charter airline in the eighties was Arrow Air [15], which “turned out to be one of Lieut. Colonel Oliver North’s regular arms shippers” [16]. An acquaintance remembers that Bebo “could talk sports and he could really talk politics, especially the passionate politics that burned in the heart of every Cuban exile”, and enjoyed “a big appetite for life and learning, always reading his newspapers and books, mainly military and spy thrillers, planted […] at the dining table, in his underwear and reading glasses.” [17] In 1990 Bauer replaced Ken Wahl as the star of CBS’s Wiseguy and, in a piece of casting strangely echoing his own background, played Michael Santana, the son of a Brigade 2506 veteran who runs a CIA front airline.

Though she later lied about her age and claimed to have fled Cuba as a teenager [18], actress Louisa Moritz was born in Havana in 1936 as Luisa Cira Castro Netto [19]. She worked as an English teacher in Cuba before the revolution, after which she left for Europe [20], ending up in New York in 1960 [21]. “Strolling down the streets of New York one day, she passed the Hotel St. Moritz and that’s how she got her new name,” says a 1976 profile [22]. Eventually she got into work as a model and began to appear in cigarette and shampoo commercials as “a 50 cent-a-dance girl who could be a $1-a-dance girl if she just didn’t have dandruff” [23], eventually landing a series of bimbo roles in films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington (1977), and The Last American Virgin (1982). In 1968, however, when she was touring the US to promote Chesterfield 101 cigarettes – the cigarette that billed itself as “A Silly Millimeter Longer” [24] – Moritz let slip to The Miami News that she had a brother, Gaudencio Castro, living in Coral Gables [25].

As the 2002 obituary summing up his “remarkable and fulfilling life” reveals, “Gaudencio was one of the equity principals who in 1958 engineered ‘the most ambitious land development and construction project in Cuba’”, but the revolution put an end to the life he had known:

In 1960, Gaudencio arrived in Miami with his family. At first, he worked tirelessly in his determination of overthrowing the Communist regime in Cuba. Gaudencio was a substantial financial backer of the Bay of Pigs invasion and was one of the official drafters of the “new Free Cuba Constitution” which would have been adopted by the Free Cuban Congress were the invasion been [sic] successful. Later, Gaudencio was highly instrumental in the negotiations held with the Fidel Castro regime, which resulted in release of the Bay of Pigs prisoners against the payment of monies, medicines, food and other goods. In the early 60s, Gaudencio, along with his three sons, established Foreign Investments Consultants Corp. (FICC), which company he chaired until his death. FICC first started out representing a leading British industrial consortium made up to conduct a comprehensive feasibility study designed to cover the privatization of seaports and harbors in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Venezuela and Brazil. This undertaking was followed by Gaudencio authoring the feasibility studies and structuring of the financing (through the International Finance Corporation (IFC), an affiliate of the WORLD BANK) which provided the seed funding for the establishment of Empresa de Curtidos Centro Americana, SA (ECCASA), the largest and most high-technologically [sic] leather tannery in all the Americas. Gaudencio was also the principal responsible for having architect [sic] and being the lead financier in the establishment of Tabacalera Nacional, SA (TANASA) in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, which even today continues to be among the largest cigar factories in the region. The cigar seeds used in the establishment of TANASA were planted by Gaudencio from Cuban-soil origin. During the 70s and early 80s, Gaudencio headed the investor/developer team responsible for a series of marquee-type land developments, including such award-winning projects as Biltmore Court Villas in Coral Gables, Lakeridge Townhouses in South Miami, Ocean Lake Plaza Condominium Tower in Key Biscayne and the incomparable E. Enid Drive Townhouses in Key Biscayne, among a range of other high-end, signature-type real estate developments. It was during this time that Gaudencio orchestrated his “legacy” transaction. In what is considered among the hallmark real estate transactions in the history of Florida, Gaudencio orchestrated and brought about the unprecedented alignment of a series of diverse equity capital sources, when he spearheaded (the widest geographic collection of private investors, the origins of whom were from various South American and European countries), the purchase of one of the largest land acquisitions in the State - both in terms of land size assemblage as well as in purchase price (well over $50 million). In this connection, Gaudencio became the Chairman and CEO of a single-purpose entity formed to acquire, from one of Florida’s real estate pioneering families, the Mackle brothers, The Key Biscayne Hotel and Villas property, encompassing 17 acres of oceanfront property, along with an additional 40 acres of contiguous unimproved land in Key Biscayne, Florida, where the ritzy “The Ocean Club” luxury condominium complex now sits. [26]

Among Gaudencio Castro’s partners in the Key Biscayne venture was Sixto Mesa [27], a veteran of the Cuban anti-communist scene who had served as treasurer of the Movimiento de Recuperacion Revolucionaria (MRR) [28] and was questioned by the FBI about his knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald after the assassination of JFK [29].

It is also interesting to observe that the years of Castro’s “marquee-type land developments” coincide with the period when the Florida real estate market was flush with money from the cocaine business and that, according to his obituary, his company “FICC thrived on the decades-old relationship Gaudencio had established with the largest financial institutions throughout the Latin American region and the Caribbean Basin. Under Gaudencio's tutelage, FICC continued to have a well-earned reputation in the course of acting as financial consultants to these banking institutions in their establishing offshore operations” [30]. By 1975, The New York Times was reporting that CIA-trained Cubans were “suspected of being engaged in international drug trafficking”, including one “large cocaine smuggler” [31]. Grayston Lynch, one of the CIA officers who commanded Brigade 2506, told the Associated Press in 1982 that his Cubans, who “became experts on radar detection, infrared equipment and starlight scopes”, “were actively sought out by other people in the drug trade, because of their expertise.” [32]

Gaudencio Castro may have had no connection with these activities, but, again, it is interesting to note that his Foreign Investments Consultants Corporation ran advertisements in 1976 and 1977 boasting of “SUBSTANTIAL INVESTORS from South America ready for immediate action in Commercial Properties – Especially Shopping Centers anywhere in Florida” [33] and announcing “Unlimited Cash Available” [34]. Continental Illinois National Bank, which provided financing for the Key Biscayne deal in the context of what The Miami Herald characterized as a “condominium market in disarray” [35], became insolvent a few years later and was insinuatingly name-dropped in reporting on laundering of drug money through American banks [36]. Gaudencio Castro was also a “family friend” of Raul Masvidal, a banker who ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Miami in 1985. Castro, too, was an early investor in M Bank, an institution run by Masvidal’s brother. The Miami Herald depicted Masvidal “battling a campaign of hints and whispers that attempt to link him to money laundering.” The article continues:

A bank Masvidal ran until 1977, Royal Trust Bank, was alleged to have handled millions in drug cash. But agents of the Operation Greenback federal task force said the questionable activity occurred after Masvidal resigned. They said Masvidal has never been a target of an investigation. [37]

Masvidal was also reported to be a member of Miami’s secretive “Non-Group” of “behind-the-scenes power brokers” who “basically run Miami” [38].

María Concepción Alonso Bustillo, who achieved stardom as Maria Conchita Alonso in movies like Extreme Prejudice (1987), The Running Man (1987), and Colors (1988), was born in Cienfuegos, Cuba, in 1955 [39], but accounts of how she got to Venezuela, where she was raised, have varied. A syndicated 1984 Chicago Tribune profile gives her story as follows:

She was born in Cuba, where her father was in the automobile business. They lived a good life, but were forced to leave in 1960 after Castro’s takeover.

“We left for Venezuela with $500, and that’s only because my mother hid it in her suitcase. You weren’t supposed to take any money out of the country. My mother was really taking a chance because if they’d found out, we would have gone to jail. She first told my father she had the money, and some jewelry, when we were on the boat. He almost had a heart attack.” [40]

A 1997 Washington Post article, however, states that Alonso “left Cuba for Venezuela with her parents when she was an infant, before Fidel Castro’s Communist revolution.” [41] “After some modeling, she was chosen Miss Teenager of Venezuela at age 15 and then the 1971 Miss Teenager of the World,” the 1984 profile continues: “‘That opened all the doors, and I started modeling and doing fashion shows and TV commercials,’ she said.” [42] Soap operas, a singing career, and Hollywood celebrity followed.

The Alonso family. Maria appears in the center, seated, and her brother Robert stands on the far right.

Her brother Robert’s life took a very different course. After studying in the US during the sixties, he spent time in Germany, where he was recruited into the anti-Castro terrorist initiatives of Orlando Bosch and Alpha 66 [43]. “Many of the organizations involved in armed action against the Cuban government had disintegrated by this time, but splinter groups remained,” writes Maria de Los Angeles Torres in In the Land of Mirrors: Cuban Exile Politics in the United States:

Some of these, such as Alpha 66, a group dedicated to the armed struggle against Castro, and Cuban Power, headed by Orlando Bosch, relied on terrorist actions. Bosch’s group developed a strategy called “la guerra por los caminos del mundo” (war through the world’s roads) that internationalized terrorist actions. His aim was to prevent any country or corporation from conducting business with Cuba or from recognizing the Cuban government. Cuban Power bombed the offices of governments and corporations that maintained a relationship with the Cuban government, such as the Mexican Tourist office in Chicago, which was bombed in 1968. Bosch’s organization reportedly was responsible for over 150 bombings before Bosch was jailed for firing a bazooka at a Polish freighter. [44]

According to Granma, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba, Alonso “was recruited by the CIA in May 1972 and trained to carry out the assassination of our Commander-in-Chief, Fidel Castro, in August of that same year, as he was preparing to begin his speech at Lenin University (East Berlin). He was captured by federal authorities in West Berlin and released three months later without trial, a release ordered by Colonel James McLoggan (US Army), coordinator of the Allied forces in that German city.” [45] Granma also had the following to say about Alonso’s colorful career:

Robert Alonso trained in the ranks of ALPHA 66. He later joined the bloodthirsty OMEGA 7 organization, responsible for hundreds of sabotage acts inside and outside Cuba. Alonso served as head of logistics, a position he held until the disintegration of this terrorist movement when it was absorbed by the CORU [i.e., the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations] in April 1976.

On December 8, 1976, he was tried in absentia by the Revolutionary Tribunal of Las Villas, found guilty of organizing the financing of the bombing of the Cubana de Aviación plane (which occurred off the coast of Barbados in September of that same year) and sentenced to death by firing squad, a sentence pending execution under No. 1335-A/76.

He is considered the commander of the so-called Luanda Massacre (February 1977), where 100 Cuban soldiers were executed along with General Eulalio López Contreras, commander of the First Artillery Regiment of the Cuban army during operations during the internationalist missions in Angola. […]

He was responsible for the seizure of the Cuban embassy in Grenada, after the US invasion of 1983 where 14 compatriots died.

In 1987 he carried out at least three incursions into Cuban territory with the aim of introducing war material into Cuba, for which reason the counterrevolutionaries Armando Sanz, Emilio Martínez and Eleazar Rodríguez Ganza were captured, all found guilty after confession, sentenced to death and shot on November 28, 1987. [46]

Alonso’s now-deleted Wikipedia entry also claims that he was active in Vietnam, Cambodia, Chile, Nicaragua, and Afghanistan [47]. When the Cold War was over, Alonso went into semi-retirement, living at his Daktari Ranch outside Caracas, where he “dedicated himself to the breeding of Colombian Paso Fino horses and built a laboratory for the extraction and cryogenization of equine semen.” [48] The Bolivarian Revolution found him reactivated, however, and Alonso took part in the US-backed coup attempt against Hugo Chavez in 2002, continued plotting, and finally “escaped to Miami in 2004 after Venezuelan authorities discovered 153 Colombian paramilitaries lodged at his farm near Caracas,” People’s World relates: “Wearing Venezuelan army uniforms, they were planning to assassinate President Chavez.” [49] Alonso was next “hiding in the city of Miami under the protection of the Bush administration,” Granma alleged [50]. “In his new exile in Miami,” the vanished Wikipedia entry claims, “Alonso drove an ambulance, was a taxi driver and drove a 16-wheelers [sic], with which he toured much of the US territory and several provinces of Canada.” [51] 

Maria Conchita Alonso, also not an admirer of Chavez, maintains that the allegations against her brother are “not true”: “I don’t talk much to my brother, but I don’t see him really, uh, being, doing that.” [52]. She scolded her old Colors costar Sean Penn in a 2011 confrontation at Los Angeles International Airport over the actor’s moral support for the Venezuelan leader and for calling out her brother’s part in the plot on Chavez’s life, prompting Penn to call her a “pig”, to which she retorted that he was a “communist asshole” [53]. When the socialist leader died in 2013, Alonso told HuffPost she would have preferred to see Chavez “finish his days in prison. That was my desire, he behind bars. But it was not what God wanted,” she reflected, adding sadistically: “Ideally, he would be alive with cancer, in jail.” [54]

Rainer Chlodwig von K.

Rainer is the author of Drugs, Jungles, and Jingoism.

Endnotes

[1] De Valle, Elaine. “Bay of Pigs Vets Thank a Star”. The Miami Herald (May 8, 2004), p. 5B.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Getter, Lisa; and Jeff Leen. “Suit Prompts Tough Look at Mas Canosa”. The Miami Herald (August 2, 1996), p. 12A.

[5] https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-32322945.pdf

[6] https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-32322973.pdf

[7] Messick, Hank. Lansky. Mattituck, NY: Amereon House, 1973, pp. 71-72.

[8] Lewis, Brad. Hollywood’s Celebrity Gangster: The Incredible Life and Times of Mickey Cohen. Monroe, IL: BookSurge, 2009, pp. 297-298.

[9] Benson, Michael. Gloria Estefan. Minneapolis, MN: Lerner Publications Company, 2000, p. 8.

[10] Ibid., pp. 9-10.

[11] Yanez, Luisa. “Estefan to Sing at Bay of Pigs Event”. The Miami Herald (June 13, 2011), p. 3B.

[12] Dwyer, Jim. “Boy’s Held Hostage”. [New York] Daily News [4 Star Final] (April 16, 2000), p. 4.

[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Bauer

[14] https://archive.ph/mmqcj

[15] Rivers, Victor Rivas. A Private Family Matter: A Memoir. New York, NY: Atria Books, 2005, p. 332.

[16] Rowan, Roy. “Gander Different Crash, Same Questions”. Time (April 27, 1992): https://archive.ph/4QDpp

[17] Rivers, Victor Rivas. A Private Family Matter: A Memoir. New York, NY: Atria Books, 2005, p. 238.

[18] “Louisa Moritz: A Castro from Cuba”. Fort Collins Coloradoan (June 20, 1976), p. 41.

[19] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisa_Moritz

[20] Hanna, Pat. “Silly Millie Serious About Her Career”. Rocky Mountain News (February 1, 1968), p. 38.

[21] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisa_Moritz

[22] “Louisa Moritz: A Castro from Cuba”. Fort Collins Coloradoan (June 20, 1976), p. 41.

[23] Hanna, Pat. “Silly Millie Serious About Her Career”. Rocky Mountain News (February 1, 1968), p. 38.

[24] Ibid.

[25] McHale, Joan Nielsen. “Silly Millie”. The Miami News (April 17, 1968), p. 2-B.

[26] https://archive.ph/qSQ4v

[27] Kimball, Charles. “Key Biscayne Tracts Cost $18 Million”. The Miami Herald (March 11, 1979), p. 2-H.

[28] https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-32298379.pdf

[29] https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-32262517.pdf

[30] https://archive.ph/qSQ4v

[31] Volsky, George. “Cuban Exiles Recall Domestic Spying and Picketing for CIA”. The New York Times (January 4, 1975): https://www.nytimes.com/1975/01/04/archives/cuban-exiles-recall-domestic-spying-and-picketing-for-cia.html

[32] “CIA-Trained Cubans Reported Running Drugs”. The [Wilmington] News Journal (May 31, 1982), p. A3.

[33] The Miami Herald (October 24, 1976), p. 10-CW.

[34] The Miami Herald (October 2, 1977), p. 6-F.

[35] “Local Condo Market Is in Disarray”. The Miami Herald (November 21, 1982), p. 15H.

[36] Wines, Michael. “US Says It Broke Vast Drug Money Scheme”. The New York Times (March 30, 1989): https://web.archive.org/web/20171219131805/https://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/30/us/us-says-it-broke-vast-drug-money-scheme.html

[37] Sachs, Susan. “Money Is Key Issue for Masvidal”. The Miami Herald (October 6, 1985), p. 2B.

[38] Bearak, Barry. “2 Cuba Natives Seek Mayoralty of Miami Today”. Los Angeles Times (November 12, 1985): https://archive.ph/pBz34

[39] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar%C3%ADa_Conchita_Alonso

[40] “Maria Conchita Alonso’s Fame Growing”. Asbury Park Press (June 27, 1984), p. B20.

[41] Winslow, Harriet. “Celebration Gets a Latin Touch”. The Kansas City Star (June 30, 1997), p. D-8.

[42] “Maria Conchita Alonso’s Fame Growing”. Asbury Park Press (June 27, 1984), p. B20.

[43] https://web.archive.org/web/20220131205407/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Alonso

[44] Torres, Maria de los Angeles. In the Land of Mirrors: Cuban Exile Politics in the United States. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2001, p. 85.

[45] https://archive.ph/1qye3

[46] Ibid.

[47] https://web.archive.org/web/20220131205407/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Alonso

[48] Ibid.

[49] Whitney, W.T., Jr. “Big Questions Emerge Over Congressional Backing for Venezuelan Protests”. People’s World (March 10, 2014): https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/big-questions-emerge-over-congressional-backing-for-venezuelan-protests/

[50] https://archive.ph/1qye3

[51] https://web.archive.org/web/20220131205407/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Alonso

[52] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEfGkVoN2Fg

[53] Ibid.

[54] Fridmann, Mandy. “Maria Conchita Alonso on Chavez’s Death: ‘I Prefer Him Alive, with Cancer and in Prison”. HuffPost (March 7, 2013): https://www.huffpost.com/entry/maria-conchita-alonso-chavez-death_n_2831446