The Mafia of Havana: The Cuban Cosa Nostra
by
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Valor and the ability to come out on top in the most difficult situations are characteristic qualities of not only the leader but the rest of the members of the Cuban Cosa Nostra. Perhaps it was one of those rare moments during the 1983 Grenada incident in which one of the lower echelon members of our Cosa Nostra had the opportunity to clearly exhibit those qualities. Grenada is a little Caribbean island that wouldn’t have captured so much attention from the big news agencies if it were not for the fact that the Russians decided to construct a strategic airport there to facilitate the transference of Cuban troops to Angola. In 1983, due to internal discrepancies with the ruling party, the Grenadian leader was assassinated, creating a situation that permitted the U.S. a justified military invasion of that tiny island. At that time, a large contingent of "Cuban civilian workers" was busy constructing the airport runway. Once the U.S. task force war ships left port to accomplish their mission, the future of Grenada’s airport was already decided. Anybody else would have conformed to the reality that there was no way to salvage the fate of the airport due to the overwhelming superiority of the invading force. But Fidel Castro, with his familiar ability to turn things around to his own benefit, realized that the Yankee invasion to Grenada was bringing him another wonderful propaganda opportunity. Fidel Castro sent Colonel Tortoló to Grenada when the U.S. Navy was in route. He had precise orders to organize an armed defense resistance to the taking of the airport by the Yankees. Tortoló’s mission was to arm the "Cuban civilian workers" with Russian AK-47s and organize their defense of the airport. The orders he received were strict and specified that no one could surrender and everyone must fight until victory or the death of the last of the combatants. Our Cosa Nostra was confident of their men. The order of self-sacrifice was given, and Tortoló and company were being counted on for its unequivocal fulfillment. In Cuba, the news of the dutiful heroic death of the last combatant embracing the Cuban flag was already carefully written. When the armed Yankee helicopters landed on the runway, which was under construction, the order to fire was given and the AK-47 bullets ricochet against the bulletproof helicopters of the Yankees. Radio Reloj (the 24-hour time and news station in Havana) interrupted their regular broadcast to inform the Cuban people of the latest news coming from the Grenada front. The whole Cuban population vibrated with emotion to learn of the glorious deaths in the line of duty of the latest group of Cuban "workers." Everybody in Cuba was listening to the news that the radio station anchorman claimed was coming directly from Grenada. But there was a hitch . . .. What was not planned was the extraordinary survival instinct and the ingenuity of Tortoló. Not even his superiors knew how to calibrate all of his valor. Tortoló was given a suicidal mission, but by nature the members of our Cosa Nostra were not fools, they were courageous and sometimes even gutsy, but what they indeed had was that something extra that distinguishes those destined to survive. Tortoló managed to endure that extremely difficult situation, a situation as difficult as surviving the 1953 Moncada Barracks attack and another near fatal experience, the 1956 Alegría de Pío village debacle. Fundamentally, Tortoló enforced the orders he received: the arms were distributed among the "Cuban civilian workers," the defense of the airport was organized and the order to fire against the Yankees was given. Tortoló received his military training in the Soviet Union, and as a career military knew very well that there wasn’t the slightest possibility to survive the powerful fire force of a Yankee helicopter division with a few AK-47 rifles. After the resistance was initiated his acute survival instinct successfully guided him. He managed to break the Yankees surrounding his group and get the hell into the nearby mountains. Finally he sought refuge inside the Embassy of the Soviet Union in Grenada. After a few days, the people in Cuba learned that the Cuban "workers" in Grenada hadn’t died and that they were taken prisoner by the Yankees. They also saw Tortoló arriving by plane in Havana from Grenada, coming down on the tarmac and telling Castro, who was there to receive him, "Commander in Chief, your order was executed." However, Tortoló was punished because he did not give his life with the rest of his "Cuban civilian workers" according to plan. He was demoted to private and was sent to the war in Angola to regain his military status. The fact that he was not immediately executed proves that in the higher echelon of the Cuban Mafia it was recognized that Tortoló was a prime specimen of our Cosa Nostra.
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About the Book
Based on historical facts lifted from Castro’s speeches published in the official Cuban newspaper, Granma, Grave de Peralta, in a most direct, matter of fact way, presents a devastating image of Castro’s regime. We can see that the fate of Cuba since 1959 is a reflection of the real nature of Castro. He was a gangster from the beginning and will be to the end. His Mafia-type regime took over a highly successful developing country that during the first half century of its independence made extraordinary progress in all fields. Over the forty-three years of Castro, Cuba has steadily declined to the levels of Haiti and Bangladesh. Grave de Peralta exposes that Castro’s Cuba is structured and operates as a large-scale organized crime operation as it assumes the wealth of the country while taking advantage of family relations and needs. Castro and his Mafia don’t care about the welfare of the people. They care about extorting the monies to stay in power to perpetuate their personal privileges. It is frightening that a regime like this has been thriving for over four decades and ninety miles from the United States. And frightening how ignorant and insensitive the American public has been kept by the United States. media and academic circles about the real nature of Castro’s regime revealed in this simple little book. Concluding, Grave de Peralta says, "According to Castro, he is a saint. According to his oppositors, he is another communist tyrant. According to stubborn historical facts, Fidel Castro, is actually a Mafioso." After reading this book, we will see Castro’s Cuba in a totally different light, perhaps the truest and easiest to understand depiction of his destructive effect on Cuban society. Agustín Blázquez
About the Author
Born in November 1957, in the eastern city of Holguin, Luis Grave de Peralta Morell was president of the official Castro government University Student Federation of the Physics-Chemistry-Mathematics Faculty at the University of Oriente, where he graduated as a Physicist in 1982. He was Professor of Theoretic Physics and Biophysics at that university until 1989, when he was expelled from the faculty after his voluntary resignation from the Cuban Communist Party. In 1992, he was apprehended and accused of "rebellion through pacific means" for being the author of the book manuscript Cuban Themes or Recreative Dialectic. Because of this unpublished manuscript, he was sentenced to thirteen years in a maximum-security prison. After four years, in 1996, thanks to an international effort to gain his release along with other political prisoners, he was deported directly from jail to the United States in an U.S. Air Force plane. In exile, he resumed his work as a scientist and in 2000, he received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Texas Tech University. In 1997, his book The Magic of Love, a collection of short stories written for his children from his jail cell, was published in Mexico. Grave de Peralta decided to make these stories public as part of his tireless effort for over six years to gain freedom for his sons and for his family reunification, which had been prevented by the Cuban government. In 2001, his second book, The Mafia of Havana, was published in Spanish with a cover designed by his son, Gabriel. Grave de Peralta lives in Lubbock, Texas with his older son Gabriel, his Cuban wife, María, and his younger son, Cesar, who finally arrived from Cuba on November 16, 2001.