MIAMI, TERRORISTS’ PARADISE

BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD -Special for Granma International -

FROM its offices at 1714 W. Flagler St, in Miami, the Cuban-American terrorist group Alpha 66 continues launching its calls to terror. In an anti-Cuban magazine, its’ new chief and CIA agent, Ernesto Díaz Rodríguez, has just confirmed his intention to maintain  ”a combat strategy for a radical change” in Cuba.

“We are expanding our offices in Miami and at our Rumba Sur military training camp,” confirmed Díaz, who was detained in Cuba in 1968 for his participation in one of Alpha 66’s terrorist operations.

Since the early 90’s, the group has been training terrorists at the camp, located on 40 SW Street and 172nd Avenue in Miami. On several occasions, ex-officers from the U.S. Marine Infantry Corps have participated in training activities at this location.

The new “leader” of the mercenary group intends to set up cells on the island, while ”more and more Cubans are joining Alpha” in Florida.

“They are people in good physical shape ready to undertake armed struggle,” he affirmed in that same interview given to a Californian magazine.

Díaz succeeded Andrés Nazario Sargent, in October, following the latter’s death. Nazario Sargent had been chief of Alpha 66 since its founding in 1962.

He created the paramilitary group with several other mercenaries within the framework of the so-called  “autonomous operations” led by the CIA from its Miami JM-WAVE base.

Miami police intelligence documents noted then that the group was “one of the most dangerous and most active organizations” in Miami.

Its criminal activities included several plotted attempts on the life of the president of Cuba; attacks on fishing vessels and threats against Cuban representatives in Mexico, United States, Ecuador, Brazil, Canada and Puerto Rico.

43 YEARS OF TERRORISM

Ernesto Díaz, joined the counterrevolution movement at a young age and abandoned the country in March 1961 to settle in the United States where he linked up with the 2nd Escambray National Front, one of the groups set up by the CIA to engage in terrorist and sabotage operations against the youthful Cuban Revolution. He then underwent military training in the Dominican Republic where he acted as second head of operations in preparation for several terrorist plans against Cuban installations.

On May 19, 1963, Diaz was in an Alpha 66 pirate launch coming from the United States, which opened fire on student hostels at the “Tarará” beach in Havana. Agustin Gutiérrez, Elio Grillo, Julio Cruz, Zenén Castillo and Ramón Quesada Gómez were also on board.

Back in Miami, Díaz and his accomplices boasted about their ”feat,” for which they publicly claimed responsibility on several occasions, but were never charged.

On December 4, 1968 Díaz was detained along with Emilio Nazario Sargent, Felipe Sánchez Oliveros, Antonio Manuel Rodriguez Lorenzo and Hermenegildo

Rodriguez Pérez, while engaging in an operation on the coast of Pinar del Río province. A large quantity of weapons were seized from the commando.

PLOT TO ASSASINATE CHAVEZ

On December 1, 1999, in a conversation with Venezuelan journalists, Cuban President Fidel Castro exposed Ernesto Díaz’s participation in a plot to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, along with Eusebio de Jesús Peñalver Mazorra, head of the United Liberation Commandos, René Cruz Cruz and Mario Chanes de Armas, all notorious terrorists.

 Díaz was one of the individuals who campaigned in Miami in favor of the kidnapping of little Elián González. Afterwards, he also supported fundraising activities for the release of Posada Carriles and his accomplices imprisoned in Panama after a failed assassination attempt on the Cuban president involving 30 kilos of C-4 explosives, planned in November 2000, and which would have caused thousands of deaths.

He is likewise connected to the Miami beneficiaries of the National Endowment for Democracy, the US International Development Agency and, more directly, the CIA, who travel annually to Geneva to attack on the pretext of defending human rights, thanks to anti-Cuban funds from millionaires.

These activities on the part of the new chief of Alpha-66 have received the backing of Florida’s Republican Congress members, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Diaz-Balart, who have traveled in person to Geneva with similar intentions.

Díaz boasts about his ”excellent” relations with the extreme right in Poland and the Czech Republic. “In the last 10 years, Díaz Rodriguez has visited 18 countries to proselytize against the Cuban communist regime,” the magazine specified, without questioning the identity of the sponsors of such a wide-ranging tours.