December 11, 1972

By Milt Sosin

A bomb explosion in Miami's Little Havana early today destroyed the offices of a firm that forwards packages to Cuba. It also broke windows in the U.S. Immigration Service office in the same building.

The Manhattan offices of the same firm - VA-Cuba Forwarding Co. Inc. - were gutted by a similar blast early today. This left no doubt here that the firm, and not the federal office, was the target.

Also bombed about the same time was a Queens, N.Y., travel agency operated by Cuban exiles. The agency also sends parcels to clients' relatives in Cuba.

In the Miami blast, a bomb placed on a window sill inside an ornamental iron grating ripped ground-floor VACuba offices in the rear of a two-story concrete building at 1001 SW 1st St- The rear of the building faces Hagler Street, with a parking lot intervening.

Federal agencies, including the FBI, entered the investigation along with police in the two areas.

Police in Miami said they believed an anti-Communist Cuban refugee organization was responsible for the bombings but could not pinpoint any one group. One investigator said:

"There are so many operating right now we couldn't begin to say who is responsible."

Some militant anti-Castro groups in Miami claim that welfare packages sent to Cuba via Canada and Spain help the Communist economy.

They ague that despite the humanitarian aspects involved, these packages serve as an "escape valve" for the tensions in Cuba caused by lack of vital medicines and other goods.

In addition, they say, the Cuban consulates get high fees - between $50 and $60, they claim - for each package they move. The groups say this gives Cuba the foreign exchange it needs.

Dr. Inocente Larzabal, a Cuban exile physician, was on emergency call in the ground-floor offices of the Miami Cuban Association, in the same building at the time of the blast.

He was asleep on a couch in the offices on the northwest corner of SW 1st Street and 10th Avenue, but was not injured.

"'It lifted me off the couch and I thought it was a plane crash until I smelled gunpowder," Larzabal later said. He was the only occupant of the building at the time of the explosion.

The blast occurred at 3:23 a.m. Miami District Fire Chief Dan Heyder said it was caused by "an infernal machine triggered by an electrical timing device."

Technicians of the Metro Bomb Squad found pieces of the time device in the blast rubble.

1t appeared that the bomb was made of dynamite as opposed to C-4 plastic explosive, which has been used in past attacks on consulates, travel agencies and package forwarding firms.

"The bomb was placed on that ledge," said Heyder, pointing to a rear window high up in a concrete wall. The ornamental ironwork which protected the window apparently had been used to wedge the explosive package into place.

The blast not only wrecked the VA-Cuba offices, but also blew out numerous windows of the building, including some in front. The second floor is occupied by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Thomas Johnson, one of the owners of the building, said that as far as he understood, VA-Cuba Forwarding was operated by O. A. Montaine and Mario Delgado. New York police listed the owner of VA-Cuba as Mario Patino, whose name also is known at the SW 1st Street building.

Five hours after the blast, none of the operators had yet shown up at the scene. Delgado's car, wrecked by the blast, was in the parking lot, and across the hood was a sign, tossed there by the explosion.

It read: "VA-Cuba. Reserved for O.A. Montaine."

The blasts in Miami and New York came about seven hours before arrival in Miami of the first of the renewed Freedom Flight planes from Cuba in seven months. There was not believed to be any connection.

The explosion at the Manhattan forwarding office gutted its ground-floor headquarters in a two-story building on Broadway between 157th and 158th Streets.

It also shattered windows in a bar, a delicatessen, the Teogo Democratic Club, the American Friends Service Coop. and offices used by U.S. Rep. Bells Abzug and Priscilla Ryan in their second congressional contest. All are in the same building as VA-Cuba.

Across Broadway, apartment windows as high as eight floors up were blown out.

The Jackson Heights, Queens, travel agency explosion broke windows in a computer school and shoe repair and jewelry shops in the budding occupied by Calypso Travel Agency, and in a podiatrist's office and another travel agency in adjacent buildings.

Anarda Falcon, operator of the travel agency, said that in addition to travel business, her agency sends parcels of food, clothing and medicine to clients' relatives in Cuba by way of Canada.

"I've been getting phone calls for a month or two saying if I don't stop sending packages to Cuba, they'll do harm to me or my business," she said.

A local Spanish-language newspaper that said that she was vehemently anti-Castro had criticized her for sanding parcels to Cuba, Mrs. Falcon reported.