The emergence of an increasingly Communistic regime just ninety miles off the coast of the United States caused alarm among the American people in a way never experienced in the post-World War II era. As Cuban leader Fidel Castro consolidated power over his island nation, in the process seizing American assets, American leaders and citizens felt a sense which could be described as betrayal, and even of being outsmarted. From Castro�s rise to power in the early days of 1959 to late 1961 it became increasingly evident that Cuba was turning Communist. Among American politicians and publications, denouncement of Castro and his revolution escalated.
Others felt differently. In sympathy toward the new regime, some progressive segments of the American public were reluctant to accept the political and economic steps taken by the Cuban government as harbingers of communism. The April 6, 1960 edition of the New York Times contained a full page paid political advertisement entitled, �What Is Really Happening in Cuba.�3 This ad went on to announce the formation of an organization whose purpose was to counter negative publicity the Cuban Revolution increasingly received in the American press. An FBI report from an investigation starting in 1960, and dated July 11, 1961, referred to the Times ad quoting a passage stating that the new organization intended to �promulgate the truth abut revolutionary Cuba and neutralize the distorted American press on Cuban affairs.�4 This ad marked the birth of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.
New York was the starting point of the organization, but chapters sprung up in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Tampa. Tampa had a large, well established Cuban-American community, which had given moral and financial support to the various groups seeking to overthrow the Batista dictatorship. In addition Tampa�s Ybor City and West Tampa had a history of political activism of a liberal and even radical political bent. The ascendancy and growth of the organization occurred in a city which was geographically southern and much smaller in size than the larger cities with a tradition of radical politics like New York. Tampa�s FPCC chapter showed itself to be very active in the course of its existence. In a 1962 Tampa Times newspaper article former Tampa chapter head VT [Ted] Lee said that there were about 300 members in the organization, and claimed an additional 1,000 sympathizers.5 Many others attended a series of public meetings sponsored by the group.
While it is true that the Tampa chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee had historical antecedents to Tampa�s nearly one-hundred year old radical tradition, and in the 1950s to Fidel Castro�s 26th of July Movement, it primarily served a function similar to other FPCC chapters in countering anti-Castro propaganda. The organization principally was related to the Cold War coming to Cuba and consequently to Tampa�s Ybor City.
Its initial popularity in a southern city of 250,000 may lead one to discount the FPCC�s Cold War functionalism, since cities of comparable size such as Jacksonville, Florida and Charlotte, North Carolina did not have FPCC chapters at all�much less active ones�and also did not have a large Cuban-American population. But the earlier 26th of July Movement did not have the onus of a Communist state to defend, in the sense that the FPCC did. Both organizations, in spite of their differences, had roots in a radical tradition with origins in Cuban, Italian, and Spanish immigration to Florida.
Labor unrest in Key West and the coming of the railroad down the west coast of Florida made Vicente Martinez-Ybor relocate his cigar factories in the vicinity of Tampa, at the invitation of pioneer Henry B. Plant in 1886. Martinez-Ybor secured land and created housing for his workers. The relocation was enigmatic for an industrial entity in this period of national populist and progressive unrest. Martinez-Ybor established improved economic and social conditions, which in turn improved and for a time secured industrial peace in the nascent industrial town.6
The cigar entrepreneur died in 1896, amidst a nation undergoing rapid demographic and industrial change. Labor unrest began to assert itself throughout the nation. In Tampa, it was manifested in the cigar industry, and would become the main crucible of cultural formation. Soon unions sprung up, as Tampa�s cigar industry and its radicalism were additionally fueled by immigration. During the years 1885-1910, thousands of Cubans, Italians, and Spaniards came to the small coastal village of Tampa, and transformed the settlement into a thriving industrial and commercial center. These immigrants, drawn by cigar manufacturing, made Tampa into the nation�s leader in the production of high quality, hand-rolled cigars.7 The Latinos of Tampa created for themselves a rich community life that included, among other things, immigrant labor unions, foreign language newspapers, ethnic fraternal clubs, immigrant religious parishes and radical political parties.8
Cubans and the other Latinos established medical aid societies to combat illnesses like yellow fever and malaria.9 Also formed were social clubs such as Circulo Cubano, which provided social activities such as picnics, domino playing, and dances. Ybor City institutions like these caused ethnic identity to flourish.10 In Tampa the Latin settlements of Ybor City and West Tampa, however, were isolated from the mainstream Anglo-American community, while generally in contact with each other.11
Feelings of Anglo-Saxon superiority, under the guise of Social Darwinism, rose out of the 19th Century and was evident among Southerners, Who saw themselves as being, �the most Anglo-Saxon of all the nation�s regions.�12 Darwinist ideology was supplemented by the legal standing of racial segregation. As far back as 1906, newer immigrants were seen as being of �Negroid stock,� or accused of possessing �improper� [favorable] attitudes toward blacks. Southerners were said to prefer immigrants of �Teutonic, Celtic, or Saxon origin.�13
By early 1911 the Industrial Workers of the World [IWW] Local 602 was fully operational in Tampa, publishing its local newspaper El Obrero Industriale. One labor leader wrote the American Federation of Labor [AFL] secretary stating that, �Tampa is a splendid field for IWW propaganda. The workers of Tampa to a considerable extent are permeated with socialist ideas, and many of them at least think they are socialists.�14
But the AFL incursion ran into problems in Tampa�s Latin community. The union incurred the wrath of the Tampenos because they wanted to organize only skilled workers. Many of the more radical union members dissenting this were deported to Honduras. Landlords evicted overdue tenants. In addition, the well known labor leader Samuel Gompers refused to send aid, claiming that La Resistencia did not conform to American trade union principles.15
The Spanish-American War was a defining event for the Ybor City community as well as the rise of cigar industry unionism. Members of the city�s sizable Spanish community were viewed with suspicion as potential spies in the conflict. The Spanish club, Centro Espanol in Ybor City was abruptly shut down by United States troops waiting embarkation to Cuba. This was done as a response to fears of sabotage or espionage.16 A War Department report had indicated that help was sought in checking suspected Spanish agents, since a related spy ring operated out of Canada.17 The wartime atmosphere in Ybor City also caused the Cubans to look upon their Spanish neighbors with suspicion.
The heroics of Cuban patriots Jose Marti and Antonio Maceo gave way in the post-war era to new labor militancy, partly because of American control of Cuba. An emerging generation was looking for answers. The fabled Marti made more than three trips to Tampa in the early 1890s in order to arouse support in the struggle for Cuban independence against Spain. He visited Tampa�s cigar factories and paid special visits to Afro-Cuban leaders.18
The legacy of slavery was important to the Afro-Cuban community, and a residual fear of worse times for American Afro-Cubans was apparent. Marti and the Afro-Cuban leadership formed La Liga de Instruccion de Tampa, and soon attracted thirty Afro-Cubans.19 Marti�s rapport with Afro-Cubans existed in spite of an increasingly segregated South. Anglo-American society tolerated this breach of �colony.�20 Continued Anglo-Saxon resistance fostered, along with renewed immigration, a new group of Cubans who carried on the older tradition of radicalism.21
In World War I, Ybor City�s radicals were monitored by the Bureau of Investigation [predecessor to the FBI]. There were reports, originating in Ybor City, of assassination plots against Woodrow Wilson and President Victoriano Huerta of Mexico. The Bureau also investigated the personal and private lives of local leftists and anarchists.22
Ybor City radicals were activated in the 1920s by the trial of Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, and the early career of Italian socialist journalist Benito Mussolini. The future Fascist dictator was an ardent socialist and a hero to many Italian-American leftists. Factory workers read his socialist teachings, and copies of Mussolini�s L�Avanti circulated on the streets and in the clubs of Ybor City.23 But the Ybor City community turned against Mussolini when he came to power in Italy and established a Fascist government.
Mussolini�s betrayal of socialism caused anger among Tampa�s Italian and other Latinos. The reaction in Ybor City was even more militant than in other Italian-American communities. Fascist Italy, more than twenty years after the Spanish-American War, became the second autocratic European power to see radicalism in Tampa as threatening, as another new generation of Tampenos fueled this brand of radicalism.24
Of the three Latin ethnic groups in Ybor City, Cubans were both largest in number and closest in proximity to their native homeland. Consequently, another Tampa institution, the Cuban lector, was very influential. A literate worker would read the works of Victor Hugo, along with newspapers, and books to the other workers who simultaneously hand-rolled high quality cigars. History professor Gary Mormino referred to this as, �the most symbolic of the special ambience of the cigar industry.� This reader was called el lector, and text was read from a raised platform [la tribunal].25
One of the lectors was a 1913 Cuban immigrant by the name of Don Victoriano Mantiega. Mantiega soon after his arrival, was viewed as gifted by the Latin community. He soon moved from the lector platform editor�s desk, and founded the newspaper La Gaceta in 1922.26 He was to become an Ybor City institution in his own right, as his newspaper flourished. It is still in existence eighty years later. Forever sensitive to his fellow Latinos, and the clubs created by the Italians and Spaniards, Mantiega made La Gaceta trilingual. A page was reserved for those whose native language was Italian.27
A German visitor to Tampa in 1931 caught the essence of the culture that was Ybor City, in effect describing two parts of Tampa. The Latin Quarter was more revealing to this visitor. This German citizen wrote, �Here they have Italian opera houses with balconies, cock fights, bullfights, houses with balconies, incredibly numerous coffee shops where Italians, Spaniards, Creoles gesticulate wildly�We are in Ybor City.�28The tourist wrote a blander visage of the first Tampa, while describing the �paradisial� aspects of the southern city and its warm climate. Like the Frenchman de Tocqueville a century before, this outsider saw a small corner of America where the uniqueness of the community defined its particular brand of Americanism.
Virtually all the Spanish and Italian language papers supported efforts to promote cohesion between the various immigrant segments of Ybor City.29 This became even more apparent, and was fueled further by the advent of one of the immigrants own, since Victoriano Mantiega and his publication La Gaceta further institutionalized the aspects of this thriving community. Mantiega could almost be an icon for Ybor City, with his liberal and sometimes radical, ideas. In the early 1930s, with the advent of the Spanish Republic, Tampa�s own Spaniards began removing all signs of the monarchy. Many Spanish immigrants in Tampa held high expectations for the new regime.30 Soon this sense of pride, and anticipation of better things to come for the Spanish Republic, faded as the Falangist rebellion headed by Generalissimo Francisco Franco plunged Spain into a civil war. Franco was aided by Hitler and Mussolini, while the Spanish loyalists were supported by Stalin.
An isolationist United States officially remained neutral during this European War, which some called a preview for a larger war. President Roosevelt gave a speech in the 1930s expressed that the US should remain �unentangled and free,� and should stay out of European conflicts.31 But Communist Party members and other leftists heeded the call of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to combat fascism and the Spanish rebellion. In New York, in the 1930s, there was a huge demonstration by the May Day Committee protesting fascism.32 An outpouring of 40,000 volunteers went to Spain to aid the loyalists. Among them were 3,000 in the American sponsored Abraham Lincoln Brigade. About two dozen of the brigade members were from Tampa.33
La Gaceta publisher Victoriano Mantiega was one of the strongest defenders of the Spanish Republic. As a result he came under fire from former Spanish consul Andres Inglesias who said, �The red Mantiega has been very damaging to our cause in the Spanish colony in Tampa.�34 La Gaceta became the official organ for the Tampa Committee for the Defense of the Spanish Popular Front.35 But the Abraham Lincoln Brigade was fated to fare poorly. It was a fighting force with a misplaced sense of idealism that was also ill equipped, reckless, and misinformed abut Joseph Stalin and his ruthlessness. The group�s reckless endeavor proved disastrous.36
The passing events were a personal show of character and compassion for Victoriano Mantiega. Those debating and demonstrating the Spanish Civil War gave him both praise and criticism. Mantiega had been one of the most vocal supporters of the demonstrations against fascism, and one of the Popular Front�s staunchest allies. But when a Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia signed the 1939 non-aggression pact, and after the Soviets invaded Finland, Mantiega�s paper took a stand against the Soviet Union�s aggression. As a result some of the local Communists, Mantiega said, �compared me to Adolph Hitler.�37
Ybor City�s foremost journalist reiterated the independent thought of his community. He was not going to back the USSR, which was described in Franklin Roosevelt�s February 10, 1940 speech when he said, �The Soviet Union is a dictatorship, as absolute as an dictatorship in the world, it has allied itself with another dictatorship�and had invaded a neighbor so infinitesimally small, that it could do no possible harm to the Soviet Union.�38
Mantiega�s remark put himself in the philosophical company of Franklin Roosevelt, and was a harbinger of what was to come in World War II. Cuban, Spanish and Italian-Americans joined the military and fought in World War II as patriotic Americans. Ethnic differences, including those with the Anglo-American community, vanished for the sake of unity. When the war ended, the servicemen returned to Ybor City eager to resume familiar patterns of their domestic lives. But displacement during the war and depression created a crumbling infrastructure. This and the decline of the cigar industry changed the area.39 But in the early 1950s, this evolution proved inconsequential for what was to come.
In 1952, Cuba experienced unrest, terror and a change in power. Fulgencio Batista was head of state for a period in the early 1940s, and was a major power broker in the period when he wasn�t officially in charge. His modus operandi was patronage, kick backs, contracts and salary.40 He became the new head of state, ignoring the election process in achieving this end. Cries of betrayal ensued in Cuba, and calls for adherence to the Constitution of 1940 became commonplace. Many Cubans seethed with resentment at the new dictatorial regime. Its brutality conjured memories of the Machado regime of the 1930s. Among the angry was a young lawyer and political activist named Fidel Castro. His anger later found itself to the meeting halls and streets of Ybor City, and aroused the Cuban community to the service of his cause.
A desperate, but determined Castro came to the United States in late 1955 seeking support for his revolution. He started chapters of the Movimiento de Julio 26 [26th of July Movement] in several US cities including New York, Detroit, Miami, Key West and Tampa. Other chapters formed in Mexico, Venezuela, and Costa Rica.41 Tampa and its large exile community were very influential, even though the 26th of July Movement at its peak only had about sixty members.42 But even with this small size, it was effective. Victoriano Mantiega was an important part of this local �underground railway.� He became head of the chapter in 1955, but resigned after a year. His newspaper, La Gaceta, in 1955 was nearing thirty-five years of operation. The paper continued publishing editorials, and reporting news as it related to Cuba. Mantiega�s activities were augmented by his son Rolando, the business manager of La Gaceta.43 The writing and publicizing activities provided by La Gaceta proved invaluable to the Cuban exiles in Tampa, and to Fidel Castro. But there was help of a militaristic nature also, one that Cubans spoke about in hushed tones.
Anonymously admitted by Ybor City Castro supporters were a series of confiscations of war materials. Among them were 150 machine guns packed in oil drums with ammunition, a boat, and a plane. These were seized in Miami in 1958, but had been transported through Tampa. All were destined for anti-Batista rebel forces in Cuba.44 Four Ybor City Tampans were arrested, but the federal agencies reported no arrests actually occurred in Tampa�s Ybor City.45 Many Cubans would not admit to these activities in 1959 for fear of reprisal by either the US government, or the agents and spies of Batista�s government. Castro himself indicated this. The fear was well founded since Batista, as with other Cuban leaders, had taken an interest in historic Ybor City. Visits to Cuba by Americans, particularly from Tampa, were commonplace and Batista knew many of them personally.46But Fidel Castro�s supporters were not daunted.
The Cuban revolutionary�s followers raised funds by selling �banners� and �rebel currency� in various denominations. They also aided refugees, so they could meet US immigration requirements. And they found jobs for the exiles.47 Ybor City�s rebels�most of them born or naturalized US citizens�did not feel they stretched the laws of their homeland too far by aiding Castro. �After all,� one commented, �we also had a revolution here in the United States, you know, which turned out to be a pretty good thing.�48 Miami gained the distinction of being the �gateway to the revolution.� Most rebel arm shipments passed through Miami during these hostilities. It was also reported at the end of the conflict, that Tampa�s estimated 50,000 persons of Cuban descent or citizenship in Ybor City and West Tampa were proud of their past in supporting the Castro Rebellion. One former US military combat veteran, who also happened to be a Cuban American ciudadano, once fought with Raul Castro in the Sierra Cristal Mountains in 1958.49
The elation and pride in Tampa soon turned to hostility. Divisiveness over Cuba�s new leader among Cubans soon set in. In addition, American business interests became antagonistic toward Castro�s revolutionary government. Castro�s treatment of defeated Batista supporters was another aspect of his revolutionary government that resulted in deteriorating US-Cuban relations.
A January 16, 1959 St. Petersburg Times editorial expressed this sentiment when it stated, �Friends of Cuba are profoundly disturbed with the continuing mass executions of �Batista criminals� following the continued practice of summary courts martial.�50 The editorial went on to criticize Castro for trying to remedy Batista atrocities by using similar tactics. Castro was lambasted by the Times as it implied that Castro continually violated the rule of law,
�What the Cuban people hated most about Batista was his secret police, his contempt for anything resembling due process, his arrests without warrant, his torture chambers and execution without trial. Castro may think that he is only purging those who participate in such inhumanities, and so his own regime will remain unaffected. But will it? Where will the line be drawn, if orderly trials are not substituted for the drumbeat courts now functioning?�51
The Times expressed a sense of dismay typical of late 1950s American thought. The paper demonstrated a fading sense of optimism as it wrote of basic good intentions of the Castro regime, stating that democratic reform could be accomplished. But the overall tone of the editorial showed more alarm than optimism.
Across Tampa Bay, the Tampenos in Ybor City, who had thought glowing about Fidel Castro�s revolutionary government taking power, had to deal with deteriorating relations between Cuba and the United States. Raul Villamia, the local head of the 26th of July Movement, occupied Tampa�s Cuban Consulate offices when Castro took over. Tampa Times reported Bob Denley questioned him about the reception he received after the transfer of power in Cuba. Villamia described Tampa as very supportive and described Ybor City and West Tampa as non-supportive of Batista.52 Tampa�s Cuban community did support Castro�s revolt, and attempted to reform the island�s government, but the Batista supporters expressed their own sense of outrage at the coming to power of Castro, and his supporters in Ybor City.
The January 5, 1961 edition of the Tampa Tribune, following the break in diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba, describes window smashing, paint throwing and threat exchanges between pro and anti-Castro groups in the Ybor section.53 An organization formed in rebellion at this time, against the Castro regime. It called itself the Cuban Front. The group was made up of Cuban exiles and residents, which at this early date of disaffection with Castro, was composed primarily of Batista supporters.
Since Cuba and the United States had by early 1961 experienced two years of continuous deteriorating diplomatic relations, the Cuban Front�s strategy countered the Castro supporters by raising the specter of Communism coming to Cuba. By January 1961, the Cuban government had considerably moved to the left politically. Seizures of American business assets increased. Vast areas of agricultural land tracts and American owned businesses were confiscated. Included were the telephone company, sugar and tobacco growing areas, and petroleum refineries. Anti-Castro reaction burgeoned in both Cuba and Tampa. The rise in tensions on both sides brought Tampa police into Ybor City. The Cuban Consulate was also under guard by the police.54
In reaction to Castro, the Cuban Front opened up a propaganda front in Ybor City. Front members Raul Brana and Dr. Manuel A. de Varona met with former Batista regime consulate head Armando Sacassas, during the first week of 1961. Cuba�s former diplomat passed on the names and plans of Castro�s agents in Tampa.55 The main charge made against the agents, was that Castro had blackmailed Ybor City cigar manufacturers in order to force them to join the revolutionary cause. Sacassas, himself, had defected from Cuba the week before, and sought asylum in the United States. Cuban exiles charged that cigar manufacturers were being extorted by Castro into giving money to Tampa�s Castro leaders under threat of having tobacco leaf cut off from Cuba.56 When questioned about this, several of the cigar manufacturers called the charges �preposterous.� Brana used this propaganda ploy in order to show anti-Castro strength and give credits to Sacassas for breaking the pro-Castro movement in Tampa. Brana also said that the FBI had been in touch with Front members.57
After attacking the manufacturers, Raul Brana went after the unions. He charged that the Tampa Cigar Union had Communists in their membership. Brana stated, �The support for Castro in the union comes from the top to the bottom�from leaders as well as members.� But when confronted, the anti-Castro leader also acknowledged that there also were many loyal supporters of the US in the cigar factories.58
Armando Sacassas, speaking in Miami on January 9, continued his diatribes against the Tampa pro-Castroites. He claimed that communists had control of the 26th of July Movement affiliated Patriotic Movement Club in Tampa. The previous day, the batistiano claimed that Cuban secret police were operating in Tampa, and had pro-Castro speeches and communist literature which were slated for distribution in Tampa�s Latin Quarter.59 The Cuban exile backed up earlier statements by the Democratic Revolutionary Front that he had turned over names of pro-Castro agents to the Front.60 With the arrival of Sacassas on the media scene, and the Cuban Front organizing in the homes and streets in Ybor City, an anti-Castro movement was in its early stages.
The Tampa Times reported that the Tampa patriotic and pro-Castro clubs at 9th Avenue and 14th Street in Ybor City had suffered attacks frequently over the past several months at the hands of anti-Castro groups. After the January 3 diplomatic break, anti-Castro vandals struck quickly. On the night of January 3, vandals smashed almost everything in pro-Castro clubrooms, and splattered red paint on walls, doors, and floors.61
This early anti-Castro movement attacked not only the 26th of July group, but also the offices of La Gaceta. The Tampa Times reported, �In this day of attacks, the police reported that the trilingual newspaper La Gaceta was also attacked. The newspaper known for its pro-Castro opinions has previously been the target of repeated attacks. The paper�s front has been hit numerous times in recent weeks.�62 La Gaceta was suffering from Victoriano Mantiega�s support of Castro, which, from an organizational standpoint, went as far back as 1955 when he and Castro formed Tampa�s 26th of July Movement chapter. Rolando Mantiega, editor of the newspaper recalled that the club had been formed in 1955 to �encourage and foster better relations� between the United States and Cuba. Mantiega denounced the emergence of new Cuban elements in Tampa that had resorted to violence.63
An American diplomatic break with Cuba would place Tampa�s Ybor City into an increased area of Cold War activity. At first, the pro-Castro movement seemed dead because of the break. The revolutionary�s allies in the Latin Quarter had become tainted with the onus of having had supported a foreign leader now hostile to the United States. The pro-Castro movement, however, would survive, in the form of a new organization, that didn�t initially exhibit support from a foreign nation hostile to the United States. The new organization, with no apparent ties to Cuba still extolled better relations with the new revolutionary government. Tampa was now ready for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. The Cold War had come to Ybor City.
1 Mantiega. Roland. �As We Heard It.� La Gaceta, December 22, 1961. 12.
2 Ibid. 12.
3 �What is Really Happening in Cuba.� New York Times. April 6, 1960.
4 NARA. JFK Collection. Federal Bureau of Investigation, July 11, 1961. �Report Appendix� p. 15.
5 Denley, Bob. �Of Red Domination��Fair Play� Leaders Shrug Off Charges.� Tampa Times. August 24, 1961.
6 http//www.ybormuseum.org/research/ybor-city.html.
7 Pozetta, George E. �Immigrants in the Southern Mind: A Tampa Case.� Jerrel H. Shofner and Linda V. Ellsworth, ed. Ethnic Minorities in Gulf Coast Society. Gulf Coast History and Humanities Conference, Pensacola: 1979. 26.
8 Ibid. 26-27.
9 Westfall, L. Glen. �Retention of Cuban Culture in Tampa.� Jerrel H. Shofner and Linda V. Ellsworth, ed. Ethnic Minorities in Gulf Coast Society. Gulf Coast History and Humanities Conference, Pensacola: 1979. 69.
10 Mormino, Gary R. and George E. Pozetta. The Immigrant World of Ybor City: Italians and Their Latin Neighbors in Tampa, 1885-1985. Gainesville, Florida: University of Florida Press, 1998. 70.
11 Ibid. 70.
12 Shofner, Jerrel. Intro. Ethnic Minorities in Gulf Coast Society. Gulf Coast History and Humanities Conference, Pensacola: 1979. vi.
13 Gatewood, Willard B. �Strangers and the Southern Eden: Ideologies of Race and Ethnicity in the South.� Ethnic Minorities in Gulf Coast Society. Gulf Coast History and Humanities Conference, Pensacola: 1979. 10.
14 Mormino. 126.
15 Ibid. 116-117.
16 Hawes, Leland. �Spanish �Spies� Stirred Tampa in 1898,� The Tampa Tribune. May 8, 1988. D1.
17 Ibid. D1.
18 Muniz, Jose Rivero. Trans. By Eustasio Fernandez and Henry Beltran. The Ybor City Story 1885-1954. Tampa: 1976. 58.
19 Ibid. 58-59.
20 Mormino. 79.
21 Ibid. 81.
22 Ibid. 154.
23 Ibid. 162.
24 Ibid. 162.
25 Ibid. 102.
26 Ibid. 103.
27 Westfall. 71.
28 Mormino. 60.
29 Ibid. 167-168.
30 Varela Lago, Anna Marie. ��No Parisan!� The Spanish Civil War�s Impact on Tampa�s Latin Community, 1936-1939.� Tampa Bay History. Fall/Winter 1997.
31 CNN Perspectives Presents Cold War. A Jeremy Isaacs Production for Turner Original Productions, Inc. Episode 1: �Comrades 1917-1945.� Time Warner, Burbank, CA: 1998.
32 Ibid. �Comrades.�
33 Lago, Anna Marie. 9-11.
34 Ibid. 12-13.
35 Ibid. 12-13.
36 Carroll, Peter N. The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War. Stanford, California, 1994. 65. A survey of 1,745 American volunteers made in 1937 showed only thirty-four percent had military experience.
37 Mantiega, Roland. �As We Heard It.� La Gaceta. December 22, 1961.
38 Comrades 1917-1945.
39 Mormino. 299.
40 Argote-Freyre, Frank. Fulgencio Batista: From Revolutionary to Strongman. New Brunswick, New Jersey and London: Rutgers University Press, 2006.
41 Dunkin. Tom. �Fidel Castro�s Ybor Underground,� St. Petersburg Times. January 18, 1959. 3
42 Ibid. 27.
43 Ibid. 27.
44 Ibid. 3.
45 Ibid. 3.
46 Watson, William R. Jr. �Fidel Castro�s Ybor City Underground.� (1999) (University of South Florida). April 1999. 9.
47 Dunkin, Tom. 27.
48 Ibid. 27.
49 Ibid. 27.
50 �Castro Risking His Own Success,� editorial, St. Petersburg Times, 8-A.
51 Ibid. 8-A.
52 Denley, Bob. �Castro Man Tells of Tampa Support.� Tampa Times. January 6, 1961. 1.
53 Smith, Fred. �Tensions Still Run High in Tampa�s Latin Quarter,� Tampa Tribune. January 5, 1961, 1-B.
54 Ibid. 1-B.
55 �Cigar Men Here Deny Blackmail.� Tampa Times. January 9, 1961. 1A.
56 Ibid. 1A.
57 Ibid. 1A.
58 Ibid. 1A.
59 �Former Cuban Consul Who Defected Drops Out of Sight in Miami.� Tampa Tribune. January 9, 1961. 9. There was also an article in the Tampa Tribune on January 8, 1961 in which a sergeant stationed at the Cuban embassy claimed that Castro had 2,000 spies in the United States. He named a number of large US cities where he claimed they resided.
60 �Castroites Here Called Communists.� Tampa Times. January 10, 1961. 1A.
61 Inglis, Tom. �Pro-Castro Clubs Closed.� Tampa Times. January 14, 1961. 1A.
62 Ibid. 1A.
63 Ibid. 1A.
End of Page
Copyright
1998-2014 Cuban Information Archives. All Rights
Reserved.
