• U.S.

Foreign Relations: The Return of Brigade 2506

6 minute read
TIME

Pan Am’s clipper Sam Houston landed at 6:10 p.m. at Florida’s Homestead Air Force Base. A dozen ambulances waited near by. Dr. Lee C. Watkins, chief of the U.S. Quarantine Station in Miami, ran up the ramp, peered in at the plane’s 107 passengers, and groaned: “My God, yellow jaundice—all of them.” Then he realized that the lights bathing the area made everyone appear a sickly yellow. The passengers filed stiffly out of the aircraft, then melted in the laughing, tearful, incredulous realization of freedom. Cried Carlos Leon, the first off: “I just don’t believe I’m alive.”

The Sam Houston carried the first of the 1,113 survivors of Brigade 2506, the forlorn-hope band of Cuban exiles who suffered catastrophe at the Bay of Pigs. For their release, the U.S. had agreed to pay Fidel Castro a ransom of $53 million in drugs, medical equipment and other goodies (see following story). As the planes bringing back the prisoners prepared to take off from Havana’s San Antonio airport, Castro delayed their departure by demanding to inspect the first shipment of drugs. Then he watched a demonstration of Soviet MIGs in the air space required for the prisoners’-take-off. At last, beaming like a black-bearded Santa Claus, Castro waved the prisoners toward freedom. One pilot got a vicarious sort of revenge: he gunned his plane in such a way that Fidel’s cap almost flew off in the prop wash.

“These Are My Sons.” On their flight to the U.S., the prisoners were briefed about what they should and should not say after their arrival in Florida; they were particularly instructed to stay silent about the last-minute U.S. refusal to provide expected air cover over the Bay of Pigs. Awaiting them when they arrived was Jose Miro Cardona, president of the Cuban Revolutionary Council. Cried Miro: “All these are my sons. All my sons.” In fact, his blood son, Jose (“Pepito”) Miro Torra, arrived on the final plane.

Miro was one of the few Cubans permitted to meet the planes. Most of the prisoners’ relatives had spent the day in Miami’s Dinner Key Auditorium, about 30 miles from Homestead. They gathered, about 10,000 of them, in a joyous mood. They waited and waited. Almost twelve hours passed while Castro stalled. Even after landing at Homestead, the ex-prisoners were kept from their kinfolk while being fitted for fresh khakis and given a roast beef dinner.

“He Is My Son.” In the auditorium, a U.S. Army honor guard formed a double file on the stage. One after another, the members of Brigade 2506 marched between the files. In the audience, faces contorted as mothers and wives, fathers and brothers saw their loved ones. Cubans are a passionate people—passionate in their hopes and their hungers, in their politics, their patriotism and their personal relationships. They stood tensely at attention for The Star-Spangled Banner —and then came delirium, as prisoners and families rushed together in a frenzy of love. One elderly woman said it for all. “See,” she cried as she clung to a young man. “He is my son. He is my son, and I am embracing and kissing him.”

Those unbelieving words, that ecstasy born of anguish, expressed the explosive emotion of the moment. But after the homecoming there remained some hard facts to be faced. What would the men of Brigade 2506 do next? Most were determined to continue their fight against Castro. Vowed Manuel Artime, one of the leaders of the Bay of Pigs invasion: “Our plan is to return to Cuba. We will come back—when or where I cannot say —but we will return.”

Submerge Those Differences. To this spirit, President Kennedy lent great support on two occasions. First, he received Artime and other officers in Palm Beach.

Then, two days later, he flew to Miami’s Orange Bowl to review Brigade 2506 and receive its flag—which had been hidden by one of the men during months of imprisonment and smuggled out of Cuba.

“I can assure you that this flag will be returned to this brigade in a free Havana,” said the President in strident, emphatic tones. “The strongest wish of the people of this country, as well as the people of this hemisphere, is that Cuba shall one day be free again, and when it is, this brigade will deserve to march at the head of the free column.”

Kennedy urged the Cubans to “submerge those differences which now may disturb you, to the united end that Cuba is free,” and commended to them the advice of Jose Marti, the hero of Cuban independence, who in 1895 urged his fellow exiles to display “not the useless clamor of fear’s vengeance but the honest weariness of an oppressed people.”

But it was Kennedy’s presence rather than his words that made the impact on a screaming crowd of nearly 40,000. As the President walked slowly through the lines of troops, chatting with many of the men, one ex-prisoner broke from the ranks to lock him in a mighty abrazo.

The President’s heady words were relayed to the crowd through an interpreter. But such was not the case when Jackie. dressed in a pink sheath, stepped to the microphones. In excellent Spanish and a firm and confident voice, she praised the Cubans and said: “I feel proud that my son has known the officers. It is my wish and my hope that some day he may be a man at least half as brave as the members of Brigade 2506.”

Women in the audience wept.

Starting Again. Official U.S. policy toward Cuba apparently is still as the President enunciated it in September: “We shall neither initiate nor permit aggression in this hemisphere.” Without strong U.S. support, the Cubans could hardly hope to return to their homeland for a long while. But even if the men. as one immigration official said, would have to “start all over again like any other exiles.” they were at least starting a long way from the dungeons of Castro’s Cuba. And that was certainly something to be thankful for.

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