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There is currently quite a lot going on, both in Cuba's training camps and in the field. The job of training Castro's subversion army is handled by Cuba's Dirección General de Inteligencia (DGI), whose comandante, Manuel Pineiro Lozada—known variously as "Red Beard," "M-l," and "Petronio"—oversees everything from guerrilla training to cash disbursements for Castro's Latin American agents. The DGI has trained more than 5,000 Latin Americans in guerrilla warfare, including 500 Venezuelans, 300 Peruvians, 200 Panamanians, 75 Dominicans, 60 Salvadorans. Trainees receive Guevara's La Guerra de Guerrillas and another handy pocket guide called 150 Questions on Guerrilla Warfare, written by Castro's old mentor, Alberto Bayo, a Communist veteran of the Spanish Civil War. Bayo's dedication reads: "To those who have died and are dying in the filthy dictatorial bourgeoise military oligarchic prisons in Latin America." The students spend from four weeks to a year learning about explosives, weapons and psychological warfare, then return home to await the proper time for action.
Raids in the Backlands. Not every guerrilla band in Latin America is controlled by Castro; to think so would attribute far too much importance to him. But most of them fight in his name and with his methods. In Venezuela, hardly a week goes by that the Castroite FALN terrorists do not shoot a cop in Caracas, dynamite an oil pipeline, or raid some remote village. Last week one band clashed with government troops 200 miles south of Caracas, and when the shooting was over two guerrillas and two soldiers were dead. In neighboring Colombia, long troubled by a siege of backlands banditry, President Guillermo Leon Valencia's biggest headache is "Sure Shot" Pedro Antonio Marin, 35, who leads some 100 guerrillas and killed 17 people on one recent backlands raid. Another 150 guerrillas are operating in the Guatemala countryside, the most important group led by Marco Antonio Yon Sosa, 34, a onetime army lieutenant who graduated from the U.S. Army counterinsurgency school in Panama before deciding to go left. In Peru, bands totaling 1,300 guerrillas are operating high in the Andes, so far have killed 22 troops while eluding pursuing government forces.
Then there is the Dominican Republic, where Communists and far-leftists of every stripe attempted to steal away a coup in favor of deposed President Juan Bosch, then fought bitterly to keep OAS and U.S. troops from pacifying the situation. These Red groups, the most rabid of which is the Castroite 14th of June Movement, have now hidden thousands of arms in case another opportunity presents itself. In the meantime, Juan Bosch has been parading around Santo Domingo calling for "strikes, demonstrations and appeals" to drive out the OAS's peacekeeping troops.