Cuba: The Massacre

(8 of 10)

February, an urgent and anxious atmosphere settled over the exile groups. CIAgent Bender called representatives of the Frente and M.R.P. together in Washington, told them to join forces and stop squabbling about politics. He is said to have handed them a list of 26 Cubans, told them to choose ten to participate in the selection of a Cuban provisional President. The Cubans looked at Bender's list, say that they failed to recognize six of the names, refused.

Two weeks later, the Cubans got together independently for four days in Room 125 of Manhattan's Hotel Commodore, where they finally agreed to cooperate. The pact was sealed in a banquet room of the Skyway Motel, Miami. There, say the exiles, a CIA agent named Carr called for "democratic agreement of all present in order to choose a chief or President, who would head the provisional government later." The choice of the Revolutionary Council, as the joint Frente-M.R.P. group was named: José Miró Cardona, a man whose career has been based on mediation and compromise.

Earning the Hatred. Miró, son of a division general in Cuba's Third War of Independence (1895-98), has always avoided getting involved in partisan politics. A Havana University Law School graduate, he began a practice in 1938 that eventually earned him a reputation as Cuba's best-known criminal lawyer, a professor's chair at his old university and the presidency of the Cuban College of Lawyers, the equivalent of a national bar association. His most celebrated case: the defense of Army Colonel Ramón Barquín, accused in 1956 of plotting against Batista. Barquín got six years on the Isle of Pines, but Miró's defense was so brilliant that he earned Batista's cordial hatred.

Miró's characteristic response to the dictator's dislike was to try to mediate between Batista and his opposition. But his attempts to draw feuding Cuban factions together ended abruptly in 1958, when Batista suspended all civil rights to cope with the rebellion of Fidel Castro. An organization of Miró's friends, largely conservative businessmen and professional men, denounced the Batista regime for "supporting itself by force." The dictator sent some henchmen to arrest Miró. As they were searching his office, he was making his escape to the Argentine embassy, disguised as a priest.

Moving to Miami eight months before Batista fell, Miró united anti-Batista groups in exile under the banner of Castro's 26th of July Movement. Four days after Castro's triumph, Miró was named Premier of Cuba (Castro stayed on as armed-forces chief). Miró soon realized he was nothing but Castro's puppet, resigned after 39 days. He told a friend: "I cannot run my office while another man is trying to run it from behind a microphone."

Returning to his university law professorship, Miró watched as Castro turned Cuba left. He served briefly as Ambassador to Spain, accepted a second appointment (never fulfilled) as Ambassador to the U.S. Like Ray, he stayed on at the university until the Communists took over. Then he returned to exile in Miami—where, almost by instinct, he began to try to conciliate between Ray's M.R.P. and Varona's Frente.

"They Promised." As president of the Revolutionary Council, Miró began to plan