Armando Cañizares Gamboa

Age 28

Missing in Action / Member of the 2506 Brigade

Presumed killed on April 21, 1961 at Bay of Pigs, Cuba

Born September 24, 1932

Resident of Camaguey, Cuba

My father, Armando, had fought in the Sierra Maestra under Che Guevara. He and his two brothers, Francisco and Julio, had joined the Rebel Army to free Cuba of the Batista dictatorship. All three, only in their twenties, were deeply committed to restoring democracy for the Cuban people.

My father was particularly anti-Communist and had, in fact, told as much to Che Guevara during a conversation in the mountains. Later, in his memoir on the anti-Bastista fight, Che writes that the Cañizares brothers had gone back "to fight as traitors in the invasion." (Ernesto Che Guevara, Pasajes de la Guerra Revolucionaria, 3ra edición, México, Editorial Era, S.A., 1969, pp. 146-147.)

All three brothers left the Sierra with a large group that took leave for opposing the cold-blooded assassination of a young soldier. A Castro protégé had shot the young man, of very humble origins, for taking off his boots despite orders to always keep them on, even to sleep. Fidel had stepped in to override the legal code of the Rebel Army and the deed had gone unpunished.

After hiding for a few months inside Cuba, my father, his brothers, and a friend managed to obtain papers to leave for the United States. He and my mother married in Miami in November 1958.

November 17, 1958

On January 1, 1959, at dawn, Batista fled the country and the revolutionary forces assumed power. My parents arrived on one of the first planes to land in Cuba with leaders of the 26^th of July movement (the oppostion to Batista) in exile.  My father took a high-level position at Cuba's Institute for the Stabilization of Sugar (ICEA). Yet, both my parents were very concerned with the turn of events and quickly realized Castro had no democratic intentions. They were particularly appalled at the executions and summary trials immediately initiated by the new government. My father joined the underground opposition quickly mounting against Castro, whose ranks were filling with old-timers from the anti-Batista struggle.  A former comrade in arms from their days in the Sierra tipped my father off that a case was mounting against him. In those days, people caught conspiring against the government were quickly executed. So, in May of 1960 we left the country in a hurry for Miami. I was only eight months old. My mother was six months pregnant with my brother.

In the the fall of 1960, a military force of Cuban exiles was organized and trained covertly by the United States to invade Cuba and topple Castro. My mother pled with my father for him not to join. They had two babies and, as new exiles, very little money. He told her that because he had helped put Castro in power, his moral duty -to his children and to Cuba- was to help get him out.

My uncles Julio and Francisco, as well as my aunt's husband, Uncle José, joined the Brigade. Four wives and seven small children stayed behind in the United States, waiting.  My father left for the training camps in Guatemala on January 18, 1961. From there, he left in the invasion on April 17, 1961. He never came back. Luckily, the others did. 

At the Bay of Pigs, my father and his brother Julio were part of a small group that had fought intensely and managed to avoid capture for four days. Dismayed at the lack of promised air support and realizing the invasion was doomed, they were attempting to break through surrounding Castro forces to join the insurgency at the Escambray mountains.  Exhausted and hungry, they all fell asleep (the man designated to keep guard was also overcome by exhaustion). A group of militiamen shot at them and a gunfire exchange ensued. He and a friend, Manuel Rionda, were badly injured with grenade shrapnel and gunfire.  With no medical attention called for them, the rest of their group was forced at gunpoint to leave them.  

Manuel and my father were never seen again. The families in Cuba searched for them unsuccessfully and the Cuban government refused to provide information or confirm their deaths despite pleas of all kinds, including through the International Red Cross. My grandparents in Cuba had been confined with thousands of Cubans suspected of counter-revolutionary sentiments in the mass raids that followed the invasion.  After their release, my grandmother learned of my father's likely death and my uncle's imprisonment. Consumed by grief, she suffered a heart attack, which, luckily, she survived.  My father´s death -real or presumed- had fallen on her birthday.

While my uncle Julio was in prison, more suffering was showered on the families of all the prisoners. Visits by family members still on the island were opportunities for the Castro government to humiliate and abuse them.  My grandmother later told me how the women would be stripped, searched with disrespect, and mocked.  Among the awful things she witnessed was seeing female prison guards tossing about the breast prosthesis of an older woman who had gone to visit her son. 

Back in Miami, ample drama and turmoil surrounded our lives. Many of my mother's best friends were going through the same situation, their husbands captured and/or injured or killed. Many didn't even die in combat. They were hunted down after their ammunition was gone or executed on the spot. Nine were murdered by asphyxia -their captors had viciously piled over a hundred men into a a sealed, unventilated, trailer. The oven of death had taken  eight hours to reach Havana despite the men's desperate cries for mercy. 

My mother and her parents had almost no money and, in their care, two infants and several traumatized teenagers. Cousins had been sent from Cuba without their parents, to escape Communism, as part of a Catholic Church sponsored program known as "Peter Pan." 

A few weeks after the invasion, my mother was at a doctor's office in Miami seeking treatment for chronic headaches, likely brought on by stress.  She picked up a Life magazine with a photo report of the invasion. There, she found a picture she took to be of my father lying on the ground, seemingly dead. I learned of the existence of this picture when I was seventeen. My mother refused to show it to me. She didn´t even keep it at our house. I went to the library at university and found it.