46th Anniversary of Viajes Varadero’s flights to Cuba – Part I (+Español)

Last December 21st marked the 46th anniversary of the first trip to Cuba by 90 Cubans residing in Puerto Rico. On December 8,1978, the Cuban government and representatives of the “Cuban community abroad” had signed several agreements. These included the release of approximately 3,000 prisoners, with the possibility of their leaving the country with their families, and the opening of travel to Cuba by Cuban nationals living abroad for family visits, which had been banned after the break-off of diplomatic relations between Wahington and Havana. In December 1977, a group of fifty-five young Cubans living abroad had participated in the “First Journey of Cuban Youth,” later named the Antonio Maceo Brigade and also known as “55 Brothers and Sisters” (55 Hermanos), the title of a documentary made of their visit to the Caribbean nation. This trip and what was happening in the relations between both countries led Cuban president Fidel Castro, in a press conference on September 6, 1978, to convene a dialogue with Cubans living abroad to discuss subjects of common interest.

Having been part of various processes of rapprochement with Cuba through Areito magazine and the Antonio Maceo Brigade, I was invited along with other Cubans to Kingston, Jamaica in late September 1978, to be interviewed by Cuban television about the dialogue that was to take place during the first weeks of November. While waiting at the airport for my return flight to Puerto Rico, the Cuban consul asked me about the possibility of organizing a group of Cuban families interested in traveling to Cuba after the dialogue meetings and the opening of travel by Cubans to their homeland. I answered that we had a comrade with experience in organizing student and worker strikes who had also been key in organizing the first contingent of the Antonio Maceo Brigade, that his name was Carlos Muñiz and he was actually unemployed at the time.  I was asked to share the idea with Carlos; if he agreed, he would travel to Jamaica to discuss it. I remember going from the airport to Carlos’s apartment to talk about this proposal. Since our vision was political and not business-oriented, our approach to the initiative was that it would allow us to insert ourselves in the Cuban community in Puerto Rico and exert some influence, and that the commercial aspect would be a financial tool to protect us from repression or attacks by those who opposed these activities.  This was clear very early in the process and marked a difference in style from others who were involved in the “business of travel to Cuba.”

When Carlos Muñiz returned from Jamaica with an approval, we decided that he and Ricardo Fraga would be in charge of organizing the first family reunification group, while I would coordinate the group invited to participate in the dialogue meetings, which were set for November 21 and 22 and December 8, 1978. Carlos and Ricardo had Cuban common friends and classmates from high school, and began to spread the word among them of the possibility of putting together a group interested in traveling to Cuba to visit family, with no political conditions other than obeying the country’s laws.

From the beginning, Viajes Varadero had eminently political rather than commercial purposes, and had also been attacked way before the first family trip on December 21st. The printed weekly La Crónica, founded in March 1978 after a split in the Réplica weekly, was run by Gloria Gil Castillo, who had links to and surrounded herself with terrorists operating in the United States and Puerto Rico. She made the weekly into media tool for advocating and supporting terrorist acts by all the groups operating underground, with absolute impunity, in the United States, Puerto Rico, and the rest of the world. In the issue dated October 19, 1978, about a month before the dialogue began, she wrote in her anonymous column “Who’ s Mac”:

“Our anti-communist intelligence source has informed us of a little group that will be visiting communist Cuba. Said group is formed by one of the communist ‘kids’ from Areito. We know his whole name, but suffice it to say that his last name is Muñiz. Mr. Muñiz has made countless trips to communist Cuba with the Areito group and his little soul brother, Raúl Álzaga. Many local ‘Cubans’ are thinking of enjoying this little trip.”

The threats were intensified in the same column published on October 31:

“Lastly, it comes to mind that any action by an anti-communist group could turn this ‘little pleasure trip’ into a tormented one. It has happened before and it could happen again.”

Gil was undoubtedly referring to the bombing of a Cuban Airlines flight in October 1976 as it was departing Barbados, killing seventy-three passengers. By early October, two bombs had exploded in Puerto Rico—one against the Girasol travel agency, which specialized in arranging travel to Cuba for Puerto Ricans, and the other at Publish Records Services, whose Cuban owner planned to broadcast a documentary about the Tropicana Cabaret on Puerto Rican television. Finally, the November 14 issue of La Crónica, seven days before the first dialogue meeting, published on its cover the image of a hooded figure who, in representation of the terrorist group Omega 7, declared: “We will not allow the dialogue to advance. Dynamite is the only language we are going to dialogue with,” stated someone identified as “Comando Z,” military chief of the organization.

Another reality we would have to face, besides Cuban terrorists and media attacks, would be the surveillance and persecution on the part of Puerto Rico police authorities, the FBI and no doubt, the CIA. That first trip departed on December 21 from San Juan to Miami and on to Kingston to board a Cuban Airlines flight the next day. In San Juan, police dogs checked the baggage for bombs. When they returned on December 27, we learned from some passengers that the group had been photographed by the police before boarding the plane and that more than one FBI informer had travelled with them. To this day we have not been able to document those two claims, but the information at the time came from someone who was closely linked to high political figures in Puerto Rico.

The impact of that first trip and all the others that originated in the United States created a state of euphoria in many segments of the Cuban community, regardless of the media campaigns and terrorist acts that were developed during the ensuing days and months to prevent them from continuing. The success of the initiative really surpassed our expectations, and forced us to find a bigger space and to recruit a group of young people who had participated in that first visit to work with us. Seven people were added to the staff to deal with the avalanche of applications. A second group had already been organized to travel on January 4, 1979, and candidates were being processed for subsequent weekly flights.

The first bomb against Viajes Varadero exploded in the early morning hours of January 4. It did not affect the flight that was leaving that morning, nor did it prevent the move to the agency’s new space, which was planned for the next day. Oddly, the La Crónica weekly, in its “Lo que vio El Duende de etiqueta” (What the black-tie elf saw) section published on December 31 (four days before the attack), wrote: “And expanding on the Varadero Agency, an explosive artifact was placed in its locale yesterday, causing considerable damages… so much that today the agency was moving to another space. OUR CONGRATULATIONS TO THE CUBAN PATRIOTS!!!” There could only be one explanation for the difference in dates: they had advance notice were expecting the bomb to explode before publishing the December 31 issue.

In addition to the threats in the media, the bombs, and the police surveillance, which was often disguised as an interest in protecting and preventing the physical elimination of one of Viajes Varadero’s directors, we faced a government measure. At the initiative of statehood party senator Nicolás Nogueras Cartagena and with the support of autonomists in the senate, a resolution was approved on January 24, 1979—20 days after the first bomb and three months before the assassination of Carlos Muñiz—to “Condemn the Castro regime and any dialogue with Castro,” as the headline in El Mundo newspaper read. We know that this resolution was orchestrated by members of La Crónica with close ties to Senator Nogueras, who we came to call “the Godfather of Cuban terrorists in Puerto Rico.”

Aniversario 46 de Viajes Varadero (Parte I). La fundación (+English)

From January to April 1979, weekly charter flights were arranged that picked passengers up in San Juan and flew them directly to Kingston, but that joy didn’t last too long. The growing Cuban tour operator Havanatur decided to create a reservations center in Miami, moved its executives to that city under the umbrella of American Airways Charter, and organized direct flights from Miami to Havana, until they were cancelled by federal authorities in the late eighties. From January to April 1979, about 2,000 people were able to fly directly from Puerto Rico to visit relatives in Cuba. Carlos Muñiz was shot on April 28, 1979 and died in the early morning hours of April 30. In May we began to see a reduction of the number of passengers traveling to Cuba, with an average of 200 Cubans per month during the rest of the year, for a total of approximately 3,000 people.

By April and May there were also conflicts with Havanatur’s travel policies. There were divergent opinions in terms of the massive number of passengers, the frenzied operation of the trips, the loss of control of the groups organized by the agencies and the elimination of tour guides, the obligatory purchase of hotel accommodations even when passengers did not use them, and a commission that could not exceed $30 USD per passenger. We began to realize we had little influence and even less decision-making power in what we in the U.S. and Puerto Rico considered an abusive process. It would take a long time to overcome those differences.

Drawing from a photo of Carlos Muñiz Varela

There was a dramatic reduction in the number of visitors to Cuba during the following years, in comparison to the 100,000 Cubans who travelled in 1979. No more than 50,000 would travel per year during 1980-1985. This was due in part to the Mariel crisis, when 125,000 people left the island. In answer to the launching of Radio Martí—created by the Reagan administration and the Cuban American Foundation—on May 19, 1985, Havana cancelled travel to Cuba from the United States and Puerto Rico. The prohibition lasted a year in the case of travel from the United States and five months from Puerto Rico.

Raúl Álzaga is a founder and current president of Viajes Varadero, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
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