Cuba – The Pull Of The Land

Uncle Max

July 31, 2025July 31, 2025 Richard Barnes

Last week I was interviewed for hours regarding my Uncle’s and my father’s murders in 1968 and 1982, respectively. The discussion went far longer than anticipated because the interviewer wanted to understand how Massachussets, Pennsylvania, Florida, Cuba, and Venezuela all “connected” so extensively with our family.

This morning I enjoyed coffee with an acquaintance who also asked how my grandfather, whose fathers had lived and died in Massachussets since the 17th Century, ended up in Cuba and then his offspring went to Venezuela. I was happy to give him the 60,000 foot overview.

The fact is that all families have interesting histories. The problem is that relatively few take the time to describe or narrate such to their children and grandchildren, who, if experience is any guide, would be positively delighted to know them and would never tire of hearing them. Who doesn’t remember seeing little ones wanting to know what their fathers or mothers did “when you were little”?

My father would often tell us about his brother, Uncle Max’s antics in Cuba. My father was an excellent baseball player, Uncle Max was an excellent swimmer. My father only beat him once: a marathon swim in Santiago Bay (if memory serves) where Uncle Max committed the cardinal sin of over worrying about another swimmer who was supposed to be his greatest competition.

As Uncle Max kept looking over his shoulder to see where his “competition” was, my father pulled away and beat him. Everyone — especially my father! — knew that would be a once in a lifetime. And it was. But that didn’t stop my father from teasing Uncle Max about it for decades.

Uncle Max was a firecracker — full of energy and stamina. Retired in Miami, well into his 70s and into his 80s he swam 100 laps, and later, 50 laps every day. I am convinced that exercise regiment forestalled his succumbing to Parkinson’s Disease in 2007, his 91st year.

That energy and invincible good humor was on full display early one morning, again in Santiago Bay. Only this time my father and Uncle Max along with two other friends were in a boat fishing. Uncle Max’s line tensed suddenly and the boys realized he had caught something terribly big! He worked the fish, but eventually ran out of fishing line.

Yes, he jumped into the bay and kept working the fish! I laugh as I write this. I always think of Uncle Max when I see the beginning of The Lord of the Rings where Peter Jackson depicts Déagol, Sméagol’s cousin, hooking a large fish and jumping into the river after running out of line. It is there that he sees the One Ring to Rule Them All and … well, you know the rest of that story.

In Uncle Max’s case, his friends and my father rowed while yelling at Uncle Max to “Let it go!” They caught up with him and laughed until they cried. I believe it was a giant Grouper, but do not remember. This story was last told me many years ago.

My cousin Eileen once told me that when she understood that her father, Uncle Max, had fought in WWII in the Philippines, she climbed on his lap and asked him, “Did you die?” I was not there but can easily see my uncle laughing uproariously.

It’s not easy to choose one’s “favorite” Uncle Max story, but I suppose it would be the one where, again in Cuba, the boys, including my father and Uncle Max were swimming back and forth and jumping or diving in, just having the time of their lives.

They did not notice, or rather, they ignored a large yacht moored nearby.

Soon a crewman, in bright whites, came to the dock where the boys were diving and swimming and called Uncle Max to him.

“My boss would like to challenge you to a swim. Would you agree?”

“Yes! Yes! Tell him yes!” — It is difficult to convey Uncle Max’s energy and enthusiasm with mere words.

So the gentleman on the yacht approached in a dingy and introduced himself by name.

They agreed to the natural markers for their swim and dove in. Uncle Max won.

As they caught their breath and congratulated one another for a good swim, the gentleman again stretched out his hand and asked, “Do you know whom you just defeated?”

“No!”

“You just defeated the Jamaica Olympic champion. Congratulations!”

None of that ever went to Uncle Max’s head.

In 1984, at my wedding’s reception held in a military base in Puerto Rico, someone came to me and whispered, “You have a call.”

A call?

I followed the gentleman to an office and picked up the phone which was lying on a desktop.

“Hello Ricky! Congratulations!” said the voice on the other end. It was a voice and a laugh I so easily recognized. It was Uncle Max and his wife, my Tía Carmencita.

May you rest in peace, Uncle Max.

Uncle Max, far left; my father, center. With cousins in Massachussets, circa 1920

Uncle Max and his sister, Aunt Sarah, circa 1975

Uncle Max and Tía Carmencita and Aunt Sarah and Uncle Luis (“Wichy”) came to see us at the gate at the Miami International Airport while we were on a layover on our way to Venezuela. Uncle Max is second from right. Circa 1989.

Middle row, left to right, Cousin Sarita, eldest daughter to Uncle Max and Tía Carmencita, Tía Carmencita, Uncle Max. I am in the back; the rest are five of my children. Miami, Florida, circa 2002.

El Bogotazo II

April 26, 2022April 27, 2022 Richard Barnes

The prior post in this series (El Bogotazo I) reviewed Fidel Castro’s violent career in Cuba during high school and college, including arrests and questioning for suspicion of murder and more. This is important background for today’s post, which picks up in 1948, when the United States, concerned by Communist infiltration throughout Latin America, recommended the creation of the Organization of American States (OAS), an idea which was quickly seized upon by South American countries.

The function of this new organization was to provide a forum for the nations in the American continent to meet to discuss and address regional problems. For example, fast forward to 1962: President Rómulo Betancourt demanded and got the expulsion of Cuba from the OAS given repeated, proven attempts by Fidel Castro to subvert and overthrow the government of Venezuela, including shipments of armaments and men to Communist guerrilla groups operating under Castro. See Spurning Fidel.

The OAS was to be inaugurated during an international conference taking place in Bogota, Colombia in April, 1948. Although one could argue the site was appropriate, nevertheless, one could also argue that the timing was all wrong. Colombia was gearing up to hold presidential elections less than two years later, in 1950, and the Unión Nacional de Izquierda Revolucionaria (UNIR, translated “National Union of the Revolutionary Left”) were vocal in asserting those elections would be won by their candidate, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a radical leftist populist.

Gaitán’s extremist nature was obvious, as witness his frequently repeated motto: “If I advance, follow me, if I retreat, push me, if I betray you, kill me, and if I die, avenge me! To the charge!” His bellicosity was not empty rhetoric. A few months before the OAS conference, he called for a march against the conservative government, “The March of Silence”, to which over 100,000 came, many of them fully armed.

To add to tensions, Rómulo Betancourt, who had assumed the temporary presidency of Venezuela by means of a military coup d’etat, and who was still known for his Communism, which was later abandoned (see Envy), had signaled his support for Gaitán and did not denounce rumors signaling that should the elections be fraudulent (interpreted to mean, should Gaitán lose), Venezuela would support the overthrow of Colombia’s conservative government. Talk about chickens coming home to roost: a little over a decade later, Betancourt led the expulsion of Castro from the OAS for having sought the overthrow of his government.

Opposed to the creation of the OAS, Argentina and the Soviet Union agreed together to sabotage it by surreptitiously financing a conference of Latin American “students” to denounce “Yankee aggression”, meaning the creation of the OAS. This conference would be held simultaneously with the OAS inauguration conference. The Soviet Union and Argentina sought to capitalize on the smoldering animosity between Colombia and Venezuela as well as the anti-American Zeitgeist in Latin American universities.

Argentina emerged from the Second World War as a major economic power. However, Juan Domingo Perón, yet another leftist military leader (see Right-Wing Military for discussion on military leftism) helped overthrow its government in a military coup and was its dictator from 1946 to 1955. He was very anti-American and had close ties with Nazi Germany and later the Soviet Union. Like all good Communists, he took Argentina from economic dominance to massive expropriations and economic decline. Argentina eventually became the poster child of hyperinflation which was eventually broken in the 1990s.

Perón and Stalin were determined to cause chaos in Bogota. They promoted, financed, and ensured the inauguration of the Congreso Estudiantil Latinoamericana (Latin American Student Congress) to be held alongside the assembly creating the OAS. The promotion and organization of the students to attend that congress was headquartered in Havana, Cuba, led by Fabio Grobart. The Congress itself was to be led by Gustavo Machado. And the star attraction of the Congress would be none other than Gaitán himself.

That would be the fuel. The lit matches would be groups of revolutionary Latin American students from all geographic points, directed from Argentina. These would travel separately and converge in Bogota a few days before the inauguration of the OAS. Their objective was to engage in violent street actions and sabotage operations ostensibly to prohibit the establishment of the OAS. The hard-nosed reality behind their purpose was actually to foment chaos.

Among the student groups traveling to Bogota would be a handpicked group of four from Havana, Cuba. And one of the four was Fidel Castro, fully in his element.

Juan Domingo Perón (1895-1974). Similar to Hugo Chavez, Perón was very charismatic and remained popular despite disastrous policies which did great economic harm to Argentina. He was overthrown and exiled in 1955 by a militar coup. Nevertheless, from exile, he used the Argentinian left and the Communist guerrillas to sow widespread chaos and lawlessness, eventually paving the way for his return to power in 1973.

Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) was yet another left-wing military leader who was diligent and successful in creating havoc, chaos, and death in the bloody 20th century. His “alliance” with the United States and England during World War II allowed unprecedented Soviet access to allied military and diplomatic sources which harmed the West and from which she has yet to fully extricate.

Rómulo Betancourt (1908-1981), circa 1945, a time when his sympathies continued to lean heavily to port, creating long-lasting animosity with neighboring Colombia, and throwing fuel to an increasingly volatile environment.

Jorge Eliécer Gaitán (1903-1948). “If I advance, follow me, if I retreat, push me, if I betray you, kill me, and if I die, avenge me! To the charge!” He was assassinated in April, 1948.

Voices From the Past

April 18, 2022April 18, 2022 Richard Barnes

A dear cousin’s re-discovery of some old letters (from the 50s) stirred recollections of the years I lived in Miami under the tutelage of Aunt Sarah and Uncle Luis, whom we called Uncle Wichy.

Five decades ago, our paternal grandfather’s side of the family met in Miami for the wedding of one of his granddaughters. Twenty of us met for that event, and, although several had met separately on different occasions over the years, all twenty of us did not meet again for over three decades afterwards, when we had a family reunion in December, 2006.

By then, five had died, eight marriages had been celebrated, and numerous children had been born. And so, we decided to celebrate a family reunion where the remaining fifteen could meet once again. Adding spouses and children who were able to come, the group that day numbered forty-six, mas o menos.

Since December, 2006, five more have passed away, including Aunt Sarah, the last surviving child of our paternal grandfather. The last member to have passed away was my cousin Max (Papaito), who died December 19, 2021.

This post borrows from a recollection I wrote about fifteen years ago about that family reunion in 2006, which I hope gives a little sense of our gratitude towards one another and to God.

We gathered in a one-bedroom condominium near the beach, overlooking the inter-coastal waterway. This type of arrangement we were used to as children when sometimes as many as 20 cousins, uncles, aunts, and grandparents plus assorted visitors gathered annually in Miami in a small, one-bathroom house whose address and telephone number we still know by heart.

For many years, that house was home as we’d leave Venezuela to go to school in the States. In this way, family history repeated itself, in that, a generation earlier, our own parents had to leave Cuba to go to school in Massachusetts and while there they all stayed in an uncle’s house and learned to live with one another and to appreciate one another and to love one another. Thus, for two generations, these extended families were quite close, and our challenge is to instill that sense of communion to the third and fourth generations who are already amongst us. It won’t be easy, and it won’t be done as it was when our parents lived in Cuba and we in Venezuela. But it can be done.

Funny how all seems laughter and joy looking back. Well, in a real sense, it was laughter and joy, because, although there may have been fights and misunderstandings and even bitterness for a time, it all turned out to a strengthening of and appreciation for our generational bonds. And that is certainly cause for laughter and joy.

So, at the time, while Tom may not have appreciated Jack’s sticking a straw in his eye; and Jack may not have understood Tom’s declaring his brain to be upside down; and while Julie detested wearing everyone’s hand-me-downs, even the boys’; and while Dan could show his displeasure by throwing a shoe through the wall (names have all been changed to protect the guilty); etc., those of us who remain, appreciate and love one another today. We wouldn’t change events, even if we could.

Our beloved Aunt Sarah would ensure we all went with her to church every Sunday morning. We all remember how, at the conclusion of each service, the choir would sing the beautiful benediction, The Lord Bless You and Keep You (from Numbers 6). Easter Sundays were very special as she would get us up well before dawn and drive us — in more ways than one — to the coast to attend sunrise services. As we grew older and more resistant to such early reveille, she resorted to threats, such as, “Wait till I tell your parents!” That would work for some, but not all. But we were always very glad we went.

She would also insist on outings, usually on Sundays after church. How she put up with our bickering, our foot dragging, our resistance to going anywhere, we’ll never know. Maybe she anticipated how, at the end of every single one of those outings, we would be enjoying ourselves so much, we would not want to leave. Maybe she knew they were for our benefit and that one day we would appreciate them. Maybe she was simply a very determined lady, whom we all loved.

And, for the most part, we can thank her for telling us about Jesus. That’s some heritage to leave to sons, daughters, nieces, and nephews.

As for Uncle Wichy, I can say, with all honesty, he scared the living daylights out of me. Once, upon arrival from the airport, I, about 7 years old, was greeted by him, whom I had not seen for a year, with, “Now remember, if you misbehave, you’ll get Pow-Pow”! I stared in stunned silence as he roared with laughter.

He took us deep sea fishing and “lobstering”. Once, while pulling up a lobster trap, the lines and eventually the trap caught in the ship’s propeller, destroying trap and catch. We continued talking and fishing as if nothing had happened. He rebuked us quietly, “This is a great loss for José (his friend who had agreed to take us along) and I feel very bad about this.” Even though José told him it was nothing and “Don’t worry about this; this is a typical loss” still Uncle Wichy fretted the rest of the day and into the night.

He mellowed with the years, and we grew to understand his love and genuine interest and concern for us. He died in 1995.

Besides Aunt Sarah, our paternal grandparents had three sons: Uncle Max, Uncle Charles (“Charlie”), and Uncle Alfred. Both my father, Charles, and Uncle Alfred were murdered. Uncle Max died in 2007, less than a year after the family reunion. Uncle Alfred never married, but the first two did and their wives, Tía Carmencita and Tía Adita, regaled us with their stories for years afterwards….

As we shared pictures and music in 2006, we recalled these things and much more. And we were grateful our own children were able to attend.

My mother, Tía Adita (91) is the last surviving family member of that generation who was in that 1972 photo.

Cousins either after church on a Sunday or after Easter Sunrise Service, circa 1963

The years flew by. The affection remained.

Myth: Initially, Fidel Castro Had No Interest in Communism

April 2, 2022April 2, 2022 Richard Barnes

The corollary is a variation of “the devil made me do it”. In the case of Castro, the received text is that the United States made him do it.

And that is yet another modern canard.

We’ve looked at the origins of Communist ideology in Latin America (see Protevangelium and prior posts) and demonstrated that such predated the Monroe Doctrine, not to mention 20th Century American foreign policy. This is not to argue that United States’ policies are without fault (they have much to answer for, especially since the mid-19th century, but that is another tale). Our point is simple: the America-drove-Fidel-and-Hugo-(not-to-mention-Ho)-to-Communism is a ridiculous assertion, albeit a dangerously misleading one.

When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, thereby breaking the Hitler-Stalin Pact (officially called the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), Fidel Castro was a 15 year old high school student in the prestigious Colegio de Belén in Havana. The prior year, 1940, Fulgencio Batista had been elected president of Cuba and immediately set about to court Communist political support.

Batista legalized the Communist party and enabled the return of Fabio Grobart and Gustavo Machado, along with others from exile in Mexico. They had all been expelled (see here) from Cuba for their subversive activities seeking the overthrow of the Cuban government and the installation of a Communist regime. What possessed Batista to believe these men had shed their nefarious ideology and Comintern membership and would now play fair remains clouded in political, historical, and psychological mystery. Other than the average politician’s lust for power, further explanations need to be sought elsewhere. The fact remains that Batista enabled the Communists in Cuba.

Grobart’s and Machado’s mission was to serve as Soviet liaison in the Caribbean region and to support the development of Communist parties therein. Seeing Batista’s naiveté, Grobart moved the general quarters of the Latin American Comintern to Cuba from Mexico, wherefrom, as its director, he now had a free hand for his mission not only in Cuba, but in all of Latin America, a role which he and Machado undertook with great relish and effectiveness.

While Grobart and Machado did their thing establishing the Comintern in Havana, the Jesuits in the same city were doing theirs, indoctrinating their students, sons of well-to-do Cuban families, in the Colegio de Belén. The Jesuits had been expelled from all Spanish lands, including Cuba, in 1767, by decree of King Carlos III of Spain. That decree was lifted in the 19th Century and the Jesuits returned to Cuba in 1853, once the decree was overturned and Queen Isabella II founded the Colegio de Belén. For more on Jesuit expulsions in the 18th century see here.

Counterintuitively, Colegio de Belén was a hotbed of pro-Spanish Republic (Communist) sentiments. This can seem surprising because, as popularly conceived, Roman Catholics were supporters of Francisco Franco (see here). Nevertheless, as usual, the easy or superficial supposition is not always the correct one. A recent Jesuit history recounts a representative event: a Jesuit who served as something of a chaplain to Francisco Franco but who joined the Communist party after the war.

What is not disputed is the historically well-documented political involvement of the Jesuits throughout the order’s history. As its members focused on “helping the poor” while they educated the sons of the elites, their remedies tended towards Socialistic solutions with a patina of Scriptural justification. Of course, a thorough understanding of the Eighth Commandment, “Thou shalt not steal”, would have helped the order temper its Socialistic leanings. That Commandment formed the basis of the Fifth Amendment to the United States’ Constitution which, when properly applied, prohibits the taking of life or property “without due process of law….”

Neither the Commandment nor the Amendment are more than a glint in the pen or gun of hardened thieves’ or politicians’ intent on taking what is not theirs. And Castro’s high school career among the Jesuits did not create any meaningful deterrence against such takings.

One other characteristic Colegio de Belén strengthened and developed in Castro was a hatred against The United States, for their humiliation of Spain in the late Spanish American War. See War for more information on that event.

Both traits — lack of respect for others’ lives and property and hatred for America — were initially instilled in Castro by his father (see here) who was cruel to his workers, mostly from Haiti, and who hated the Americans although he became very rich working and doing business with them.

When Hitler broke the Hitler-Stalin Pact and the United States and Britain formally allied themselves with the Communists. The Soviets opened an embassy in Cuba with an ambassador who represented them in both Havana and Washington. Upon the opening of the embassy in Havana, Grobart and Machado went to work with alacrity and by the end of 1944 inaugurated a series of “cultural exchange” programs, to which Colegio de Belén sent a student delegation, among which was Fidel Castro.

(Note the year: 1944 — the war was not yet over, the Soviets and the Americans were “allies”, but the Soviets always had other plans besides survival, and they never lost sight of such.)

The dissertations were fulsome in their praise of the Communist revolution and its eventual worldwide triumph. Castro was especially impressed with Gustavo Machado’s oration relating his efforts to recreate a Latin America united under the Communist flag. He dwelt on the massive petroleum reserves in Venezuela, who at the time was the principal exporter of petroleum in the world and the third producer after the United States and the Soviet Union. According to Machado, Venezuela’s riches would be more than sufficient to finance a Latin America union allied to the Soviets.

Machado’s comments rang true. Fast forward to the late 50s and one finds Venezuela and Cuba among the richest countries in Latin America, both being major exporters of petroleum and sugar, respectively.

Upon conclusion of the Second World War and the outbreak of the Cold War, the Soviet Union continued, with renewed vigor, to work for control over Cuba and Venezuela. Meanwhile, Fidel Castro, having completed his tenure in Colegio de Belén, entered the University of Havana school of law and immediately linked up with extreme leftist gangs.

Readers will need to go to other sources for details on Castro’s violent acts during his student years, not only in Cuba but in the Dominican Republic and in Colombia (the “Bogotazo” in 1948). For our present purposes it is sufficient to know that he was no late bloomer. His North Star was taking power as a Communist, not only in Cuba, but in Venezuela and then all of Latin America. He saw himself as a mystical, Communist José Martí, Simón Bolivar, Francisco Miranda, and more; one who would embody and realize his understanding of the goals and dreams of those men.

He was engaged in many violent activities including his murderous attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953, for which many of his comrades were executed but he and his brother, Raul, were spared thanks to Roman Catholic intervention. Batista, ignorant that the definition of insanity is repeating the same action and expecting a different result, foolishly amnestied them in 1955 upon which they exiled themselves to Mexico only to return in 1956 and set up headquarters in the Sierra Maestra from whence the Communists eventually triumphed with no small military assistance from Venezuela.

In Venezuela, meanwhile, the era of coups interspersed with duly elected governments continued (see here). By the time Castro returned to Cuba in 1956, Venezuela was ruled by Marcos Pérez Jiménez (see here), and his links with Venezuela continued to strengthen.

*Colegio de Belén*, circa 1940, the time that Castro was a student there

Fidel Castro, far left, second row from top, circa 1942, *Colegio de Belén* basketball team

Raul (B. 1931) and Fidel Castro (1926 – 2016), circa 1964.

Vyacheslav Mkhaylovich Molotov, for whom the Molotov Cocktail is named, (1890-1986) and Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893-1946), in 1939 after signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop (Stalin-Hitler) Pact.

Fulgencio Batista (1901-1973), circa 1934

Aftermath of “El Bogotazo” in Colombia, 1948. One of Castro’s early international involvements.

Caribbean and South American Communism Protevangelium

March 25, 2022March 25, 2022 Richard Barnes

In recent posts we have documented the fact that Communist activity in Cuba and Venezuela did not begin with Fidel Castro, let alone Hugo Chavez.

Communism did not arise in Cuba as a reaction to Batista or in Venezuela in revulsion to Gómez or Pérez Jiménez. Nor did it come because of the “horrors” of the United States’ invasion of Cuba or her “exploitation” of Venezuela (or insert any south-of-the-border country). The usual shibboleths insisted upon by our betters simply will not hold under more than casual examination.

Communistic ideals, preached in the Paris communes in the 19th century predated the Spanish American War as did Lenin’s radicalism and destructive activism as well as his admiration for the French Revolution. His initial hateful attitude was directed to the Russian Tsarist regime. His glee at the outbreak of the First World War had nothing to do with the United States, which entered that cavalcade of horrors towards its end. He wanted war and mayhem because he was convinced it would enable the overthrow of the Tsarist dynasty and the consolidation of power under a Communist regime. In this he was correct.

But the United States did not enter into his fevered dreams at that stage.

Neither did she enter into the fevered imagination of another admirer of the French Revolution: Simón Bolívar. Like Lenin, Bolívar was an acolyte of the Jacobins and, initially, of Napoleon, who was seen as the one who would ensure the Revolution would endure and advance. If one is to judge Bolívar by his fruits, one would inevitably be confronted with the parallels between the bloodshed and mayhem in France and that in South America. One would see that in both cases, the fruit was bitter, and the deleterious effects, long-lasting, persisting to this very day. The power and glory of late 18th and early 19th Century France and South America are no more, and no comeback is on the horizon.

And neither, at the time, vocalized any blame to America for their own disastrous policies and actions. The rationalizations and blame-game came much later by way of their advocates and fellow travelers seeking to justify the savagery and terror as well as their own consolidation of power and overarching control over people: their own and others. (For this, American universities and high schools will One Day give an account.)

So, as for instance, we have the Cuban, Paul Lefargue (Lefargue), one of the most influential Communists who predated the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Lefargue was born in Cuba in 1842 and died in Paris in 1911. He married Karl Marx’ daughter, Jenny, and the two of them were indefatigable in their successful promotion of the Communist virus in France and Spain, from whence it sailed back to the Caribbean and South America where the successful infiltrators, the Polish Comintern agent, Fabio Grobart (1905-1994), and the Venezuelan Comintern agent, Gustavo Machado (1898-1983) (agents) both were enthusiastic carriers, having promoted the objective conditions necessary for its propagation: hatred for the colonial past and for the United States present.

Hugo Chávez was born in 1954. His first overt coup attempt was in 1992. However, to understand him, his actions, and the worldview that motivated them, one must review well over a generation before, as this blog has striven to do.

Fidel Castro was born in 1926. His first overt coup attempt was in 1953 (ignoring the aborted 1947 attempt to overthrow Trujillo in the Dominican Republic). However, here too, one must provide a broader context well beyond Castro, to understand his actions and motivations, setting aside the psychological aspects.

Absent the actions and evangelistic fervor of Paul Lefargue, Fabio Grobart, or Gustavo Machado, there would have been no Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, or Nicolás Maduro regardless of what the United States did or did not do. Special mention must also be accorded to Douglas Bravo, the Venezuelan guerrilla and erstwhile Castro ally, whose long-term strategy of infiltration of the Venezuelan armed forces and the use of Simón Bolívar as a euphemism for Marxist ideology enabled and ensured the rise of Chávez and Maduro and continues to pay dividends to this day. (Gustavo Machado had the same idea but was discovered during the Gómez dictatorship, resulting in his exile.)

Of course, these men did not act alone: the Comintern keenly sought and aided their success in the Americas; women of means and influence as well as United States reporters, bureaucrats, academics, and politicians were devoted disciples and promoters. Whether knowingly or duped is irrelevant; the results were horrible just the same.