Cuba

Cuba and the Cuban-American exile community played a significant role in Contra operations, with Bay of Pigs veterans serving as key Central Intelligence Agency operatives and anti-Castro networks providing logistical support for the covert war in Central America. The connection between Cuban intelligence operations, drug trafficking, and the Contra war formed a recurring thread throughout the 1980s.¹

Cuban Exile Support for the Contras

Both early Contra groups tapped into Miami's Cuban community, drawing financial support and volunteers from rabidly anti-Communist Cubans, including men who had worked with the CIA on the Bay of Pigs operation. The first military supplies for the Contras were purchased from Miami sporting goods stores by the UDN-FARN. Cuban-Americans served as key operatives throughout the Southern Front in Costa Rica. The Medellín cartel's money-laundering wizard, Cuban-American Ramon Milian Rodriguez, created an interlocking chain of companies including Frigorificos de Puntarenas, the Costa Rican shrimp company used by Oliver North's Contra supply operation, which was owned and operated by Cuban-American drug traffickers.²

Key Cuban Operatives

CIA agent Felix Rodriguez, a Bay of Pigs veteran, was sent to San Salvador to manage the Contra resupply operation at Ilopango Air Base. Luis Posada, a veteran CIA agent with a history of involvement with drug traffickers and terrorists, was recruited by the CIA in the 1960s after years of working with anti-Castro Cubans in Miami. In 1973, the DEA received reports that Posada was in contact with two Cubans in Miami who were smuggling narcotics into the United States. After escaping from a Venezuelan prison, Posada resurfaced at Ilopango as Rodriguez's right-hand man. The CIA deliberately recruited Bay of Pigs veterans for Contra work, replacing less controllable Contra leaders with the crowd of drug dealers and Cuban veterans working with the Chamorro faction.³