Dos Épocas

Flying the Coop
Part III of IV


Photo: The Villalobos family residence in Havana's Miramar neighborhood. Circa 1957.

At around 1 a.m. on the morning of October 10, 1960, the prisoners, accompanied by four complicit guards, made their way down to the shoreline below Morro Castle with several uniforms safely packed. Hiding amid the shoreline rocks, they could see the faint lights of a ship far off in the distance and began to send the pre-established signal. Whether the signal light was obscured and not visible by the cutter, or the Coast Guard had pulled the plug on the operation is unknown. No raft ever arrived to recover the group. From then on, the men would have to resort to fallback plans and improvisation. Taking to the water, the group swam a few hundred yards to a stretch of shoreline near an auto tunnel that cuts through the Bay of Havana. Donning the stolen military uniforms, they were able to hitch rides into the city’s downtown area sometime later in the pre-dawn hours. From a safe-house, the men made contact with Villalobos, who would await the arrival of half the group at the family residence in the city’s Miramar neighborhood, then home to Cuba’s most prominent families. Some time later, the gates of 601, Fifth Avenue creaked open. The headlights of a car illuminated the darkened home’s interior as Villalobos emerged from the mansion’s garage-side entrance to usher the men inside. The mansion, with its lights extinguished, took on a forbidding air as the men found their way up a winding marble staircase into what had once been the bedroom of Eugenio’s sister and brother-in-law. Only two months earlier, they had fled to Miami along with their children and Eugenio’s mother, and were unaware of the developments back in Havana. Villalobos gave Captain Raul Barandela a revolver to use in case anything went awry. With that, the fugitive collapsed on a soft bed for the first time in months and drifted off to sleep, the revolver safe below his pillow.


Photo: Huber Matos' adjutants were housed in a second floor bedroom highlighted in this black and white photograph.

The following morning found Villalobos in his Havana office, awaiting further instructions on how to smuggle the men out of the country when his phone rang. His sister Nena shouted frantically on the other end of the line that a gunshot had gone off in the bedroom upstairs. Terrified that the shot might have been heard by Havana’s now ubiquitous militiamen, she begged her brother to get back to the house as quickly as possible. Entering the house, Villalobos went straight for the upstairs bedroom where he found all five men, alive and well. At some point during the early morning hours, while the exhausted men slept, one of the guards, doubting the promises of a space on the boat out of Cuba, had attempted suicide. Fearing he was about to be left behind and sold-out, he pulled the revolver, ever-so-gently, out from beneath Barandela’s pillow. A struggle ensued as the five men fought for possession of the gun and a shot pierced the quiet of the vast mansion. Barandela eventually regained control of the weapon but it took Villalobos some time to reassure the frightened guard that no one would be left behind before he was finally put at ease.


Photos: Villalobos family photos taken at the family's residence, where Matos' adjutants would later be hidden.

In the early years of the revolutionary government, militiamen were a common sight in Havana’s neighborhoods. The ever-present threat of a U.S. invasion or an internal uprising was constantly on the minds of the revolutionary hierarchy, which dispatched pairs of eyes throughout the capital city’s many neighborhoods. Villalobos would have to concoct an excuse for the sound of gunfire that had pierced the quiet of the upscale neighborhood. Taking a starter’s pistol as well as several other toys from his nephew’s bedroom closet, he littered the floor of the foyer with every manner of toy car, plush animal and, of course, the pistol. Reasoning he would simply explain to any curious police or militiamen that the boy had been playing with the starter’s pistol inside the house, Eugenio Villalobos, his sister Nena and their nervous guests settled down for another night at the house on Fifth Avenue. It would prove to be a nerve-wracking evening of waiting for a knock on the door that luckily, never came.

Please return for part IV on 2/1/07