Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3

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If you were to ask any 21st-century American about Cuba, most of the stories that would come to mind would be those of the Missile Crisis, the world on the brink of nuclear collapse, and the repression of freedoms against the island’s inhabitants by a socialist tyranny. And they are right.

But the rich connections between the island and the United States are not limited to the last 70 tumultuous years. There is a whole current of prior ties, in which solidarity and alliance between regional neighbors prevailed.

We discussed these with Cuban-American historian Octavio de la Suarée, who for years was a professor and head of the Department of Language, Literature, and Culture at William Paterson University in New Jersey, and who presides over the Cuban Academy of History in Exile. Here is part of that long conversation on the 250th anniversary of the United States.

With the arrival of the socialist revolution in Cuba, many exiles found support in the United States government to try to reclaim their homeland. Perhaps the high point of that early period was the Bay of Pigs invasion. What connections existed between the exile forces and the U.S. military?

The Bay of Pigs invasion, also called the Playa Girón invasion, was a failed military invasion of Cuba in April 1961, organized by the United States and carried out by anti-Castro Cuban exiles, with the objective of overthrowing the government of Fidel Castro. It ended in total failure for the United States and in a huge political and military victory for the Cuban government.

In 1959, Fidel Castro overthrew Fulgencio Batista, a dictator supported by the United States. Initially, the United States did not openly oppose him, but Castro soon nationalized U.S. companies on the island and moved closer politically to the Soviet Union. In the midst of the Cold War, this greatly alarmed the United States.

The United States then faced the dilemma of wanting to overthrow Castro and prevent a socialist government just 90 miles from Florida, but they were unsure what measures should be taken to try to provoke a popular uprising against the Cuban regime. All this without direct military intervention, to maintain a “plausible denial” of their involvement.

There was also a great fear of the spread of communism in the Americas. An agreement was reached to prepare an invasion designed by the CIA during President Eisenhower’s administration. Some 1,400 Cuban exiles, the so-called Brigade 2506, were trained in Guatemala and Nicaragua with a landing projected for the Bay of Pigs, south of Cuba.

On April 15, 1961, Cuban airfields were bombed by Cuban pilots and other Americans acting independently, but they failed to destroy Castro’s air force. The following day, the landings took place at Playa Girón and Playa Larga.

Aside from the location chosen for the assault, which was highly unfavorable for the invaders, they did not receive the promised air support and were trapped, perhaps due to the change of government during the transition from a Republican to a Democratic administration.

The attackers had to confront the Cuban army, militias, and police, and the entire affair resulted, as expected, in a defeat for Brigade 2506. All the invading aircraft were destroyed and their pilots killed in action, except for one of the four American airmen, who was taken prisoner when his damaged plane crashed. There were many dead and more than 1,100 prisoners, and it was all over in less than 72 hours.

Reflecting on the reasons for the invasion’s failure, the geographically unfavorable location, President Kennedy’s cancellation of promised air support, and the poor planning by the U.S. officials are frequently cited, since the Cuban people never rebelled against Castro or did not have the opportunity to do so. They greatly underestimated the people’s support for Castro in that early moment and the effective Soviet-backed Cuban military response.

What consequences resulted from the invasion’s failure?

As a consequence of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Castro consolidated his position (he had officially declared the socialist character of the revolution shortly before) and gained greater international prestige; at the same time, he strengthened his alliance with the USSR.

For its part, the Democratic administration faced military and political defeat and international humiliation due to the loss of its credibility and prestige, and President Kennedy had no choice but to publicly assume responsibility for what had happened.

The United States policy also became more radicalized against Cuba, as demonstrated by the tightening of the embargo and the Cuban Missile Crisis, the most dangerous moment of the Cold War. These events inspired left-wing revolutionary movements in Hispanic America, increased distrust of the United States, and strengthened the image of Havana as the “leader” of anti-imperialism.

A notable aspect of the Bay of Pigs events is the heroic story of an American pilot who provided air support to the Cubans, but whose plane was shot down in combat. He was taken prisoner, and Castro held his body captive for 18 years, until 1979.

The four American pilots known to have perished in the Battle of the Bay of Pigs on April 17, 1961, were Riley Shamburger, his co-pilot Wade Gray, Thomas Willard “Pete” Ray, and his co-pilot Leo Baker, all members of the Alabama Air National Guard in Birmingham.

The first two died when their plane crashed into the Caribbean Sea after being shot down by strafing fire from a Cuban Air Force T-33 fighter jet. The other two crew members of the second downed plane, Thomas Willard “Pete” Ray and Leo Baker, managed to land alive, but were immediately surrounded by Cuban militiamen and subsequently died from their adversaries’ gunfire.

And so begins the unusual and interesting story of the body of the crew member of the second plane, pilot Thomas Willard “Pete” Ray.

Since the Cuban leader knew that the Cuban refugees living in the United States could not have invaded the island without the express consent of the U.S. government, and that the Kennedy administration could completely deny its involvement in the attack, Fidel Castro considered it a good idea to preserve the body of the deceased pilot — fair-skinned with green eyes, to be precise — as evidence of the U.S. government’s participation in the invasion of Cuba. With his co-pilot, Leo Baker, who had brown skin and could have passed for Cuban, it was not necessary to do so.

Pete Ray’s daughter was vital to completing a story of redemption.

Exactly. A story unfolded that demonstrates the close bond between a father and his daughter.

The Cuban regime stored Pete Ray’s body in a morgue at the Institute of Legal Medicine in Cuba for 18 consecutive years, even after the United States acknowledged his involvement in the preparations for the Bay of Pigs invasion — perhaps because Castro wanted to keep him as a war trophy.

His daughter, Janet Ray, who would become the protagonist of this story as she tried to recover her father’s remains, was just six years old at the time and began her odyssey searching for and gathering information about him. Even in school, she began to notice that her classmates looked at her askance, not understanding why, until years later she learned that her father was accused of belonging to a group of paid mercenaries seeking fortune by attacking the island of Cuba.

From the age of eight, Janet would leave her tape recorder running, hidden under the sofa in the living room of her house, to gather information about her father — information her family kept from her to prevent her from learning of his violent death and the rumors circulating. This is how she learned the names of friends, colleagues, and people connected to her father, which she religiously wrote down in a notebook she never let out of her sight. She would retrieve papers her mother threw away in the trash, obsessed with finding out her father’s whereabouts.

Almost three years after his disappearance, she heard on television that Castro would release some prisoners captured at the Bay of Pigs, and Janet dreamed of finding her father among them. She remembers for a long time how she and her mother anxiously watched television during the prisoner exchange for food and tractors between Cuba and the United States, searching for her father’s face among the group of men Kennedy received in Florida, but without any luck.

She still didn’t understand so much secrecy, why the U.S. government was doing everything possible to keep her from knowing where her father was, as Janet imagined.

It was at that moment that she began a mission that would last 18 years and seven months: to find the truth, bring home her father’s remains, and ensure that he was honored in his own country. Later, she frequently visited local libraries and bookstores, reading archives, documents, books — anything that might give her a clue — to try to learn more about the case of Cuba and her father’s death.

In several conversations she had with members of the Alabama Air National Guard, she realized that the vast majority avoided giving her any information. Finally, one day someone told her, “Ah, he went down in Cuba during the Bay of Pigs invasion.” By then, President Kennedy was already acknowledging his government’s involvement in the matter, but denied that American military personnel had entered Cuban territory.

Ten years later, we find her at university, and it is during this four-year stay that she frequently traveled to South Florida, where she realized for the first time that her father was considered a good pilot in the fight against the dictator Castro, and not a criminal mercenary.

On a subsequent trip to Miami, someone told her that there were rumors that the body of an American was in a morgue in Havana, along with photographs taken after his death.

Shortly afterward, Janet married Mike Weininger, an Air Force pilot with whom she shared her concerns and who joined those who wanted to help her.

Did Janet ever speak with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)?

In the early 1970s, she learned that some members of the CIA, who until then had religiously kept her father’s involvement in the Bay of Pigs invasion a secret, were now willing to share their knowledge on the matter.

In April 1979, on the very anniversary of her father’s disappearance, Janet Ray Weininger heard a knock at the door of the house where she was living at Hahn Air Base in Germany with her husband, a military pilot. Upon opening the door, she found an envelope sent by Peter Wyden, a journalist she had interviewed a few months earlier who was writing a book about the Bay of Pigs invasion. It contained photos of her dead father.

She quickly went to a friend’s house who took her to the airport to travel back to the United States, but she found that the last flight of the day was full, with no seats available. She then managed to speak with the pilot and begged him to take her back to her country, explaining that her father, also a pilot, had died at the Bay of Pigs and that his body was in Cuba. Since there was no room, the two pilots agreed to take her with them in the cockpit. She only had $10.00 in her pocket.

With her was the envelope she had received the night before with photos of her dead father. From the age of 15, in 1970, Janet began writing letters to the tyrant Castro month after month, asking for information about her father’s whereabouts, without receiving any reply. In 1974, the CIA awarded Thomas Ray the Intelligence Cross, its highest distinction. His family didn’t find out until many years later.

The next seven months were crucial, and Janet tried to contact the Cuban government. Through a journalist cousin and with Pete’s mother’s help, they managed to get local politicians interested in the case.

On the other hand, the CIA denied her all information; they wouldn’t even give her her father’s fingerprints for possible identification. Janet had to arrange with her doctor for her dental impressions so the body could be identified.

Finally, independent fingerprint and dental analyses by Cuba and the FBI corroborated the identity. The man who had remained for 18 years in a refrigerator at the Institute of Legal Medicine, in Havana, was Thomas Willard “Pete” Ray.