Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4

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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 the final part of that long conversation on the 250th anniversary of the United States.

How did the body of pilot Thomas Willard “Pete” Ray, who fought alongside Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs, return to the United States?

Following negotiations by President Jimmy Carter’s administration, the body was returned to his family on December 5, 1979, draped in the Star-Spangled Banner and carried by soldiers in full military uniform.

Janet was pregnant when the plane landed at Birmingham Airport with her father’s remains, at the same spot from which he had taken off on a failed invasion of Cuba that led to his death and nearly two decades frozen in a Havana morgue at -10°C.

And after a brief service at a local church, he finally went to pay his long-postponed debt to the earth. Meanwhile, trumpets sounded in mourning.

Janet’s life, from the time she came of age, was dedicated to restoring the name of her father, who died in combat, by any means possible, even after recovering his body and restoring his military honor.

In 1998, we found Janet in the remote mountains of northern Nicaragua with the families of two Cuban pilots from Brigade 2506 who died on the flight back to Nicaragua.

For her new mission of reuniting the fallen pilots with their families so they could be buried with honor and dignity, Janet had secured CIA funding for a mission led by the U.S. military, meeting with government officials, politicians, and other influential figures in Washington, D.C. They managed to find the bodies near the town of San José de Bocay in the department of Jinotega.

Upon her return to the United States, she founded Wings of Valor, Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to restoring lives destroyed by war, poverty, and disaster.

But Janet didn’t stop there.

In November 2003, while the Castro regime was cracking down on peaceful dissidents and writers, Janet found legal representation and sued the Cuban government for the execution of her father and the desecration of his body.

The following year, Janet’s efforts were rewarded with nearly $87 million for her father’s execution and the desecration of his body. Of that money, $65 million was for punitive damages and another $18 million for compensatory damages for pain and suffering. More than $3.5 million was designated for her father’s estate, with Janet as its representative.

However, the $18 million in compensatory damages frozen in the United States since the embargo was imposed were not available from the U.S. government. But two years later, in 2006, a federal judge in the state of New York ordered J.P. Morgan to release $23.9 million to Janet from the frozen funds and $66 million to the family of Howard Anderson, who had won damages in 2004 against the Cuban government.

In 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of World War III. Military tension between Cuba and the United States reached unimaginable levels.

The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was one of the most tense moments of the Cold War and, without exaggeration, the moment when the world came closest to nuclear war.

It began as a political and military confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union that lasted 13 days, from October 16 to 28, triggered by the secret installation of nuclear missiles on the island.

It’s worth remembering that, after the 1959 revolution, Cuba aligned itself with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and that the United States had attempted to overthrow Fidel Castro in the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. For its part, the Soviet Union, then led by Nikita Khrushchev, intended to protect Cuba from a U.S. invasion and was also interested in balancing nuclear power, since the United States had missiles aimed at the USSR from Turkey and Italy.

U.S. U-2 spy planes took aerial photographs of the missile bases in Cuba, and the president was briefed by the Armed Forces on October 16.

President Kennedy then ordered a “naval blockade,” officially called a “quarantine,” to prevent more missiles from reaching the island.

For days, Soviet ships approached the blockaded zone, and no one knew if there would be shots fired by either side. There were several very serious accidents, such as the downing of an American spy plane over Cuba.

Secret negotiations were held until an agreement was reached, and the Soviet Union agreed to withdraw its missiles from Cuba once the United States promised not to invade Cuba and secretly withdrew its missiles from Turkey.

This confrontation was extremely important because it demonstrated the dangers of nuclear escalation and led to improvements in communication between the two powerful countries. For example, the famous “hotline” between Washington and Moscow was established, and it spurred further nuclear arms control agreements.

In short, the crisis demonstrated that the nuclear balance could destroy the world in hours and that diplomacy, even between enemies, was vital for global survival.

If the negotiations had failed, what would the possible scenarios have been?

This is not an exaggeration, and many historians believe that nuclear war would have been almost inevitable. Here are three realistic scenarios.

The first, and least likely, could have been a direct military clash in which the United States invaded Cuba. Today we know that there were tactical nuclear weapons on the island and that Soviet commanders were authorized to use them if attacked.

A nuclear explosion in the Caribbean would cause thousands of deaths immediately, and the United States would respond by attacking the USSR. It would trigger an almost automatic global escalation.

A second scenario would involve a ship firing by mistake, a radar misinterpreting a signal, or a pilot acting on their own initiative, all happening without “political decisions.”

A third scenario would involve a large-scale nuclear war. If the balance of negotiations were to break down, missiles would be launched from Cuba, the United States, Europe, and the USSR. Cities like Washington, Moscow, New York, and London would be destroyed.

As a consequence of any of these scenarios, there would be a global economic collapse, massive radioactive contamination, and worldwide famines (what we would now call nuclear winter). The most unsettling aspect of this whole affair is that Kennedy and Khrushchev didn’t control everything.

Many military commanders were willing to go further than the politicians wanted, and humanity depended on individual decisions, on people who didn’t lose their composure or push the button.

From 1959 onward, Cuba entered the Cold War fully, but on the Soviet side. The saga of spies that the Castro regime has infiltrated into American territory turned the island into an enemy to be closely watched. Is it still a threat in that sense?

A completely impoverished country like Cuba doesn’t have the most powerful intelligence in the world, but it probably does have one of the most patient, disciplined, and ideologically coherent. It doesn’t buy spies: it trains and convinces them! Its intelligence is small, but very effective, focused more on ideological quality than quantity.

There are basically two classic methods.

First, ideological recruitment from universities, the armed forces, diplomacy, student movements, and leftist parties. They seek people with prior political convictions, not so much for money.

Their narrative centers on the fight against imperialism, sovereignty, social justice, and resistance to U.S. power. Their agents are young and trained for years. They receive intensive political education, military discipline, and extreme compartmentalization. These “sleeper agents” live normal lives as academics, journalists, civil servants, and businesspeople for decades. The intelligence apparatus builds a culture where betrayal is betrayal of the nation, not just the employer.

Cuban agents have fewer resources, are fewer in number, but are well-positioned. They have patience, ideology, and deep integration. They stand out for their conviction, their long-term effectiveness, and their stealth. They are offered identity, a sense of history, and a mission. Many agents genuinely believe they are fighting a powerful enemy. The Cuban spy does not betray. As an ideological spy, he endures prison, exile, or decades without recognition.

The second method is this. The Castro regime remains powerful because of its perpetual war mentality, its strategic patience over many years, its ideological infiltration mindset, its focus on the United States, and its networked operations; when one falls, there are usually others active or dormant.

Could you give us some examples?

Of course. There are several.

One of them was the Wasp Network, a Cuban spy network dismantled in 1998. It infiltrated military bases, Cuban exiles, political organizations, and strategic centers in Florida.

It stole sensitive military information, monitored and penetrated exile groups, and participated in the downing of the Brothers to the Rescue planes. The network was made up of illegal agents who operated with false identities, sham marriages, and led completely fabricated lives. They answered directly to Cuban intelligence.

Several members were sentenced to long prison terms. In Cuba, they were celebrated as national heroes.

Another case was that of Ana Belén Montes, an established analyst at the Intelligence Agency specializing in Cuba. She had access to top-secret Pentagon information and spied for Cuba for 16 years (1985-2001). She passed classified information on U.S. military capabilities and operations in Latin America, as well as the identities of U.S. agents. Her ideological commitment was unwavering; she did not spy for money.

She compromised entire operations, endangered lives, and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Her work demonstrated that Cuba could infiltrate the heart of U.S. defense.

We can also add the case of Manuel Rocha, a career U.S. diplomat and ambassador to Bolivia. He held high-ranking positions in the State Department, and spied for Cuba for more than 40 years, beginning in the 1970s. He operated under both Republican and Democratic administrations. He actively influenced foreign policy decisions. He wasn’t an analyst, but a decision-maker. He helped shape governments and alliances favorable to Havana. His actions confirmed that Cuban infiltration was very active in the United States.

Kendall Myers, a State Department official, spied for Cuba for decades. With his wife, they were part of an ideological family network.

Carlos and Elsa Álvarez participated in infiltrations of academic and political circles.

There were (and possibly still are) sleeper agents in universities, NGOs, media outlets, and think tanks.

But this awful scenario could change, with a free Cuba.