Rolando Masferrer

Rolando Arcadio Masferrer Rojas (1918–1975), was born on July 12, 1918, in Holguin, former Oriente Province, Cuba, better known simply as Rolando Masferrer, was a Cuban henchman, lawyer, congressman, newspaper publisher and a political activist. He was killed in Miami, United States, on October 31, 1975 (57 years old).

Family

He married Lucila Montero and they had two children: Alejandro (Alex) (died as a homeless in NY) and Liudmila. Rolando had two brothers: Rodolfo and Raimundo. All emigrated to the U.S. with Rolando on January 7, 1959.

Cuba 1930s

Masferrer was a member of the leftist revolutionary Joven Cuba organization as a teenager. He participated in an assassination attempt on Colonel Jose Eleuterio Pedraza, chief of Cuban National Police in 1936. He was a member of Cuba's Communist Party ( Popular Socialist Party) since 1935, but he was expelled in 1945 and later he became an anti-communist. He was assistant editor of Hoy (Today), the Cuban communist daily, since 1939 until 1945. Later he published a socialist weekly called Tiempo en Cuba (Time in Cuba).

Civil War Spain

He formed part of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish civil war in 1937. He was wounded in the left foot in Spain, and in Europe is said to have been an enforcer for International Brigades much feared for the thumping of his wounded gait when he approached his victim. He was lame for the rest of his life.

1940s Cuba

He graduated as a lawyer from the University of Havana with honors (Dolz Award) in 1945. Masferrer also participated, with Fidel Castro and over 1,000 Cubans, in the aborted Cayo Confites expedition of 1947, which sought to overthrow Rafael Trujillo, the authoritarian leader of the Dominican Republic. He was a rival of Castro in the bloody feuds of the trigger happy action groups in Havana and subject of one failed attempt by Castro and others to kill to him in 1948. Masferrer was elected to the Cuban House of Representatives for the Republican Party in 1948. He was fluent in English and was appointed as an English teacher at Marianao High School in 1946. Many people think that this was a sinecure. He was founder and leader of the Movimiento Socialista Revolucionario (MSR) that became a gang.

1950s Cuba

Masferrer was a staunch supporter of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista after the latter seized power in 1952. He was a Senator for the Partido Auténtico (1954-1958) in the Batista government and the leading founder of Los Tigres de Masferrer, a paramilitary organization set up to protect Batista from guerrilla groups and to support Batista militarily. In this period he published two papers Tiempo in Havana and Libertad in Santiago de Cuba which insulted Francisco Franco, but without positive reaction among other leftwing Spanish Civil war exiles. p lo

During the final years of the last Batista regime to (the end of 1958), Masferrer and his tigers operated in Oriente province; often, it is said, out headquarters in Victoria de las Tunas, others say in Santiago, Manzanillo and Bayamo where he had an array of exotic weapons including very lethal large caliber "air rifles." At times his followers penetrated the Sierra Maestra with stealthy silence, terrifying some local Escopeteros who without time to react or appropriated weapons to face him fled before his forces; then the "tigres" vanished. In this fashion the Tigres apparently too stealthy to be opposed raided and killed throughout the foothills of the Sierra Maestra. He is known to have threatened Franciscan priests in Manzanillo, Cuba (de Paz, pp. 81–82). The Cuban government of Fidel Castro accused Masferrer of 2,000 killings (disputed), but also says that the Tigres were careful to remove all evidence.

Masferrer was ingenious and intelligent, he plotted to buy "La Hacienda Sevilla" and divide up the land so as to reward the local guajiros for informing on Fidel Castro in the first months of his operations in the Sierra Maestra. This connection may or may not explain the attempted betrayal of Castro by Agrarian Organizer Eutimio Guerra.

Regardless that Masferrer had been a Communist supporter, after Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba on January 1, 1959, Masferrer had to abandon the island. He fled on his yacht Ola Kun II, an old former US Coast Guard vessel with his family and over 20 followers on January 1, 1959, arriving in Key West, Florida. He received asylum in the U.S. and settled in Miami. Castro accused to Masferrer of stealing US$17 million (disputed), and requested to the US government the extradition of Rolando to Cuba. Castro's request was denied.

US 1960s and 1970s

In the United States, he befriended Mafia bosses such as Santo Trafficante, as well as union leader Jimmy Hoffa. He established the 30th of November organization, with the purpose of killing Castro. Masferrer was also known for mistreating Cubans residing in Florida, extorting money from them for what he said was "to help Cuba".

On September 26, 1960, Masferrer sent an expedition of four boats to Cuba. One boat reached Cuba, three Americans: Allan D. Thompson, Anthony Zarba and Robert O. Fuller were caught and eventually executed

In December, 1960, the '' Miami Herald'', reported that Masferrer was leading a small group of fifty three people who were polishing their killing skills at a ranch owned by multi-millionaire Howard Hughes. Masferrer might have intended to hire a few of them for his organization.

In the early 1960s, Masferrer was associated with ''El Tiempo'', a Spanish-language newspaper, edited by S. Ross, in New York City.

In 1961, Masferrer met with President John F. Kennedy, presumably to talk about Castro and the situation in Cuba. But Kennedy disliked Masferrer's radical and fanatical personality, and the two never established any publicly known conversation after that.

In 1967, Masferrer plotted and accumulated weapons to invade Haiti so as to have a base, free of US law, to attack the Castro government of Cuba which had foiled direct attempts to land (Project Nassau or Operation Istanbul). Masferrer was imprisoned 2 years for that in the U.S. (1970-1972). He owned a security agency in Miami, and published the weekly Libertad (Freedom). The Castro government had sentenced him to the death penalty in 1959. Masferrer was killed by the explosion of his car by dynamite placed in it ( car bomb) on October 31, 1975. Fidel Castro arranged the attack, and it was carried out by Colonel Rodriguez, a member of Cuban Contra-intelligence.

Notes

References

Morán Arce, Lucas 1980 La revolución cubana, 1953-1959: Una versión rebelde Imprenta Universitaria, Universidad Católica;

de Paz-Sánchez, Manuel 2001. Zona de Guerra. España ante la Revolución Cubana. Litografía Romero. S.A. Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain

Ros, Enrique 2003 Fidel Castro y El Gatillo Alegre: Sus Años Universitarios (Coleccion Cuba y Sus Jueces) Ediciones Universal Miami

{{DEFAULTSORT:Masferrer, Rolando
1918 births
1975 deaths
Opposition to Fidel Castro
Deaths by car bomb in the United States
Exiles of the Cuban Revolution in the United States
Abraham Lincoln Brigade members
People murdered in Florida
Male murder victims