Didion & Ferrer
On Joan Didion’s Miami and the Cuban Missile Crisis
On Super Bowl Sunday in 1986, Gator Kicks Longneck Saloon — yes saloon, located where Calle Ocho meets the Everglades — closed its doors after the game. The owner told The Miami Herald that he, along with many other Americans, was leaving the city in search of a place that spoke one language: English.
Nothing is new.
The internet is saying it’s 1961 all over again. Because of the plane that crashed with the figure skaters, and the Bay of Pigs. If that’s true what follows are whispers of coups and arguments of coups and predictions of coups, and bombs and assassinations both successful and unsuccessful. What follows are broken promises and hypocrisies and regret. What follows, also, is nothing.
Miami moves on but never lets go. And yes the city is changing. It’s not just the Cubans anymore, it hasn’t been for a while. But understanding Miami in 2025 — its people, their grudges and politics — would be impossible without considering the series of events set in motion by the Cuban exiles and by JFK and by the CIA in response to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961.
I am on page 88 when the knot forms in my throat. I’ve heard this all before. This is my grandfather’s story. Published by Joan Didion, in 1987.
“In 1962, Bay of Pigs veterans ‘were quietly entering American armed forces’…under the misapprehension that the United States was in fact preparing to invade Cuba.”
President Kennedy himself made the promise at the Orange Bowl, taking the flag from Playa Girón and vowing to return it to a free Havana. Didion notes that Washington underestimated the exiles' distrust of the United States and overestimated their capacity for self-deception, which was always tempered by their extensive experience in the politics of conspiracy. Equally misjudged was the depth of Cuban resentment and the way Miami would evolve into a beast of its own.
Later that year, at Fort Knox, an unprecedented strike occurred once it was clear to the Cuban men that the United States and Russia had reached an agreement: there’d be no Cuban invasion. The special agreement to end their strike involved transferring them to Fort Jackson, South Carolina (Didion notes they had found Kentucky to be too cold) followed by a prompt discharge from the US Army.
Many of these men would go on to work intimately with the CIA in the years that followed (a decision several would come to regret). They went in thinking Kennedy meant what he said at the Orange Bowl. In 1974, respected exile leader José Elías de la Torriente was shot through a Venetian blind in his Coral Gables home, allegedly, by another exile. His “new plan to overthrow Fidel Castro” through the CIA never materialized, and time made him a traitor.
Raul Masvidal, who the Herald deemed “the most powerful Cuban in Miami” told Didion that John F. Kennedy was still the number two most hated man in Miami. Number one of course being Fidel Castro. “Then Kennedy. The entire Kennedy family.” Rumor has it that the Kennedy curse was enacted by a Cuban Santera, but I digress.
The Cuban Missile Crisis is considered one of President Kennedy's greatest achievements. Twenty years later it remained Miami’s deepest grievance. At a very late dinner in a very nice apartment on Biscayne over carne con papas, Joan Didion recounts an exile stating, “Let me tell you something. They talk about ‘Cuban terrorists'. The guys they call ‘Cuban terrorists’ are the guys they trained.”
My grandfather, Angel Ferrer, texts me back “The whole training was six months. We had a few short trips max 72 hours very few. There were boys nineteen years old, amazing. Over two months of Fort Knox and then Fort Jackson.”
His cousin was captured and imprisoned during the Bay of Pigs invasion, ultimately taking his life the year following his release. The last time we discussed Fort Knox, I saw the heartbreak in Abuelo's eyes as he recalled the betrayals, back to back to back. He was 24 years old, newly wed. The following year he’d become a father. My father was eight days old when JFK was assassinated. Abuela Marta remembers it like it was yesterday. They remember everything.
Beginning in the 60s, daily business in Miami was “carried on by men who speak casually of having run missions for the CIA…There were CIA gun shops. There were CIA boat shops. There were CIA travel agencies and there were CIA real-estate agencies and there were CIA detective agencies.”
According to banker and real estate developer, Masvidal, this was a strategy to keep hope alive among the exile community. It was important to the CIA, he said, “to try to keep people here from facing the very hard and very frustrating fact that they were not going home because their strongest and best ally had made a deal. Behind their backs.”
Every Cuban parent has been the victim of una estafa, deceit. It’s woven into our story and, through the lingering effects of epigenetics, has shaped the experiences of most Cuban Americans — whether they carry that weight consciously or remain blissfully unaware.
In the decades following the Cuban Missile Crisis, the consequences were undeniable: Exiles began to turn on each other, their paranoia and pride intensifying. Enemies multiplied: Cubans in New York, Sandinistas in Nicaragua, traitors on the radio, The Miami Herald, left wing terrorists and — according to the Santa Fe document, which warrants separate analysis — extended to include “liberation theology”, Hollywood, and a woman’s right to choose. Bombs were planted to send messages. Ronald Reagan vowed to protect the "freedom fighters of the eighties” the way Kennedy couldn’t. Miami suited the Reagan administration’s pursuit to eradicate communism in Havana and Managua. Violence in the 80s was commonplace during la lucha, the fight. The kind of fight that has no winners. The kind of fight where keeping your original allies was rare.
Bernardo Benes, a prominent Cuban banker who also lost his reputation and respect among exiles to his dealings with the CIA, said to Didion at his home over breakfast, “A million Cubans are blackmailed, totally controlled, by three radio stations. I feel sorry for the Cuban community in Miami. Because they have imposed on themselves, by way of the Right, the same Condition that Castro has imposed on Cuba. Total intolerance. And ours is worse. Because it is entirely voluntary.” He then, in response to his nervous wife shouting in Spanish behind them, said in English,
“No Cubans will read what she writes.”
I’ll leave you with this:
Abuelo tells me to start working on serious articles and to read five books a month. He says to start with short stories and ends every text with 😇❤️.
Interesting. This could be expanded into a movie perhaps. Bravo.
Wow wow wow! This was such a great read! Keep them coming!!!!