HIALEAH GARDENS, Florida — Cuban flags hang from the walls and model planes seem to float in the atrium as bright Florida sunshine pours into the Hialeah Gardens Museum Honoring Brigade 2506, a memorial to the 1,200 CIA-trained Cuban exiles who stormed Cuba’s shores in the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961.
“Of the 106 who died, only 67 died in combat and the rest, how did they die?” said Felix Rodriguez, 79, to the Washington Examiner in a three-hour Spanish-language interview in his thick Cuban accent Thursday.
The Bay of Pigs veteran and famed CIA operative proceeded to describe every instance of death: on boats, in planes, defending safe houses, or at the hands of Fidel Castro’s henchmen.
“There were some who are recorded as having died in battle but who were executed when taken prisoner,” he said, noting the Cubans had 4,000 to 5,000 casualties.
“Fidel never told anyone about this,” he added poignantly.
He used his cane to point at various munitions used at the Bay of Pigs invasion as he gave a tour of the museum, setting his cane down to adjust carefully a Browning automatic rifle that had tipped over.
Rodriguez described how the idea of the museum came about. He envisioned something more than the “Casa de la Brigada,” a donated house in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood that is now home to the Brigade 2506 Museum and Library.
The former residence is a must-stop for presidential candidates passing through Miami, including candidate Trump in 2016. The hallowed museum also serves as an unofficial social club for veterans to shuffle around and debate loudly with each other in Spanish about Cuban politics, baseball, and what happened a half-century ago while sharing Cuban pastries and coladas, heavily sweetened espresso.
Rodriguez recalled a conversation with a fellow veteran some 15 years ago about a new museum.
“He said, ‘Felix, we need to find a place for our memorabilia because we still have a lot of members, but as the years pass, there will be a moment when there are no more brigade members to preserve the story of the brigade,’” Rodriguez recalled. “There will be no more. Definitively, there will be no more.”
Donations from veterans and prominent Cuban Americans totaled $500,000. Then there was a deal with a local college that fell apart and a chance conversation with the much-beloved Cuban-born mayor of Hialeah Gardens, Yioset de la Cruz.
De la Cruz talked to Cuban American legislators who authored a state bill six years ago that would award $500,000 to a museum on city land, and he surprised Rodriguez with the news of its passing.
Then, shockingly, then-Florida Gov. Rick Scott vetoed the bill.
Not only did Scott veto the bill, but he did it on the anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion.
“He vetoed it on April 17. Either he is very stupid, or he has no idea who we are,” Rodriguez said. He immediately called Scott’s office and spoke to an assistant.
“I want you to give Gov. Scott a message on my behalf,” said Rodriguez, who was then president of the Brigade 2506 veterans association. “Tell him that in the next election, no matter who runs against the governor, all of us are going to vote against him.”
Rodriguez declined an invitation to breakfast with Scott in Tallahassee and instead invited Scott to visit the Casa de la Brigada in Little Havana and learn more about the veterans.
A week later, the assistant called back, saying Scott would not be traveling in the area, but he gave his “gentlemen’s word that if you put the money again, he’ll sign it.”
“So, we put a million dollars,” Rodriguez said. “It passed, and the governor signed it.”
In addition to more than 600 photos that Rodriguez and other veterans have been assembling on the walls of the 5,000-square-foot building over the past six years, a M41 Walker Bulldog light tank and the original B-26 Marauder bomber used at the Guatemalan CIA training camp are part of the museum grounds.
Getting the airplane, a treasured historical artifact to the Guatemalan military, was no small feat, Rodriguez said, pointing heavenward.
“It appears that the man above, the almighty, wanted to give us the plane,” he said.
He recounted another chance encounter, this time with the Guatemalan president and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio at CIA headquarters. Years of negotiation ensued before a subsequent Guatemalan defense minister gave the OK, and the plane was cut in 18 pieces, shipped to Miami, and reassembled for display in a future botanical garden behind the museum.
An auditorium room with photos honoring those killed at the battle and thereafter as American soldiers fighting in Vietnam is lined with display cases on either side. In them are artifacts from the veterans’ subsequent imprisonment in Cuban prisons, like rosaries and cigarettes, and an old CIA radio like the one Rodriguez had with him at a safe house in Havana during the invasion.
The tastefully designed museum feels a bit like a Cuban home, with broad windows and clay-tiled roofs projected into the main atrium. Portraits of Cuban independence leader Jose Marti do not escape a single room, and one side area bears a model of the landing site with green and red lights that help tell the story of the invasion.
But although visitors may peruse the museum with a face mask, Rodriguez says it is not officially open yet. For that, Rodriguez and his fellow Bay of Pigs veterans are waiting for one VIP.
“We want the president to come for the inauguration of the museum,” he said. “We have some friends who are going to help as soon things open up a little more.”
