The second half of June 1962 began and the actions of the CIA and the Pentagon against Cuba within Operation Mongoose, currently declassified by the U.S. government, were in their culminating stage of sabotage, terrorist acts, attacks and uprisings in rural areas that were to lead in the following months to a supposed popular uprising.
But behind this frenetic desire of the White House to take revenge for the defeat of the Bay of Pigs in 1961, the Dirty Tracy action (foul play) that would lead to self-aggression on ships, civilian airplanes of the United States or allied countries and mainly against the Guantanamo Naval Base, which would blame the Cubans for the death of citizens and military personnel and would be the pretext for the invasion of the island, would stand out.
According to documents declassified in 1998, the plan within the so-called Operation Northwoods was presented in March 1962 to the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, by four-star general Lyman Louis Lemnitzer, and rejected after more than three hours of tense discussions, in which the military pressured McNamara with the proposal.
Although far away from those real or presumed contradictions in Washington, in that summer and in the following years of the 1960s, the chiefs of the Guantanamo Naval Base increased provocations as if they were ready to continue with that macabre plan.
Thus, planes and ships violated the airspace and its waters, soldiers attacked Cuban posts and continued supplying weapons to counterrevolutionary elements in the area.
The island’s counterintelligence even learned that among the tasks of the enclave’s naval intelligence was the capture of supposed agents or national saboteurs to provoke a response.
In this difficult context, the young fisherman from Caimanera, Rodolfo Rosell, who had joined the Revolution and supported his family with his small boat Las Dos Hermanas, was reported missing since July 11 until his body was found on the stern of his boat on Conde Beach on July 13 with horrible marks of torture.
According to the autopsy, the cause of death was an irreversible intracranial hemorrhage. Numerous hematomas and puncture marks were visible on his body.
When making a recapitulation of such despicable facts, we remember that the first murder related to that illegal military installation was that of the enclave worker Ruben Lopez Sabariego on October 15, 1961, who left nine children orphaned.
Nor would the death of Rodolfo Rosell be the last, in 1964 the border guard Ramon Lopez Peña fell, killed by shots fired from the naval base. Also killed in the same circumstances was combatant Luis Ramirez Lopez in 1966, victim of a gunshot fired by U.S. Marines while he was carrying out his mission of guarding the national territory.
Due to measures taken mainly by the Cuban side in later years, a climate of normalization was achieved in the border region of Guantanamo, although in spite of the legal steps and denunciations made by Cuba, these crimes and others remain unpunished without the slightest decency on the part of the U.S. government, which has declassified some of its operations against Cuba.