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National Geographic : 1982 Aug
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(Continuedfrom page 175) sake, rather than play polo." Others have come to south Florida for other reasons. ||OW WE WALK." Andres Nazario Sargen closed the door of the car and waited while his aides retrieved three rifles, packed in an ironing-board car ton, from the trunk. Then we set out along a narrow path through the waist-high grass of the Everglades, the four of us on a summer day of hellish heat. Twenty min utes passed before we reached an Alpha 66 military training camp. Based in Miami, Alpha (for the begin ning) 66 (for the number of those originally KEVIN FLEMING Florida's Latin flavor grows with an unending stream of immigrants; half of Miami's 350,000 population is Hispanic in ancestry. In the Little Havana district, Cuban-born Ana Doddo carries a ship shaped pinata across Southwest Eighth Street, known locally as Calle Ocho. involved) is an organization dedicated to the overthrow of Fidel Castro. Nazario, a short, slight man in his 60s, is secretary-general of the group that claims 6,000 members in its various chapters. "We want to create a revolution through out Cuba," said Nazario, who at one time was an ally of Castro in the fight against dic tator Fulgencio Batista, "so we use sabo tage, underground tactics. We send small groups of men to infiltrate the island and to move into the mountains." Among other things, they affix anti-Castro bumper stick ers to cars in Cuba. The camp is off Highway 41, some 25 miles from Miami. Sleeping quarters, a kitchen, and other rooms have been fash ioned out of vines and branches and euca lyptus logs. On this day there were six Cubans in training, firing rifles, swinging through the trees on ropes, and subduing one another with kicks and chops in simu lated hand-to-hand combat. One of their instructors, Humberto Alva rado (page 196), was born in the United States of Cuban parents and had gone to the island to live as a youngster. "For me," he said, "disenchantment with Castro set in when I was 13 years old. I went up into the mountains to pick coffee beans as a volun teer. We were working to save the coffee harvest and bring some foreign exchange to Cuba. They took us up the mountain by truck and made us walk down. They prom ised us medical support, food, and other necessities, none of which we received. "The big shots rode down the mountain, while we burned our boots walking down. So I could see then the formation of an elite within the revolution; I didn't like that." He returned to this country in 1968. He entered the U. S. Army to get military train ing, and after his discharge he shopped around for an organization where he could put that training to work toward the fall of Castro. He chose Alpha 66. "It seemed to be the most active," he said. And now he was in the camp, showing the others what the U. S. Army had taught him. He wore fatigues and an Army cap with the airborne insignia, and exuded the brio of a warrior as he moved about the compound. There are other anti-Castro groups in Mi ami, including one called Cubans United. In NationalGeographic, August 1982 184
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