Information Memorandum of the Anti-Castro Cuban Émigré Forces (Mexico)

In the month of September 1961, a report from Guatemala reached us, from an entirely credible source – the same [source] that gave us reports on the preparations for the aggression in April [i.e., the Bay of Pigs] – which points out the following:

“The invasion planned for the near future is imminent. It will be more violent, much more than the one in April.

Place of departure: Yucatán Peninsula, Quintana Roo [Mexico], and Belize.

Number of men in camps, according to lists with names in our hands:

Rancho Viejo, 131 men; Santa María, 132 men; Leona Vicario, 159.

There are other camps that have not been localized, all directed by Yankees.

Arms seen: M-1, M-3, machineguns, pistols and abundant ammunition.”

It also informs us that in the first days of September Prio, at the request of the State Department, visited Mexico in order to unify all the groups of counter-revolutionary Cuban immigrants, including the Batistianos. The idea was the formation of only one supposed Cuban government-in-exile with Dr. Pio Elizalde and with other representatives of the Cuban immigrants. He met in the house of Licenciado Jorge Castro Leal, in the street Marina 706 where a few Mexicans were also present.

Among the participants of these meetings of counter-revolutionaries [were] the Cubans Dr. Pio Elizalde, José Rodríguez and Julieta Zambrano, the Spaniards Luis de la Garza, Eduardo González and Felipe de la Rosa, the Chilean journalist Luis Farías, the Mexicans Castro Leal, Fernando del la Mota, Prieto Laurens and the priest  [by the name of] Germán Fernández.

We have received information that in Puerto Juárez [today, part of the city of Cancún] there is a center of recruitment, that men of different nationalities go to and are distributed to different training centers. The closest center is in Santa María, some 8 km from Puerto Juárez, and where there are around 200 men well equipped with machineguns and M-1 and M-3 rifles, with abundant ammunition. An airplane supplies them at night; there is a landing strip in the middle of the wilderness, 1,200 metres long and 100 metres wide. The men are of different nationalities.

Another center is situated in Rancho Viejo (Mato Chilero). In this place there is a group of about 100 men as with the group before of different nationalities. There is a small airstrip approximately 800 meters in length. This place is about 10 km from Puerto Juárez.

In Leona Vicario, along the coast to the right [sic] of the town by about 2 km, and 14 km from Puerto Juárez, there are movements of about 80 foreigners, who carry long weapons [armas largas] and pistols.

The counter-revolutionaries that are camped in these camps do not have uniforms yet, they are hoping for them on the date of departure.

According to subsequent information it has become known that the individuals that are to be found in the three aforementioned places, received orders to move to Cabo Catoche, which had not yet happened at the time of the report due to the bad weather that existed in this region.

On 2 September some counterrevolutionary fugitives arrived from Cuba: 17 men and 5 women. They took them to Valladolid. They arrived with on a boat with a Guatemalan flag.