Anti-Castro Militants In U.S. Refuse To Quit `Fight For Freedom' -- Groups See Victory Ahead As Cuban Economy Worsens

MIAMI - A half-hour west of the gleaming city that is a monument to the success of Cuban exiles, Humberto Perez spends another sweaty Sunday in the Everglades, drilling the troops, swatting flies and keeping a promise made three decades ago.

"Many people in the Bay of Pigs invasion died thinking the blood they lost in Cuba was an investment in a free Cuba," said Perez, 51, wearing camouflage fatigues and a black beret.

"I made a promise while in a Cuban prison: One day I will get out and will continue the fight for freedom."

Perez is military chief of Alpha 66, one of several Cuban exile groups that train recruits at camps in the Everglades each weekend, still waiting for an opening to topple Fidel Castro.

The surviving founders of these groups, many of them veterans of the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, are older men now.

But Cuba's growing economic troubles have aroused passions in Miami, bringing new recruits and a steady growth of paramilitary activity, say many in the Cuban exile community.

"The exile community is in such a frenzy that many will follow anyone who will take a dramatic step," says Col. Luis Barcena, a Bay of Pigs veteran who served in the U.S. Army and is a member of Unidad, an umbrella Cuban political group.

"They see all the people coming on rafts, they see the economic conditions on television."

A new addition on the paramilitary scene, Comandos F4, said recently it was forming a Miami-based group to offer military help to rebels of the same name in Cuba.

Range of reactions

The paramilitary groups have been on the scene in Miami since Castro seized power. Their methods produce a range of reactions, from ridicule to open admiration by many Cuban-Americans.

When Alpha 66 paraded several vehicles through Miami's Little Havana recently, Cuban flags unfurled from windows and women wept, Perez says.

But some of the military training and raids conducted by Alpha 66, the oldest and best-known of the groups, have dissolved into Coast Guard rescues of disabled motorboats or encounters with bewildered park rangers at Elliott Key, an island in Biscayne Bay.

As a group of Alpha 66 members drove to the Everglades on a recent Sunday, a young man in the toll booth talked politely with them, then shouted in a mocking tone as they drove away: "Alpha 66, git outta here!"

Leaders of more moderate Cuban groups - there are dozens - are careful not to be openly critical of Alpha 66. But they murmur about using "more modern methods" such as international pressure and the Cuban embargo to oust Castro. Others grumble that the groups propagate themselves to avoid working for a living.

Jaime Suchlicki, a Cuban-American professor of international studies at the University of Miami, describes Alpha 66 as "an over-the-hill kind of group."

"I don't think they pose any kind of threat to the Cuban government," he says.

Perez doesn't bristle at such swipes.

"It doesn't bother me," Perez says. "Here, the Cuban community, they don't always believe what you do. If you kill Castro, bring Castro's head, they will say, `Is that the real Castro?' "

Twice within the past three months, paramilitary groups have called news conferences to boast of their "raids" on the Cuban coast. One group known as PUND claimed it had infiltrated a Cuban military base, and Alpha 66 said it had fired shots from a motorboat at a luxury hotel on Cuba's northern coast.

Alpha 66 says it plans three more such raids from secret camps in the Caribbean in the next two months, targeting Cuba's tourism industry.

The prospects of touching off an armed rebellion inside Cuba are declining, says Miami attorney Ellis Rubin, who represents several of the groups.

"The thousands who are now attempting to leave by rubber tubes are people who would be called upon to help an invasion force," Rubin says. "There aren't too many people left."

Public-relations stunts?

The offshore raids are viewed by some as quixotic. Others suspect the raids are all public-relations stunts to keep money coming in from thousands of supporters around the country.

"They were 20 miles offshore and fired a few .50-calibers," says Barcena, of Unidad. "If that's a raid, then I'm Napoleon."

The State Department and Cuban officials at the Cuban-interest section in Washington reported no knowledge of the previous "raids."

But some raids have produced more tragic results.

Eduardo Diaz Betancourt was captured while "infiltrating" Cuba in late 1991 and reportedly was executed by Castro's troops the next month. Two other Miami men on the raid reportedly were sentenced to 30 years in prison. The three men were members of the low-profile Comandos L but had trained with Alpha 66.

In the 1960s and 1970s, anti-Castro zealots carried out waves of bombings and assassinations in Miami that killed or maimed people considered soft on Castro and communism. But those attacks were carried out by political terrorist groups such as the now-inactive Omega 7, not the paramilitary groups that focus their attention on overthrowing Castro.

These days, the paramilitary groups focus on infiltrating Cuba to recruit supporters and conducting raids on Cuba's coast for propaganda value.

The infiltration goes both ways, however. Castro reportedly has operatives in Miami to keep an eye on exile activities. A former operations chief for Alpha 66, Francisco Avila, admitted in November 1992 that he was a double agent for Castro.

Despite such setbacks, Alpha 66 and other groups, such as Brigade 2506, Comandos L and PUND, continue to prepare for Cuban insurrection.

Federal agents monitor exile activities for violations of the federal Neutrality Act, but Perez says Alpha 66 is careful not to cross the line.

The founders of Alpha 66 believe Castro's downfall will be a reward for their patience and persistence.

"I didn't expect it to go on this long," says Andres Nazario Sargen, 72, an Alpha 66 founding member. "But time has worked for us. Our main purpose has been to infiltrate Cuba, to recruit people. We are like David against Goliath."

Col. Barcena, a career military man, believes this is wishful thinking. And he says the groups don't try to assassinate the well-protected and mobile Castro because it would be a suicide mission.

"Everybody wants to go to his funeral," Barcena says, "and they want to be able to see it."