Young Exiles Train Their Sights on Cuba

Outside a wooden house in the steamy Florida Everglades, Alejandra Piniella advances, closing in on the enemy.

The teen-ager raises her AK-47, then kicks in the door while her backups move in. “Good!” yells a trainer from an upstairs window as he lobs a firecracker to imitate the pop of a grenade launch.

Piniella dons fatigues many Sunday mornings to attend basic training in search of the dream of many Cuban exiles--retaking the communist Caribbean island. Now 17, she is too young to have experienced the 1959 Cuban Revolution.

But she is one of several young Cubans learning weekend maneuvers with the militant exile group Alpha 66.

“I don’t feel at all American,” said Piniella, a University of Miami junior majoring in biology.

“I was raised as an American with the knowledge that we are returning to our country,” she said. Like several youths in training, she expects change resulting from political discontent with the island’s current economic crisis.

“Within days, weeks or months, there is going to be some type of coup d’etat or uprising that will bring the situation to a head.”

Piniella hopes more youths will join the group, which claims to have 5,000 members across the country. Fifty are practicing today.

What was a movement of old men has become a group of whom one-third are under 20.

“Most young Cubans I speak to are willing to go back to their country. It’s not a movement of the old times at all,” she said.

Although these youths don’t reflect the views of a majority of Cuban-American youth, they claim to be committed to a political change, even a takeover, in Cuba. Many grew up in Alpha 66, steeped in hard-line tradition by their parent members.

Rafael Lara, 14, has been training with his father for seven months. He practices firing an AK-47 in hopes of taking back a country he never knew.

“It’s my father’s country, but I care about it,” said Lara, smoking a cigarette.

The Everglades location, called “Rambo Sur,” or south passage, has been used for years by exiles in training. It is made up of 10 acres of prairie muck where exiles of many ages climb ropes, practice formations and practice target shots in hopes they will get to invade Cuba.

Under a canopy, weapons, including AK-47s and Israeli-made Galil rifles, are stacked.

A young woman walks by and absently points a rifle in the direction of several other recruits, apparently unaware of basic gun safety rules that forbid casually pointing a weapon at others.

Nearby, several founders of Alpha 66 discuss politics. “We know that changes must come from inside, but we want to be there to help,” said Andres Nozario Sargenz, 70, an Alpha 66 founder.

Nearby, a lone American in fatigues and a ski mask lectures three dozen men and women about taking over a house. “Don’t touch the building. Something might fall inside,” he cautions the volunteers taking turns to sneak toward the door.

The American’s name is Willy, and he appears to be in his early 20s. No one, including Willy, will say who he works for or what he is paid, but he is clearly in charge of training. He barks an order, which is then translated into Spanish for the older Alpha 66 members. The translation time creates a delayed reaction between his issuing a command and the group’s response.

But Willy is patient as well as zealous.

Teaching the volunteers how to salute, he demonstrates the wrong way: “This resembles more of a communist salute,” he says, dropping his hand slightly at his forehead, “and we won’t have that.”

Piniella is brushing up on basic training, but soon she will specialize in marine invasions.

“I will learn how to hide boats, rafts, paddle silently, hide weapons,” said Piniella, who has learned to shoot a .22-caliber rifle, an AK-47 and a Colt 45.

Some learn faster than others.

“They feel they are doing something, even if they are not,” Willy said. “They are at the military age. It’s not just old guys talking about what could be.”

“All we can do is teach the young,” said Osiel Gonzalez, one of Alpha’s founders. “Cuba is our children’s future.”