Miami's Cuban Exiles Commemorate Seventh Anniversary of Luis Posada Carriles' Death
Miami, May 24, 2025 – Today, the older generation of Cuban exiles in Miami, known as "fighters for democracy in Cuba," gathers to mark the seventh anniversary of the death of Luis Posada Carriles, a polarizing figure labeled by Cuba as its top terrorist and long protected by the U.S. government.Born in Cuba and later a Venezuelan citizen, Posada Carriles served in the U.S. Army in his youth. Declassified CIA documents reveal his ties to the agency from 1960 to 1974, during which he supported security operations for intelligence services in Venezuela, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, and Argentina.
In Venezuela, he led the security service, overseeing the torture of revolutionaries, with funding from the National Cuban-American Foundation, a group tied to supporters of ousted Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.Posada Carriles played a key role in organizing the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and planned a 1971 assassination attempt on Fidel Castro during a visit to Chile. In 1976, he was linked to the assassination of Orlando Letelier, a former minister in Chile’s Allende government, in Washington, D.C., and orchestrated the bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner, killing 73 passengers.
Imprisoned in Venezuela for the latter, he escaped and continued anti-Sandinista activities in Nicaragua from Central America.In 1997, Posada Carriles masterminded a series of Havana hotel bombings that caused civilian deaths, later boasting about the attacks in a 1998 New York Times interview. In 2000, he attempted another assassination of Castro during a Panama summit but was arrested and later amnestied. In 2005, he illegally entered the U.S., was briefly detained, but released on bail, living freely in Miami despite Cuba’s extradition demands.Until his death in 2018, Posada Carriles remained a symbol of resistance for Miami’s Cuban exile community, fighting for a Cuba they lost. The Trump administration’s 2017 decision to reinstate Cuba on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism echoed the sentiments of this community.
