Manuel Ray

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Manuel "Manolo" Ray Rivero (born June 13, 1924 in Havana ; † November 12, 2013 in Puerto Rico ) was a Cuban civil engineer , resistance fighter , politician and entrepreneur who successively opposed the Fulgencio dictatorships from the mid-1950s to the late 1960s Batistas and Fidel Castros fought.

Life

Training and first job

Manuel Ray grew up as the son of the owner of a small shop and a primary school teacher. After attending public schools, he completed a five-year course in civil engineering at the University of Havana , which he completed in 1946. At the university he was not yet politically active, but was recognized as an outstanding athlete. He was employed by the Cuban Ministry of Infrastructure (Ministerio de Obras Públicas) and received a scholarship there in 1947 for a master’s degree in the United States. He went to the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and returned to Havana in 1949, but without having completed his master's degree. He then began to teach structural planning at the University of Havana and took over the management of the structural planning department of the Cuba's National Development Commission. Ray was significantly involved in various public and private construction projects, including as the planner and responsible construction manager of the tunnel under the Río Almendares in Havana (the first road tunnel in Cuba) , which was completed in May 1953, and as construction manager of the 25-story Havana Hilton hotel (today: Habana Libre , Inauguration March 1958). Around 1957 he was elected President of the Association of Civil Engineers of Havana.

Cuban Revolution

He was a staunch opponent of the dictatorial government of Fulgencio Batista (since 1952) and took over the leadership of the "Movement Civic Resistance" ( Movimiento Resistencia. ) In August 1957 after resigning from the National Development Commission in protest of Batista's repressive measures against the opposition Cívica, MRC). Its founder, Frank País , had recently been killed in Santiago de Cuba . This movement was mainly joined by members of the urban middle class who fought the government through acts of sabotage and terrorism, carried out revolutionary propaganda, offered hideouts for fighters in hiding, and at the same time supported the guerrillas of the rebel army fighting from the mountains far away from the capital with money and weapons . The MRC under its Secretary General Ray supported the " Movement of July 26 " (M-26-7) founded by Fidel Castro , with whose urban underground groups it coordinated, as did the fighters of the Second National Front in the Escambray Mountains Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyos , but remained organizationally independent. During the Revolutionary War he went three times to the Sierra Maestra , where he met twice with Castro for talks. In the spring of 1958, when he was already one of the most wanted opponents of the regime, he worked out the plan for a nationwide general strike together with Faustino Pérez, chairman of the national board of the M-26-7, which paralyzed the country on April 9 and, accompanied by armed attacks on the security forces intended to overthrow the government. However, the strike failed in such a way that the revolutionaries not only had to mourn numerous deaths and arrests, but many survivors had to break up their resistance groups and flee into the mountains held by the rebel army or into exile. After Batista fled Cuba at the turn of the year 1958/59 in view of his waning support from the military and the USA as well as the constantly advancing rebel army, the revolutionaries around Castro Ray transferred the office of infrastructure minister in the cabinet led by Prime Minister José Miró Cardona , which dated January 1959 new President Manuel Urrutia was sworn in. Even before Castro's triumphant arrival in Havana on January 8th, Ray negotiated together with two representatives of the M-26-7 the evacuation of the presidential palace occupied by troops of the Directorio Revolucionario , which Urrutia was then able to move into.

Ray carried the radical laws passed in the first few months of government and the growing concentration of power in the hands of Castro, while several other ministers and the president either resigned voluntarily or were forced out of their offices by the summer of 1959. As a supporter of a democratic form of government, however, he viewed the increasing transfer of responsible positions to members of the Communist Party loyal to Moscow with concern and finally left the government in November 1959 together with two other long-standing prominent opponents of Batista after a fierce dispute over a cabinet meeting the death penalty demanded by Castro had come for Huber Matos , the rebel army major who, in Ray's opinion, was wrongly accused of high treason. Matos had announced his resignation as military commander of the central Cuban province of Camagüey in protest against the communist infiltration of the government that he had lamented . Ray initially retired into civilian life and resumed teaching at the university. In May 1960 he founded a new resistance group with old comrades in arms, this time directed against the new sole ruler Fidel Castro: the "Revolutionary Movement of the People" ( Movimiento Revolucionario del Pueblo, MRP). He found numerous supporters among former members of the M-26-7, who now carried out acts of sabotage and armed attacks on government targets, but in contrast to leaders of other resistance groups advocated a democratic and left-wing policy at the same time, including many of the government's social measures how the nationalization of key industries should be preserved. In August 1960 he resigned from teaching at the university in protest at the suppression of academic freedom. The seven-member board of the MRP, which published a manifesto from the underground in October, included Ray, among others, the prominent representatives of the former Orthodox Party , Felipe Pazos and Raúl Chibás , who were also involved in the revolutionary struggle against Batista and initially after Castro's takeover Had taken over government offices. In November 1960, Ray went into exile with his wife and five children in Miami, from where he continued his resistance activities.

Exile in Florida and Puerto Rico

From Miami, he sought support for the MRP in various Latin American countries and in the rapidly growing exile community in the form of weapons, explosives and money. The MRP was considered the most powerful opposition group on the island and had one of its most spectacular actions in early April 1961 with the attack on El Encanto in Havana, the country's largest department store, which was nationalized in late 1959. At that time, the organization committed numerous acts of sabotage in Cuba. Group 18 of the officers arrested together with their Major Huber Matos in October 1959 had already freed them from imprisonment in La Cabaña . Just three weeks before the CIA's long-prepared invasion of the Bay of Pigs in April 1961, under pressure from the US State Department, Ray joined the “Democratic Revolutionary Front” alliance ( Frente Revolucionario Democrático ) and his former government colleague Miró Cardona formed a broad coalition of various opposition groups represented in exile, which was now called the “Cuban Revolutionary Council” ( Consejo Revolucionario Cubano ). In view of the overthrow of Castro, which all members were striving for, they agreed on the formation of a transitional government chaired by Miró Cardona, which should immediately appear in the Cuban public in the event of a crisis. Ray had favored his confidante Pazos instead of Miró Cardona, but was outvoted. Ray, who was given responsibility for sabotage and internal affairs, obtained assurances in the founding agreement of the Revolutionary Council that the inner-Cuban groups would play the main role in any attempt at liberation from outside. Instead, he and other members of the Revolutionary Council were caught by the invasion. With the strong involvement of the CIA and under the leadership of the militarily inexperienced Manuel Artime, it was carried out largely without prior coordination with the resistance groups already active within Cuba and, due to poor planning and, on the initiative of the US government, ended with a devastating air support after a short time Defeat for the attackers while the Cuban government arrested tens of thousands of civilians in the cities as potential counter-revolutionaries.

While Ray had supporters among representatives of the leading US media as well as in the administration of Kennedy, he was controversial with the wealthiest in money and influence of the Cubans in exile as well as with the CIA because of his political positioning. Ray has often been accused of standing for “Fidelism without Fidel” - which for many only meant a variety of communism that at least did not correspond to the economic and political preferences of the Cuban and US American investors expropriated by Castro and other more conservative forces, including the CIA leadership. Ray renounced the Revolutionary Council in May 1961 in protest against the agreements broken by the CIA and condemned in particular the inclusion of Batista supporters in the invasion force and the lack of integration of the resistance on the island: he saw himself and his MRP not on the side the counterrevolution, but rather as a defender of the democratic and social values ​​in whose name the revolution against Batista had been fought for and which Castro had given up since he came to power in favor of communist autocracy. Ray stated that he would accept support from all sides for the fight of the MRP against Castro, except from the military dictator of the Dominican Republic , Rafael Trujillo . However, when the CIA withdrew all support after his public criticism of the implementation of the invasion, he, like the other leadership members in exile, was forced to withdraw from the MRP and moved to Puerto in the fall of 1961 at the invitation of Governor Luis Muñoz Marín Rico about where he got a job on the island's development council.

From Puerto Rico he founded the "Revolutionary Council" ( Junta Revolucionaria, JURE) in the spring of 1962 , which was both politically active, e.g. B. gave the US authorities indications of potential defectors from the Castro regime, as well as building up a military arm that subsequently carried out its own command actions independently of other groups and of the US government. Ray traveled to numerous Latin American countries to solicit government support for his organization in the fight against Castro. In May 1963 he announced to several thousand Cuban exiles that within a year he would either invade Cuba to fight Castro there or lose his life trying. At the end of May 1964, Ray's expedition attempt to Cuba, which had been delayed several times, failed halfway when he was picked up by the British Coast Guard on a yacht near an island in the Bahamas together with other people and then deported to the USA. The US Coast Guard had previously notified the British authorities of the expeditionaries. While still in Nassau, he renewed his public promise to get to Cuba as an armed fighter within days. The US authorities advised him not to take any further action from US territory in the future - after another attempt at expedition by sea that failed in 1964 due to an engine failure, he finally gave up his armed resistance ambitions. JURE gradually disbanded as a result, even if Ray continued to be politically active within the Cuban exile community. In 1969 he called for a congress in exile and in 1972 founded a new organization, the "Revolutionary People's Party" ( Partido Revolucionario del Pueblo ), which, however, did not get the popularity he had hoped for. He was also involved in social and political life in Puerto Rico and was awarded the "Luis Muñoz Marín Medal" by its government in 2000.

In 1967 he had founded a civil engineering office in Puerto Rico with a business partner, to which he devoted himself full-time until a stroke in 1997 forced him to step back and he finally passed the management of the internationally active company, now known as "Ray Architects & Engineers", to his son Pedro handed over.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Edmundo García: "No éramos aliados de los Estados Unidos": Entrevista a Manuel Ray Rivero ( Memento of the original from June 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.temas.cult.cu archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked . Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 193 kB). In: Temas from July 2008, accessed on November 20, 2013 (Spanish)
  2. ↑ a b c d Jonathan A. Walton: Manuel Ray. In: The Harvard Crimson, May 9, 1961, accessed November 19, 2013
  3. ^ Fallce en Puerto Rico Manolo Ray. In: Martí Noticias of November 13, 2013 (Spanish)
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g Juan O. Tamayo: Manuel Ray, exile who fought against the Batista and Castro governments.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.miamiherald.com   In: Miami Herald of November 13, 2013 (English)
  5. ^ Julia E. Sweig: Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground. P. 157, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass. and London 2002 (English)
  6. ↑ Ramón Bonachea and Marta San Martín: The Cuban Insurrection 1952–1959. Pp. 207–215, Transaction, New Brunswick 1974 (English)
  7. ^ Paul D. Bethel: The Losers. P. 96, Arlington House, New Rochelle 1969 (English)
  8. ↑ a b Gaeton J. Fonzi and Elizabeth J. Palmer: Manuel Ray Rivero (MRP-JURE) (PDF; 406 kB). In: Anti-Castro Activists and Organizations and Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans. Report to the US House of Representatives Committee of Inquiry into the Kennedy Murder, March 1979, accessed November 21, 2013
  9. ^ Huber Matos, a Moderate in the Cuban Revolution (p. 6). In: PBS American Experience of December 21, 2004, accessed November 19, 2013 (English)
  10. ^ New Wave of Sabotage Hits Cuba. In: Schenectady Gazette of May 30, 1961, accessed from Google News Archive on November 22, 2013
  11. ↑ a b Tad Szulc : Rivalries Beset Top Cuban Exiles. In: New York Times of April 9, 1961, accessed via LatinAmericanStudies.org on November 20, 2013
  12. ^ Maria de los Angeles Torres: In the Land of Mirrors: Cuban Exile Politics in the United States (PDF; 269 kB). P. 57, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 2001 (English)
  13. ^ Boris Goldenberg : Latin America and the Cuban Revolution. P. 352f, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne and Berlin 1963.
  14. ↑ Silvia Pedraza: Political Disaffection in Cuba's Revolution and Exodus. P. 94f, Cambridge University Press, New York 2007 (English)
  15. ↑ Jack B. Pfeifer: Official History of the Bay of Pigs Invasion Vol. III (PDF; 14.8 MB), p. 184 u. a., Central Intelligence Agency, 1979 (English)
  16. ↑ Hans Gresmann: Storm on Havana. In: Die Zeit from April 21, 1961, accessed on November 22, 2013
  17. ↑ Ray Says MRP To Fight Castro. In: The Harvard Crimson, May 5, 1961, accessed November 20, 2013.
  18. ↑ Ray is Fined in Nassau. In: The Palm Beach Post of June 5, 1964, retrieved from Google News Archive on November 22, 2013
  19. ↑ Exile Ray Defiant: Reaffirms Vow of Cuba Invasion. In: The Telegraph Herald, June 5, 1964, retrieved from Google News Archive on November 22, 2013
  20. ↑ Miguel Fernández Díaz: Leyendas y verdades olvidadas: Las tribulaciones de Manolo Ray. In: Café Fuerte from November 18, 2013 (Spanish)
  21. ↑ Cuban engineer Manuel Ray dies in PR; revolutionary to anti-Castro activist. ( Memento of the original from June 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.caribbeanbusinesspr.com archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Caribbean Business from November 13, 2013 (English)
  22. ^ Fallce en Puerto Rico Manolo Ray. In: Martí Noticias of November 13, 2013 (Spanish)
personal data
SURNAME Ray, Manuel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ray Rivero, Manuel (full name); Ray, Manolo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Cuban politician, resistance fighter and entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH June 13, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Havana
DATE OF DEATH November 12, 2013
Place of death San Juan , Puerto Rico