Robert Alonso’s Fight

On May 9, 2004, the regime of Hugo Chávez accused me of having hired in Colombia a contingent of more than three thousand Colombian mercenaries, 150 of whom were captured in my hacienda, called “Daktari Rach“, a few kilometers from the capital city of Caracas. According to the denunciations of the then president of Venezuela, my intention was to assassinate him and stage a coup d’état.

Months earlier and subliminally, I had called Venezuelans to “La Guarimba,” a strategy I had been promoting since 2002, which consisted of blocking as many intersections as possible without moving more than 50 meters away from their homes (their “guarimbas” or refuge), without confronting the regime’s forces of repression in order to let “others do other things.”

I made the call subliminally through the most watched TV show at the time, “Grado 33” in which I explained how East Berliners managed to tear down the Berlin Wall.

Following the takeover of Daktari, our farm, by all the repressive forces of the Chávez regime, Japanese television went to Miami to interview me in what would be part of a documentary in favor of the Venezuelan regime. The documentary was titled: “A Revolution in Danger“. The danger of this “revolution” was, according to the Japanese: me.

The then-colonel Rodriguez Torres (now a general) who – by the way – is now being held for attempting to stage a coup d’état against Maduro, was responsible for the “Daktari Massacre,” on the orders of General Raul Isaias Baduel, also arrested for conspiring against Chavez and Maduro. Rodriguez Torres was the one who offered the first statements to the Venezuelan national press about what allegedly happened at the Daktari Ranch, where the regime killed over 30 of my employees and decapitated our two foster sons: 12 and 10 years old.

“La Guarimba” began on February 27th, 2004 at 6 pm, as it was announced. It was neutralized, however, by the false opposition on March 7th of that same year: at 12:16 noon. From then on I had to go underground. The odyssey of my escape from Venezuela through the dangerous Colombian jungle, you can read it in one of the chapters of my book “How Venezuela Was Lost“. I managed to reach the United States in April 2004.

In 2004 there were two military groups that were organizing the overthrow of President Chávez. One group consisted of active colonels and the other: retired generals. They didn’t agree, so “The Agency” commissioned me to coordinate each other. Chávez later accused the Bush administration and the Alvaro Uribe administration of putting together the plot against him.

When the Venezuelan regime learned that I was in the United States, it requested my extradition.

To defenestrate the Chávez regime, I proposed “La Guarimba” in an attempt to upload the civilian people and paralyze the country. There was a meeting with potential Venezuelan financiers. That meeting was attended by a lady named Mercedes Hernández, with whom I have had a torrid affair 30 years before, daughter of a wealthy Venezuelan, who had died years before.

After the meeting she approached me and identified herself. That was the beginning of a new romance.

My wife had warned me that if I returned to the fight she would leave me. When Chavez came to power, my wife went into a deep depression. There was no longer a marital relationship and that’s where the relationship with Ms. Hernandez began, whom I married in November 2003, after divorcing my original wife. Once in exile in Miami, marital problems began between Ms. Hernandez and me. She alleged that her relationship with me could harm her immediate family in Venezuela. In fact, his brother was captured by Chávez’s forces and tortured atrociously. She feared that her home would be turned to dust and rubble, as happened with ours – La Finca Daktari – as of May 9, 2004.

Two years later, in 2006, I divorced her and remarried to my original wife, who was already in Miami with our two younger children.

Gérard de Villiers was a French writer, journalist and publisher whose SAS series of spy novels have been major bestsellers. According to the New York Times, “His works have been translated and are especially popular in Germany, Russia, Turkey, and Japan. The SAS series has sold a reported 120 million copies worldwide, which would make it one of the top-selling series in history, on a par with Ian Fleming’s James Bond books. SAS may be the longest-running fiction series ever written by a single author.” The 2005 de Villiers’ novel was based on the Daktari’s events, for which he spent months in Venezuela gathering information. His novel was entitled “Que la Bete Meure” (Let the Beast Die).

A Coincidence?

Perhaps it was an astonishing coincidence that in the 1994 film “Clear & Present Danger“, starring Harrison Ford and produced by Mace Neufeld and Robert Rehme, “Colonel Felix Cortez” (Joaquin de Almeida) appears, as a hit man under the orders of the Colombian drug lord “Ernesto Escobedo” (Pablo Escobar?) entering the United States with a false Venezuelan passport (No. A903227681) under the supposed name of “Roberto Alonzo“, a Venezuelan citizen, born on January 23, 1951. The false Venezuela passport says that Cortez is 5’ 8’’ tall.

The coincidence is based on the fact that my name is Roberto Alonso, I am a 5’ 8’’ tall, a Venezuelan citizen born on August 23, 1950 and my passport number was then A903228692: something extremely curious!

The character that Joaquin de Almeida characterized in the film (“Colonel Felix Cortez”) was under the direct command of a Colombian drug lord, who ended up killed by “Cortez” to take control over his cartel.

The Beginning

I was born in the city of Cienfuegos, Cuba, on August 23, 1950. In the first days of January 1959, Fidel Castro, on his way to Havana, spent the night with his escort of over hundreds men, next to our house. We gave them coffee and I shake hands with Castro. I saw him as a giant: the liberator of Cuba! That same day my indoctrination began. I was only 8 years old then.

A year earlier, my parents had sent me to Loyola Military Academy, a military school. From there I heard the rumble produced by “The Night of the 100 Bombs”, a terrorist act carried out by the members of the “July 26th Movement”, under the direct command of the Castro brothers. While celebrating Christmas in 1958, groups fighting the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista seized power on the island. Fidel Castro took eight days to arrive in Havana, to confront the members of the “Second Escambray Front”, who had taken Cuba’s main military barracks in Havana: Columbia Fort.

Very soon the journey toward communism began. I was no longer returned to the military academy and re-enrolled in Los Maristas, a private Catholic school in Cienfuegos that was soon intervened by the new revolutionary government of Cuba.

My brother Ricardo, two years older than me, was recruited by the anti-Castro resistance. One afternoon he had to carry on his bicycle some flyers against the regime. He was accompanied by Reinaldito Cápiro, of his same age. My brother managed to get to our home safely. However, two blocks further, Reinaldito was immediately captured, tried and shot. He was 12 years old.

On April 1961, the Bay of Pigs Invasion occurred. My father was the leader in our city of the MRR (Revolutionary Recovery Movement) and supplied information, supplies and weapons to the Escambray Mountains, a few kilometers from our city. The invasion failed. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans were arrested. Theaters, stadiums and other detention centers were filled with Cubans who had or did not have anything to do with the failed invasion. My father managed to evade arrest by escaping to El Escambray. In August of that same year we managed to leave Cuba on the old Spanish ship “Marqués de Comillas”. It was its last journey. When it arrived in Spain it burned. It was said that it was burnt by Castro’s agents. It was a ship with a capacity of 1,300 passengers. On his last trip it took more than 3000 Cubans out of Cuba, including my family!

We were going to Spain, but my parents made the decision to stay in Venezuela, where the ship was supplied with oil. I published the story in an essay I titled “Cuando Salí de Cuba” (“When I left Cuba”).

The month we arrived in Venezuela, the record of children kidnapped in Caracas to be sent to Colombia, where they were put to begging, was broken. The drama of those first months of exile I have not been able to erase from my memory now that I am about to turn 71 years old.

Venezuela was convulsed by the guerrillas that Castro had introduced in our adopted country. Our brother was sent to the city of St. Petersburg in Florida and I was sent to Washington State, where in total I spent 7 years of my life. My brother lived with a paternal uncle and I lived with a family of farmer in a small town called Deer Park, 50 miles from Spokane, the State’s main city in the eastern region.

Upon returning to Caracas, I made the decision to study film and television direction and production in (then-Western) Germany, ending up in the city of West Berlin, where I finished my studies and worked as an apprentice at that city’s famous television station.

My Sister

María Conchita with Robbin Williams

In a brief stay in Venezuela, Marcia Piazza, who was Miss Venezuela and by then had a romance with me, managed to convince my sister – María Conchita Alonso – to compete for the title of Miss Teenager. After much insistence she accepted, achieving in Portugal in the title of Miss World Teenager. She later represented Venezuela in the Miss World pageant held in London in 1975, which earned her contracts on Venezuelan television. In 1984 she moved to Hollywood where she debuted in the film” Moscow on the Hudson” and from there she was screened as an American film star.

Recruitment

On August 23, 1972, at the age of 22, I was recruited by an international movement funded and led by the CIA. My first mission was to help evacuate from East Berlin a group of Berliners who were committed to “The Agency”. We managed to evacuate 16 young Berliners. In the process three young Berliner died, including Helga, with whom I had a fleeting affair.

The escape consisted of crossing the river that divides Orient Berlin from the West. To mislead the guards of the guardhouses, we did a reconstruction of the massacre of several Berliners who tried to reach the western sector. For the filming we put together a big show, with lights, microphones, technicians, assistants, etc. That footage is posted on YouTube.

My second mission was to eliminate Fidel Castro himself, who was scheduled to visit East Berlin and would give a speech at the university. Castro withdrew from his visit; however, I was discovered in the western part and arrested. A few weeks later I was released without charge. That and other events were published, years later, by the newspaper “Granma” under the title “Hoja Criminal de Robert Alonso”.

To finish my studies, I left Germany for the city of Aberdeen, in Scotland, where I settled for a year, after which I returned to Venezuela.

War Around the World

By then the clandestine struggle against the Castro brothers’ regime had spread throughout the world. Influenced by “The Agency”, I offered myself to belong to a group that was later called CORU, where all the anti-Castro organizations from various countries of the American continent were grouped together, carrying out what became known as “The War Around the World”. We operated in Vietnam, Afghanistan and several African and Hispanic American countries.

Communist Infiltration

In 1978, at the end of the first presidential term of Carlos Andrés Pérez, Venezuela and Cuba (at the behest of Fidel Castro himself) signed the “Family Reunification Agreement of the Cuban Community in Venezuela”. That agreement provided for the receipt in Venezuela of any Cuban from Cuba who had a relative in Venezuela. That led Castro to flood that country with Cuban spies and members of the G2.

The new president at the time, Luis Herrera Campins, had to honor the agreement and to supervise it; he named me “presidential commissioner.” Very soon we realized how Castro was invading Venezuela with intelligence agents from the “America Department”.

We managed to detect the head of that invading force and neutralized him, ending the “covenant.” However, the damage was superlative. Taking advantage of the agreement, Cuba invited hundreds of young Venezuelans to the island to be indoctrinated, among whom were Adán Chávez (Hugo Chávez’s older brother) and Nicolás Maduro himself. Both were indoctrinated in Castro’s Cuba. I recounted these events in my book “Double and Aggravated Scam“.

The Family

In 1974 I married in Venezuela a 17-year-old Cuban-Venezuelan girl, oblivious not knowing all my activities as an anti-Castro activist. Because of my commitment to the anti-communist struggle, I had to be absent periodically from Venezuela and for that I had to lie to my young wife, who very soon began to think that I shared my life with another woman. Ten years later the great marriage crisis arose and that is where she learns of my “double life” which caused so many problems for our marriage.

The Cuban Plane

In 1976 our first daughter was born. That was the year in which the accident of a DC8 of “Cubana de Aviación” occurred, causing the death of some 73 people. At first, the incident was not very clear. It was thought to be a human or mechanical failure. Then there were talks of a terrorist operation by the anti-Castro Cubans.

“The Agency” assigned me to investigate the case. Four years later I discovered that there was a report, “The RARDE Report”, issued by a British expert on air accidents named Eric Newton. The plane landed in international waters off Barbados, so Great Britain took an interest in the case.

The expert determined that the plane was damaged by commercial dynamite placed in the cargo compartment of the aircraft, which showed that the four inductees in the attack could not be the culprits of the accident, therefore they were acquitted. However, the acquittal had to be corroborated or not by a higher court, in that case: by the Court Martial, equivalent to the Supreme Court of Justice in civil jurisdiction. That sentence never came about, since the president of the Court Martial was an agent of Castro as we proved it at the time.

The trial for the blowing up of the Cuban plane went down in Venezuela’s legal history as the longest and most controversial in Venezuela’s judicial annals. After eleven years of unjustified imprisonment, activist Luis Posada Carriles escaped from one of Venezuela’s most secure prisons and I was part of the escape plan and execution. Castro accused me of financing the plot and sentenced me, in absent, to be shot by a firing squad.

In 1985 I published a book entitled “Los Generales de Castro” in which I explain how it was Castro himself who wrecked the plane to get rid of 7 Cuban generals who came from fighting in Angola and returned to Cuba with too much political and military power. I told that story to the journalist María Elvira Salazar (now a representative of the US Federal Congress).

In 1985 I published a documentary entitled “The Trial of the Century“, with all the details of the trial on the accident of the DC8 plane of Cubana de Aviación. The person who allegedly put the dynamite in the compartment of the aircraft, Ricardo Morales Navarrete, after pleading guilty to the terrorist act was allegedly murdered in a bar in Key Biscayne in Miami. 20 years later they saw him walking the streets of Montreal.

More information in Wikipedia

Angola

The civil war in Angola was the longest of the twentieth century. “The Agency” commissioned me to interview hundreds of soldiers and officers who deserted the Castro ranks. My mission was to determine who were genuine defectors and who were trying to infiltrate the United States. During my stay in Angola there was a fleeting romance with a Cuban soldier who had defected and turned out to be an infiltrator. In addition, I was obliged to eat human visors in a meeting with UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi, who carried out cannibalism practices after each victory through the ingestion of enemy visors.

2007

My sister was a good friend of Sidney Lumet who became interested in my life story. We met twice in L.A. The script was delayed by the script writers guild of America’s strike, which lasted until February 2008. Things got complicated for Lumet, who finally died in 2011.

2010

That year our daughter – six month pregnant – was kidnaped by the Venezuelan political police. They just wanted to send me a message in order to stop fighting Chávez or I will pay the price with our daughter and our 5 years-old grandson. The next day she was released, we brought her to exile in the United States, where our granddaughter was born. They are all American citizens.

Our daughter, María Carolina, arriving with our grandson to their exile in Miami

That same year, 2010, our granddaughter – Miranda – was born in the United States of America and we made sure she pledge the allegiance to the flag of her country.

2011

In 1988 my sister made a movie called “Colors” with Robert Duval and Sean Penn. Sean and my sister were very good friends until he declared himself a communist and a fan of Hugo Chavez, whom he visited in Venezuela. In 2011 Sean and my sister had a fight at the LA Airport because he called me of intent to kill Chávez. My sister came in my defense and the fight was allover the news. Of course, if or WHEN the United States of America becomes communist, he – among many others – would be one of the first to reject that “ideology”, just like happened in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. He – Sean Penn – is NOT MADE to live under a communist regime.

2014

That year we managed to raise a large part of the Venezuelans in a new “guarimba“. That year I made a few calls to Venezuelans from Miami. I alerted them to the false opponents. I explained to them again how they should revolt, and so on. Once again, “La Guarimba” was neutralized by the Venezuelan false opposition which called the regime to a dialogue.

In 2009, Chávez had warned his senior staff that he would sweep them all away if they allowed a second “guarimba.” In 2014, when “La Guarimba” was – again – about to defenestrate Maduro, I was interviewed by CNN. That year, 2014, Venezuela’s vice president – Jorge Rodriguez – came out on a TV show from coast to coast accusing me of organizing a plot to eliminate Maduro.

More information in Wikipedia

2008

In the McCain Vs. Obama race, I toured with the Republican candidate the states bordering Mexico to warn of the danger posed to the United States by Obama’s victory. When the time came to close the election campaign, it was my turn to present the Republican candidate for the closing speech.

The speech

Details

Throughout all these events there are tremendously interesting details that could fill spaces for a long-awaited TV series. In October 2007 the Miami New Times published an extensive interview related to our topic.