TOMMY L. BAKER WAS FROM DOTHAN, ALABAMA.
The North American government in the last continued closing the wall on Cuba days of the Eisenhower administration.
In a surprise announcement to less than one week to finish their mandate, the civil employees of the general-president settled down the prohibition to travel to Cuba for the North American citizens who were not in favor specifically authorized of the Department of State.
The attack to the freedom of locomotion that as much clucked the system, hid under the pretext of which service of normal protection could not be offered after the breaking of relations.
Already from before, a series of measures, secret investigations and public others, had taken, practically, to annul
North American tourism towards Cuba. But Washington feared the visits of groups that they preferred to think with his own head and traveled to the island in spite of the adverse propaganda. These groups, integrated by liberal and progressive elements of the United States, when contrasting the Cuban realities with which of them it was said in the U.S.A. showed their rejection to the campaigns and made declarations of solidarity with Cuba.
Spokesman Lincoln White, to end that incipiente revolt, said that the passports were declared invalid to travel to Cuba. The decree of Eisenhower was questioned seriously by diverse sectors that described the measurement as inconstitucional. Nevertheless, the reason alleged by the judges when it considered before the courts was the one of which she was not inconstitucioal because it was not a legislative measurement, but administrative.
The congresional maneuver of the groups of extreme right by the end of year 2000 against the agreement of both cameras that raised the prohibition to the North American citizens to travel like tourists to Cuba, in fact turned the administrative measurement legislative. Citizens who demanded their constitutional right prepare now, 40 years later, to revert the argument with which the freedom refused to them to travel to Cuba
The echoes of the prohibition dictated by the Department of State had not even been extinguished in 1961 to travel to Cuba, when six of them arrived surprise by the port of Havana on board of the Aries yacht.
To his arrival, they said that they came to defend to Cuba of the aggression that was being prepared in the United States.
The agents of the authority who received them, with the natural courtesies, listened to the declarations with benevolence and came to run the proceedings of rigor for the enter the national territory.
One was Alford Eugene Gibson, 31 years, Carolina, aircraft mechanic of the North, that belonged to the Air Force of the United States; Leonard Louis Smith, 21 years, gastronomical of Chicago, that belonged to the army of the United States; George R. Beck, 24 years, Massachusetts, that worked in a secret plant of atomic energy; Tommy L. Baker, 28 years, of Alabama, that participated like soldier in the Korean War; Donald Joe Green, 28 years, of Carolina of the North, that also participated like pilot in the Korean War, and James R. Beane, 34 years, of Carolina of the North, that took part in World War II.
To the Cuban civil employees it called the attention that all had belonged to the Armed Forces of the United States and the way to them in which Baker boasted of itself to have killed to 500 norcoreanos during the war. It claimed to be a great combatant.
It really was rare that now it came to defend to a country to which they indicated in the United States like Communist or way of being it.
Without calling the attention, the Cubans began to register the Aries yacht in which they had arrived at Havana. The search was not unfruitful. Was a cut of newspaper where it appeared a photo of own Baker and it inquired on the foot into the same one which it was prepared with a group to invade to Cuba.
?Me seems that you of verb have been mistaken?señaló one of the Cuban agents. You said that you came to defend to Cuba or to invade it?
Discovered the attempt of deceit, the North Americans confessed to be trained in a field directed by Rolando Masferrer, head of the famous "tigers" during the batistiana tyranny.
Masferrer said to them that it counted on 5 000 cash settlements in the province of Pine of the River and that they could enter easily by the norocccidental coast of Cuba and be united to those "patriotic ones".
The North Americans added who according to Masferrer the triumph was near and then they could aspire to which they wanted: degrees in the new army, concessions for the game in the great casinos or businesses of provisions to the State. Convinced and delighted, they took the Aries yacht, that had been used by several fugitives of revolutionary justice, in 1959 July, to flee from the national territory, from whose date were in the United States.
They supplied the Aries with arms, park, foods and uniforms and were sent to the adventure like in films of Hollywood. They could title the film "the return of the Aries yacht".
The liberators sighted near the coast a coastguard vessel of Revolutionary Navy military and afraid of being discovered, they threw to the sea all the compromising one who carried.
Later, bad weather and the lack of gasoline it made them be decided to enter port of Havana to avoid to be pairo. In order to be saved, they invented the legend that told the arrival.
The six North Americans were made available of the Revolutionary Court of Havana.
In the 2001 still those conditions stay. But many North Americans are determined to change them.
