Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez

Civil engineer in construction of aerodromes.

Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez was born in Miami on October 18, 1958, in the midst of a humble family that returned to Cuba in the first days of January, 1959, after the victory of the Cuban Revolution.

"Tony", as his friends call him, left prints of his firm and affable character in all the schools where he studied. His vegetarian habits and his liking for yoga won him the humorous nickname of "The Fakir" among his prison partners

After returning to Cuba with his parents in 1962, he began his school life. He received part of his junior high education and all of his senior high "Vladimir I. Lenin" Senior High School in Havana.

In 1974 he entered the Union of Communist Youths, and in 1983 he graduated finished with honors of the major of Engineering in Construction of Aerodromes in the formerly Soviet Union.

In all the places they remember him after the soccer ball, as a poet and as an excellent student. In 1989 he entered the Communist Party of Cuba.

While he worked in Cuban of Aviation, he got married with a Panamanian citizen and traveled to that country. There he had a son, but finally he got divorced and moved to Miami, where he worked and lived austerely. There he the American Margaret Bécquer, Maggy, with whom he got married in 1998. His mother’s name is Mirta Rodríguez Pérez.

THE MISSION

The case of Antonio Guerrero, as that of the other four Cubans detained and accused in Miami of attempting against the national security of the United States, among other charges.

Randy Alonso, member of the National Committee of the Union of Communist Youths of Cuba (UJC) asserted, before the delegates to the II Cuba-USA Encounter of Youths, that the five Cuban prisoners only had the mission of gathering information on the terrorist plans of the Anti-Cuban groups that operate in Florida.

He said that to understand the mission that they carried out in the American territory it was necessary to analyze the indifference of the different North American governments with regard to the accusations of criminal plans against the Island.

The attacks and terrorist actions against Cuba from 1959--year of the Victory of the Revolution – have caused the death to more than three thousand Cuban and lesions to a similar number , as well as material losses calculated in about 100 thousand million dollars.

Alonso who also hosts a television program on topics of interest of first order for the Cuban society, detailed the circumstances in which the five Cubans were arrested in September ,1998, and he denounced that this political and manipulated trial was rather against the Cuban Revolution.

In 1998-- the juvenile leader added-- it was said in the Pentagon that Cuba didn't constitute a threat for the United States. And even the antidrug czar (Barry) McCafrey assured that the Caribbean nation was not a point of drug traffic due to the government actions to combat that lash.

However-- Randy related-- two months later (July, 1998) after Cuba handed in to Washington tests of the terrorist activity organized by ultraright groups that reside in Miami, like the National Cuban-American Foundation , the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) responded with the arrest of the five Cubans.

Alonso stated that the Ministry of the Interior of Cuba gave abundant material on the counterrevolutionary activity organized and financed in that country, as well as audio recordings on similar plans, thanks partly to the work of these five arrested collaborators.

Only in the last decade, when the Island went through its worst economic crisis after the revolutionary victory of 1959, worsened by the blockade of Washington, they were able to prevent 170 actions terrorists, even attack plans against President Fidel Castro.

Alonso reiterated that the five Cubans detained in Miami, three of which were condemned to life imprisonment, gathered information about terrorism toward their country, but they never attempted against the American national security because they didn't have access to classified information.

"They worked and they lived like they could, they didn't receive a millionaire wage, nor had they access to strategic programs of that country."