By the late 1960s, St. George had lost all hope that any armed exile group might succeed in toppling Cuba’s communist regime, particularly because he knew that such groups’ reliance on the United States, and often CIA funding, undermined their credibility—especially in Cuba. To his shock, one of the giants of the terror network on which Cuba’s former dictator Fulgencio Batista had relied began operating openly in Miami in 1965. Headed by ex-Senator, Spanish Republican exile, and Batista loyalist Rolando Masferrer, the militia took the same name it had once had in Cuba: Los Tigres. Famous for the atrocities they committed against civilians on behalf of Batista, Miami’s Tigres were mostly U.S. citizens. Their middle age and lackluster physical condition made them no less dangerous.
