Guerrero, Antonio

Antonio Guerrero was born October 16, 1958 in Miami in a poor family of Cuban immigrants.

In 1959, a few days after the victory in Cuba, the revolution, his parents, Antonio Guerrero Cancio and Mirta Rodriguez Perez, returned to the island with the aim of taking part in the construction of a new society.

In 1962, Antonio was enrolled in the primary school "Laso de la Vega."

In 1970, he entered the Jose Maria Heredia high school, where he studied for two years, after which he transferred to the school with a technical degree in Escuela Vocasional de Vento.

In 1973, Anonio entered Vladimir Ilyich Lenin High School, where he proved to be a youth leader and became chairman of the high school union of his district. Antonio was fond of football, was the right back in the school team.

In 1977, he joined the national team of Havana at the National School and Youth Games. Several times Antonio was elected the best athlete of the school. In addition, he studied music, played the trumpet in the school orchestra and sang in the choir, wrote poetry.

In 1974, Antonio Guerrero joined the Cuban Communist Youth Union, where he took over as head of the basic committee. He also chaired the Boyeros Middle School Students Federation of Havana.

After completing school, Antonio became one of the winners of the training contest in the Soviet Union . He studied at the Kiev National Aviation University from 1978 to 1983 and received a diploma in engineering as a specialist in the field of construction and operation of airfields. While still a student, after the first year he went to Ust-Ilimsk for two months, where he took part in the construction of a civilian airport as part of a student international brigade. While in the USSR, Antonio Guerrero attracted the attention of the KGB and, with the approval of the Cuban government, attended training courses for intelligence and counterintelligence officers, his training was directed to work outside of Cuba.

Upon returning to Cuba, Antonio Guerrero got a job at Cubana Airlines as an aerodrome construction specialist at the Antonio Maseo airport in Santiago de Cuba , but he soon received the position of airport aerodrome manager. He was entrusted with the task of expanding the runway, as it was planned to make the airport of Santiago international. This work was highly appreciated by Fidel Castro , who personally arrived at the opening of a new airfield and had a conversation with his chief engineer, Antonio Guerrero.

At the same time, Antonio continued to work with youth through physical and ideological education. He combined all this with work in the Cuban intelligence service , which, of course, was kept in strict secrecy.

In 1989, he joined the Communist Party of Cuba and at the same time married a girl named Delgi Cabrera Puentes. From this marriage, his eldest son Antonito was born, who currently lives with his mother in the city of Santiago de Cuba.

In 1991, he remarried, this time on a Cuban of Panamanian origin Nissia Perez Barreto. In this marriage, the second son of Antonio Guerrero Gabriel was born.

Shortly after the birth of his son, Antonio was given the task of infiltrating the United States in order to collect information on the training bases of Cuban militants. However, at first he went with his family to Panama, and only from there, in order not to attract excessive attention of the American counterintelligence, he went to the United States. There he lived in casual work, until he received an invitation to work in the public service department at the Boca Chica Air Force Naval Base in southern Florida . From time to time he received cash assistance from the Cuban intelligence service. In the United States, he met an American Margaret Becker, they lived in a civil marriage for several years, and in 1998 officially married.

Antonio was able to successfully infiltrate a network of Cuban terrorist organizations operating in southern Florida. Thanks to the information received from him, the Cuban government was able to prevent numerous attacks on the island. Wife Antonio Margaret found out about her husband’s work for Cuban intelligence only after his arrest and after that continued to provide him with moral and material support.

A Miami court sentenced him to life imprisonment and two sentences of five years on top of that.

However, on October 13, 2009, his case was reviewed and his sentence was reduced to 21 years and 10 months in prison and 5 years of probation in the Florence Prison in Colorado. Antonio Guerrero was detained separately from the other members of the Five and did not maintain contact with them.

The goal of the work of Antonio was to collect information about plans for attacks against the tourism industry of Cuba and about the planned assassination attempts against representatives of the country's leadership. However, during a court hearing he was charged with espionage, threatening the national security of the United States.

The official leadership of the Cuban Republic, relatives of Antonio Guerrero and many human rights activists from around the world do not agree with the verdict and claim that the case was fabricated for political reasons.

While in custody, Antonio Guerrero did not stop his creative activity. In total, he wrote more than 800 poems dedicated to his homeland, relatives, love and patriotism. A significant part of his works has been translated into the main languages ​​of the world, including Russian. Antonio also did yoga, painting, taught mathematics and English to other prisoners.

On December 29, 2001, the Cuban parliament awarded him the honorary title “Hero of the Republic of Cuba”.

On December 17, 2014, as part of the resumption of US-Cuban diplomatic relations, he was released along with two other members of the “Cuban Five” ^[1] .

• US sanctions against Cuba

• Cuban Five // Documentary on RT
• Cuban Five // Documentary on Red TV
• Cuban Five: "Homeland or death!"
• Poetry by Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez