Antonio Rafael de la Cova was born in Havana in 1950 and went into exile on 1 February 1961. Has a PhD in History from West Virginia University (1994). Since then he has been a professor of History and Latin American anthropology at Jacksonville University, Indiana University-Bloomington, and currently, the University of South Carolina-Columbia. He is the author of Cuban Confederate Colonel: The Life of Ambrosio Jose Gonzales (2003), The Moncada Attack: Birth of the Cuban Revolution (2007), Colonel Henry Theodore Titus: Antebellum Soldier of Fortune and Florida Pioneer (2016), and more than a dozen essays on the history of Cuba published in academic journals as the Harvard Latino Law Review, The Florida Historical Quarterly, The Journal of the Early Republic, The Journal of Mississippi History and other publications.
Carlos Lazo Cuba witnessed the events that led to the fall of Fulgencio Batista's regime and which ultimately resulted in Fidel Castro attaining power. He was a pilot in the war against Castro's guerrillas in the provinces of Oriente and Camagey from May 1, 1958 until the end of that year. His memoirs describe historical facts previously unknown on the abuses committed by both the army and the guerrillas. Batista is described as being in total control of all military operations via telephone and thoroughly aware of even the most miniscule event. Lazo describes the effects of the US weapons embargo on Cuba and the role the CIA and the US naval base in Guantanamo played in aiding the rebels. The young pilot was a victim of the so-called revolutionary justice that had him and other Batista supporters killed by firing squad. Lazo was saved from death and instead tried for genocide along with 42 other companions of the Air Force. When they were declared innocent by a revolutionary court on March 2, 1959, Fidel Castro cancel the verdict and subjected them to a new arranged trial that sentenced them to twenty years in prison. In prison, he met his wife, Nora, to whom he is still married.