Antonio Rafael de la Cova was born in Havana in 1950 and departed for exile on February 1, 1961. He has a Ph.D. 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 José Gonzales (2003), The Moncada Attack: Birth of the Cuban Revolution (2007), Colonel Henry Theodore Titus: Antebellum Soldier of Fortune and Florida Pioneer (2016), La guerra aérea en Cuba en 1958: Memorias del Teniente Carlos Lazo Cuba (2017), and more than a dozen essays on Cuban history published in the academic journals Harvard Latino Law Review, The Florida Historical Quarterly, The Journal of the Early Republic, The Journal of Mississippi History and other publications, including six encyclopedias.

Martin Díaz Tamayo (1904-1995) was an illiterate peasant from Pinar del Rio, Cuba, who joined the Cuban army at the age of sixteen and rose to the rank of major general. During his lengthy military career, he participated in the Revolution of September 4, 1933, in Fulgencio Batista's coup d'état on March 10, 1952 and three years later was later chosen and trained by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to lead the Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities (BRAC) in Havana. His memoirs describe his relationship with Batista during 25 years, providing a new perspective on how he became the military leader of the Revolution of 1933 and details the planning of the 1952 coup d'état during six months and its implementation. Díaz Tamayo was the chief of Regiment No. 1 in Santiago de Cuba on November 30, 1956, during the rebel uprising and the landing two days later of Fidel Castro's Granma expedition. He describes how the revolt was suppressed as why Castro survived and triumphed two years later. In late 1958, the general participated in a failed CIA conspiracy to capture Batista with some 30 officers from Camp Columbia as well as members of the 26 of July movement who were plotting a transitional government. In exile, he collaborated with the CIA to overthrow the communist regime from 1959 to 1962.