Carlos Muñiz Varela

Young Cuban who emigrated as a child to the United States during Operation Peter Pan. He participated in student struggles in Puerto Rico, where he came to reside with his mother. He was murdered by gunmen in a suburb of San Juan. The Cuban counter-revolutionary group Omega 7 claimed responsibility for the act.

Carlos Muñiz Varela was born in the city of Colón on August 10, 1953. In 1961, at only eight years old, along with his sister, he left his hometown because his mother decided to send him to the United States, due to rumors that the Cuban revolutionary government would strip parents of parental rights.

Carlos and his sister joined the long list of more than 14,000 Cuban children enrolled in Operation Peter Pan, directed by the CIA. After a few months in Florida, the two children reunited with their mother and moved with her to Puerto Rico.

At the University of Puerto Rico, Carlos was an active member of the University Independentist Youth and led labor struggles at that institution. He actively supported independentists during the 1972 elections. He promoted trips to Cuba and rapprochement with the Cuban revolutionary government, which made him an enemy of anti-Cuban groups operating in Puerto Rico. He was a member of the National Committee of the Antonio Maceo brigade in Puerto Rico.

On April 28, 1979, in the afternoon, Carlos Muñiz Varela was traveling through the San Ramón urbanization, in the municipality of Guaynabo, near San Juan, heading to his mother's house, when from another car they began shooting at him. The assassins fired nine shots at the young man, who lost control of his car, which overturned. One of the attackers, unsatisfied with the result, approached the overturned car and at point-blank range, gave him a coup de grâce.

Taken to a hospital in the Puerto Rican capital, the doctors tried unsuccessfully to save his life. According to their report, two .45 caliber bullets had penetrated the young man's skull and cervical spine, and he died in the early morning of April 30. The next day, he was buried.

Five months before the attack, the graphic weekly La Crónica published death threats against Carlos Muñiz Varela from someone calling himself Zeta who claimed to be the military chief of the Omega 7 command, an organized and CIA-financed group. The threats were carried out. At two o'clock in the afternoon on April 30, 1979, just hours after Carlos's death, the Zero Command claimed responsibility for the murder in a telephone call to a radio station in the city of Miami.

His son Carlos Muñiz Pérez, who has led a struggle for the clarification of the murder, asked in June 2011 to American president Barack Obama to order the FBI to declassify documents related to the case in the FBI's possession, which would allow the assassins to be brought to justice. According to Muñiz Pérez, his father was:

"A victim of a conspiracy organized and financed by members of the Cuban far right in Puerto Rico and supported by similar groups in the United States. This conspiracy was also aided by groups introduced by the Puerto Rican government and police."