Man struck in hit-and-run is former Cuban political prisoner

Man struck in hit-and-run is former Cuban political prisoner
BY DAVID OVALLE
dovalle@MiamiHerald.com

A former Cuban revolutionary who spent nearly three decades as a
political prisoner on the communist island was fighting for his life
Saturday night days after he was hit by a speeding car in Little Havana.

Relatives say the car fled Wednesday morning after hitting Onofre Perez
on Flagler Street near Northwest 37th Avenue. He was rushed to Jackson
Memorial Hospital, where he remained Saturday in critical condition and
with numerous broken bones.

Police could not be reached for comment on Saturday.

Perez, who was on disability, had taken a bus that morning and was
crossing the street to go to a doctor's appointment, according to his
sister, Maria Elenea Perez.

In the Cuban exile community, the 79-year-old Perez was well-known.

He was a captain with the rebel group know as the "Second Front," which
sought to overthrow Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in the 1950s. The
group claimed as their territory the Escambray mountains.

"He's a hero, and they left him like a dog in the street," said Zoe
Lorenzo, whose husband joined with Perez in the mountains during the
fighting in 1958 to overthrow Batista.

Perez later served as the lead bodyguard for the legendary rebel William
Morgan, a former U.S. Army soldier who was arrested by the Castro regime
in 1961. Perez was convicted alongside Morgan during a brief trial at La
Cabana prison.

Perez was known as a "plantado," a political prisoner. After spending 28
years in Cuba prisons, he arrived in Miami in January 1989 with hopes of
starting a simple life.

"Perez doesn't ask for much to start his new life in Miami: a car, an
apartment and a job, preferably as a truck driver," the Herald wrote at
the time.

He was 54 years old when he arrived to Florida — and was featured in a
Miami Herald article about the Cuban Welcome Committee, a group that
helped former political prisoners arriving from the island.

He was part of a group of prisoners allowed into Miami under a renewed
immigration agreement with Cuba that allowed up to 3,000 refugees into
the United States.

Miami Herald reporter Michael Sallah contributed to this report.

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