assigned the term who were not necessarily anti-revolutionary or in exile. The slur was also prevelent in hate crimes against anti-revolutionary Cubans. In September or October of 1961, over the course of a week, 12 deceased bodies were discovered over Havana with notes attached to them that said "gusanos with pro-revolutionary [ideologies], CIA agents, who tried to escape to the United States." In a mass-jailing of political dissidents in 1961, Castro's regime used defunct sewers as prisons for accused anti-revolutionaries. In one of the sewers, a Canadian priest who had been imprisoned dressed an icon in a dress and called her "The Virgin of the Gusanos". The use of the word was exacerbated by the Bay of Pigs Invasion, when many Cuban dissidents were taken prisoner by Castro's government. The term then began to develop heavier connotations with the portrayal of dissidents as "American puppets". In May 1961, that stigma continued when a state-run radio station called Costa Rican politicians gusanos in response to a call from their government urging the OAS to take action against the Cuban government. Over 1,000 men were captured during the invasion, and Castro issued a ransom to the United States, saying "Si los imperialistas no quieren que sus gusanos trabajen, que los cambien por tractores." (If the imperialist [Americans] do not want their [prisoners] (gusanos) to labor, let them be exchanged for tractors). In relation to the anti-American and anti-revolutionary ties, the term was stigmatized further upon the labelling of terrorists as gusanos who sought to destroy the country. In November 1961, Pedro Arias Hernandez, who was stationed at Guanabacoa's Nico Lopez Refinery, was killed when 3 people attacked the state-run business. The killers were labelled gusanos by the media, and were accused of working for the CIA. During the 1962 wildfires that destroyed sugarcane plantations, locals in Cubas were reported saying that "gusanos have infiltrated the canefields." The gusano strawman became a common tool of propaganda by the Cuban government. In a 1961 speech in Santiago de Cuba, Raúl Castro said, "Our motherland will be attacked again by those gusanos allied with [American] imperialism, who will try to bring back all the bad things that the revolution is dominating. Our country will [be prepared] to elimate them." Usage in the United States Starting in the 1980s, after the settlement of the Cuban diaspora, large portions of Cubans settled in Florida, and specifically in