Rolando Arcadio Masferrer Rojas (1918–1975), was born on July 12, 1918, in Holguin, former Oriente Province, Cuba, better known simply as Rolando Masferrer, was a Cuban henchman, lawyer, congressman, newspaper publisher and a political activist. He was killed in Miami, United States, on October 31, 1975. Cuba 1930s Masferrer was a member of the Joven Cuba organization as a teenager. Civil War Spain He later formed part of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish civil war and he also was a member of Cuba's Communist Party. He was wounded in the left foot in Spain, and in Europe is said to have been an enforcer for International Brigades much feared for the thumping of his wounded gait when he approached his victim. 1940s Cuba He was a rival of Fidel Castro in the bloody feuds of the trigger happy action groups and subject of at least one failed attempt by Castro to kill him. Masferrer also participated, with Castro, in the Cayo Confites expedition of 1947, which sought to overthrow Rafael Trujillo, the authoritarian leader of the Dominican Republic. Masferrer was elected to the Cuban House of Representatives in 1949. 1950s Cuba Masferrer was a staunch supporter of Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista. He was not only a Senator in the Batista government but more importantly the leading founder of Los Tigres de Masferrer, a paramilitary organization set up to protect Batista from guerrilla groups and to support Batista militarily. In this period he published two papers Tiempo in Havana and Libertad in Santiago de Cuba which insulted Francisco Franco, but without positive reaction among other leftwing Spanish Civil war exiles. During the final years of the last Batista regime to (the end of 1958), Masferrer and his tigers operated in Oriente province; often, it is said, out headquarters in Victoria de las Tunas, others say in Santiago, Manzanillo and Bayamo where he had an array of exotic weapons including very lethal large caliber "air rifles." At times his followers penetrated the Sierra Maestra with stealthy silence, terrifying some local Escopeteros who without time to react or appropriated weapons to face him fled before his forces; then the "tigres" vanished. In this fashion the Tigres apparently too stealthy to be opposed raided and killed throughout the foot hills of the Sierra Maestra. He is known to have threatened Franciscan priests in Manzanillo, Cuba (de Paz, pp. 81–82). The Cuban government