"AND this can kill?" the garbage collector asked the young Luis, who was walking in the middle of the street with his .22 Caliber carbine.

He shouldn’t have asked this question of a young man known for being a braggart. Answering in the affirmative, he stopped in front of the mule that pulled the man’s cart and fired at the animal before him, killing it with a single shot.

That little performance cost the father of Luis Faustino Posada Carriles 80 pesos for his cocky son’s idiotic behavior.

Research carried out in Cienfuegos - with testimonies from neighbors and archive material - reveal otherwise unknown details of the personality of an individual who, as part of his operations to destroy the Cuban Revolution, the CIA would subsequently select as a member of the team of hired assassins involved in the sinister Operation 40.

The incident with the mule was not the first to demonstrate to Luis Nicolás Posada González, an honest man and owner of a small bookstore, the dangerous habits of his first offspring.

Born on February 15, 1928 at the family home at number 195, Tacón St in Cienfuegos, from the early age of just 9 years, little Luis used to catch lizards, which he then killed with an airgun.

At 15 years of age, from the rooftop of his house, he would shoot at the neighbors’ cats with a .22 carbine rifle.

Once, from the same spot, he killed a neighbor’s parrot as it balanced on a hoop in its owner’s dining room.

Posada received his primary education in religious schools governed by Jesuits and Marists. He then continued his junior high studies and a course of "sugar chemistry" in an institution run by Dominican monks, which permitted him to claim he was a "chemist" by profession.

Barely 18 years of age, Luis Posada Carriles worked in the distillery at the San Agustín sugar mill in Santa Isabel de las Lajas. He used to carry a Colt 38 revolver at the time and intimidated his work colleagues.

A year later, at the end of World War II, business at the firm slumped and Posada lost his first job.

Unemployed for almost five years, according to various accounts, he used to visit the offspring of the owner of the Cienfuegos Yacht Club, where he linked up with political people who supported the dictator Fulgencio Batista.

He visited boxing stadiums where, after the fights, he would goad the winners. That earned him a few harsh lessons.

On several occasions, he found himself involved in bar brawls. One of them led a court appearance for having disfigured a bus driver. His friendships with Batista supporters managed to ensure that he avoided being brought to trial.

Profoundly racist, he particularly hated Asians to the point that he would walk down the street throwing punches at any Chinese men who passed him by.

He ended up finding a job as a fumigator at the beginning of the 1950s with the CEFI firm, the property of the owner of the La Paloma Hotel. He drove a car round various firms offering his services.

Luis Posada Carriles continued working as a fumigator for more than five years. He always loved to carry weapons on him. His relationship with Bebo Llerendi, the husband of the niece of Colonel Ugalde Carrillo, head of the dictatorship’s military intelligence service, made it possible for him to gain entry into this repressive body.

Some neighbors confirm that he also always carried documents for BRAC – the Repression of Communism Brigade – created by Fulgencio Batista with the aid of the US intelligence service. That allowed him to freely walk the streets of Cienfuegos with a revolver.

It is the Walt Disney character who appeared in 1942 who would provide him with the nickname "El Bambi", although he had little in common with the enchanting fawn.

Posada would introduce himself as "El Bambi" or, at times, "Johnny Bambusio".

Witnesses recall how once, in the men’s room at the Cienfuegos Yacht Club, he cut off the fingertips of both hands with a razor blade and then stained the walls with his blood, proclaiming: "These are the prints of Johnny Bambusio."

Then came 1959 and the triumph of the Revolution. "El Bambi", who was now 31 years of age and identified as one of Batista’s henchmen, swiftly disappeared from Cienfuegos and traveled to the capital where he started working for the US transnational firm Firestone…

In Havana, he is linked to counterrevolutionary groups led by David Atlee Phillips, the CIA official who recruited agents under the cover of his business dealings, and David Sánchez Morales, the station chief disguised as a diplomat.

In February 1961, just 14 months after Fidel and the Bearded Ones took power, Posada sought asylum in the Argentine embassy, alleging that he was being persecuted.

On the 25 of that same month, Luis Posada Carriles traveled with a safe conduct to Miami, where he immediately joined the network of terrorist groups directed by the US intelligence service.

He joined the Halcones Negros (Black Hawks) terrorist group, part of the CIA-directed Revolutionary Unity organization, where his skills as a marksman earned him the code name "The Hunter".

Very soon afterwards, Posada was selected, in virtue of his characteristics, to be part of Operation 40, a group of hired assassins brought together by the CIA to perpetrate underhand activities in support of the (failed) Bay of Pigs invasion.

The group ended up carrying out tasks such as these throughout the whole continent. From Buenos Aires to Washington.

One of those recruiting for the CIA at that time was a young Texan with a great future ahead of him: the son of a banker well known for being a Hitler sympathizer: George H. W. Bush I, father of the current US president.