On September 12, 1983, Víctor Manuel Gerena, a young Puerto Rican guard at the Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, Connecticut, disarmed his co-workers at the end of a shift and drove off with $7.1 million — then the largest cash robbery in U.S. history — in an operation the Macheteros called Águila Blanca, after the guerrilla hero of 1898. The money moved through Mexico to Cuba and, the group said, to the struggle; in a flourish that fixed the legend, Macheteros dressed as the Three Kings distributed toys to poor children in Hartford and Puerto Rico the following Epiphany.
Gerena vanished into Cuba and spent 32 years on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list — longer than anyone in its history — before being quietly removed in 2016, never captured. The robbery financed the organization and triggered the investigation that broke it.