Sleeping with the Enemy: The Soviet Spy Who Operated in Uruguay

África de las Heras, known as Comrade Patria, turned Montevideo into a base for Soviet intelligence operations across South America.

SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY

Who does not know the character of James Bond? That 007 who, at least since the Sean Connery version, is always surrounded by beautiful women, mingling in luxury casinos, collecting exploits and always emerging unscathed from the most difficult situations.
But the image of real spies is very different from that Bond in permanent display, who dresses with exquisite elegance and drives an Aston Martin DB5, a car of which only around one thousand sixty units were produced.
Spies who are not fictional products, but flesh-and-blood people, are quite far removed from that glamour. Their reality is much more bureaucratic, quiet and often tedious.
The success of their task depends, precisely, on never standing out or appearing in any suspicious record.
Their work is mostly office-based and analytical.
Thus, most modern espionage does not take place in shootouts, but at desks. Their activity consists of analyzing tons of data, translating documents, intercepting electronic communications and drafting reports. The main role of an intelligence officer in the field is rarely direct action.
Their primary occupation is cultivating relationships, manipulating people and identifying vulnerable informants within governments or key institutions so that they leak information.
Moreover, being discovered does not culminate in an acrobatic escape at the last second, as in the movies.
In Uruguay, the most famous spy was a woman!
Her name: África de las Heras. Born in the now-convulsed city of Ceuta.
Known underground as Comrade Patria, her story far exceeds the limits of fiction.
She was married to the writer Felisberto Hernández. And this is of particular interest if we take into account what Felisberto thought about communism.
The Uruguayan writer was in Paris when he met a woman who introduced herself as María Luisa de las Heras, with refugee status and whose profession was that of a haute couture dressmaker.
He fell in love with her, and the lady, struck by the Uruguayan’s charm, decided to share married life with him.
Of course, the lady’s consent was viewed very favorably by the Committee for State Security, better known as the KGB.
For Soviet purposes, it was necessary to place a spy in South America, and what better way to do it than in Uruguay and married to the unsuspected Felisberto!
A viscerally anti-communist man who, in his notes, playing with words, gave the acronym USSR meanings such as:
“An Insolvent Republic, A Ridiculous Utopia Without Seriousness, A Renegade At Your Service, A Streak Without Luck, A Rock Without Salvation, A Filth Yes Sir, A Restless Reptile, A Rolling Without Security, A Repeated S.S. of Hitler, A Regressive Secret System, A Signature Without Solvency, A Rustic Social System, A Cold Without an Overcoat.”
The Soviet spy had found the perfect refuge for her activities. Although the marriage lasted only a short time—Felisberto would marry four times—Comrade Patria had managed to settle in Montevideo gently, without making noise.
From the Uruguayan capital, she coordinated KGB espionage networks throughout South America for nearly two decades. While Montevideo high society saw her as an elegant clothing designer, from her apartment she operated a clandestine radio transmitting encrypted messages to Moscow.
Felisberto was completely unaware of what his wife was doing, and when they divorced the lady remarried. This time, to another Soviet spy. At least at home she did not have to hide.
But she had already become legally shielded from any suspicion by immigration authorities or Western intelligence services.
At the end of the 1960s, África de las Heras Gavilán returned to the USSR, where she was received with honors and devoted herself to training new generations of spies.
She reached the rank of colonel in the KGB and was decorated with the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Star, among other honors.
The image illustrating this article is the postage stamp that Russia has dedicated to its spy on the thirty-ninth anniversary of her death.
The initiative was undertaken by the SVR, the intelligence agency that succeeded the sinister KGB.
According to the outlet ICN (Iberoamérica Central de Noticias), the SVR website publishes a biographical note on de las Heras that, in one passage, says:
“In 1947, the Center decided to send ‘Patria’ for intelligence work in one of the countries of Latin America (Uruguay), where she was expected to settle for 20 years. Throughout that time, the agent successfully completed important tasks involving the collection and transfer to the Center of valuable intelligence information.”
Two decades working with impunity without the intelligence services that operated, and still operate, in Uruguay being able to detect her.
Beyond the end of the USSR, Russia continues to glorify the spies of communism.
In the next article we will see how the ancient practice of espionage remains fully in force.

Soviet espionage in Uruguay
África de las Heras
KGB networks in South America

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