‘My nanny was a KGB spy and I discovered she poisoned her husband on the sofa where she gave me milk’

The spy gave Argentine writer Laura Ramos an after-school snack when she was around 7 years old Alejandra López/BBC She wasn’t called María Luisa. Nor was she a nanny, nor a seamstress, nor a housewife in Montevideo in the 1950s and 1960s. All of this was, in fact, a facade to hide her true identity: África de las Heras, the secret agent of the Soviet Union’s intelligence service (KGB) who, using Uruguay as a base of operations, was in charge of weaving a spy network in the middle of the Cold War. This Spanish communist activist was part of the resistance against General Francisco Franco in Barcelona before developing a long career in the service of Soviet interests. His code name within the KGB was “Patria”. During World War II, records indicate that he was a telegraph operator in the forests of Ukraine against the Nazi occupation. Afterwards, he participated in planning the assassination of León Trotsky in Mexico. Carried out espionage activities in Paris. She worked as a spy instructor in Moscow. And he conducted intelligence operations from Uruguay for two decades. With the rank of colonel and a long list of decorations, África de las Heras died shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union and took to his grave secrets that may never come to light. Many of those who knew her personally never knew who she really was. The same happened with Argentine writer Laura Ramos, until one day her brother opened her eyes. In his book Mi niñera de la KGB (My KBG nanny, in free translation), Ramos tells about his relationship with África de las Heras during his childhood and shares an extensive investigation he carried out over five years trying to discover who this woman had been. This is the first book written by someone who knew her personally and who ventured into the deepest corners of the Spanish spy’s life during her stay in Latin America. During this investigation, the author made a discovery that seemed both surprising and terrifying. ✅ Follow the g1 international news channel on WhatsApp The Spanish Africa de las Heras lived in Uruguay for two decades and, from there, wove a Soviet spy network Kindness Random House The atomic bomb But what was Africa de las Heras doing in Uruguay? The story of how she arrived in this South American country begins in Paris, Ramos tells BBC News Mundo, the BBC’s Spanish-language news service. When she was in the French city, “she seduced the poorest and most talented Uruguayan writer there at that time, Felisberto Hernández. They got married and arrived in Montevideo at the end of 1947.” Precisely because Uruguay was off the radar, it seemed like a good place to create a base that would serve to coordinate and obtain false documents for Soviet agents with the aim of obtaining information about the atomic bomb from the United States, one of Moscow’s biggest concerns at the beginning of the Cold War. These documents, says the Argentine writer, “she obtained by going to cemeteries in the interior of Uruguay and, there, looking for the graves of dead children.” “When I found children’s graves, I went to city registry offices, asked for birth certificates and then created false documents for these children who had not lived.” To have a credible facade in Montevideo that would not arouse suspicion, the Spanish spy approached Uruguayan intellectuals, many of them friends of her husband Felisberto Hernández. In front of them, De las Heras presented herself as a person with no interest in political issues, offered help with taking care of her children and dedicated herself to sewing work. Ramos’ mother met her at this time, before moving to Argentina, where her two children were born. Years later, the mother returned to Montevideo with her children and resumed contact with the spy, whose name in Uruguay was María Luisa. Nuclear explosion over Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945 Getty Images via BBC The ‘infallible weapon’ Ramos remembers that the KGB agent took care of her and her brother in 1964, when they attended a school called Escuela Francia, which was on the same block as the Africa de las Heras house. “I have a very clear memory of seeing her standing at the door of our school,” says Ramos. “She picked us up from school and took us to her house for lunch.” She was a middle-aged woman, says Ramos, “with gray hair, a little stout, but not fat, and of short stature; I have a very clear memory that she wore a skirt and blouse, and had no Spanish accent.” The writer remembers that the nanny/seamstress had a calm voice and told her stories from La cuarta height, a biography of Soviet Gulia Koroliova. “He wasn’t a sweet person at all, he was more dry.” Ramos and his brother loved going to África de las Heras’ house because she had what she considers “an infallible weapon.” “They were some very tasty, very expensive sweets, from Oro del Rhin or La Mallorquina, which she gave us for lunch”, along with a coffee with a little milk. In the Soviet Union, África de las Heras was considered a heroine by its intelligence services and was immortalized on a postage stamp Public Document Two deaths Reconstructing the spy’s steps in her passage through Uruguay, Ramos says that De las Heras separated from the Uruguayan writer Felisberto Hernández as soon as she obtained citizenship and, a few years later, she married an Italian spy, Valentino Marchetti, who the Soviets sent her as boss. They bought a house on Williman Street in Montevideo, which ended up being the same house where Ramos and his brother went for lunch after school. While investigating the Spanish woman’s story, he found a recording on a cassette tape in which a Uruguayan woman — “a librarian who had been co-opted as a spy” — reveals secrets about África de las Heras that link her to two deaths. In the recording, says Ramos, the Uruguayan woman claims that the KGB agent “poisoned her husband”, the Italian Valentino Marchetti, and that she asked him for help “to move the body from one room to another”. She would also have participated in the death of Uruguayan university professor Arbelio Ramírez, during an act by Ernesto Che Guevara in Montevideo, in 1961, says the writer. Apparently, she adds, Arbelio Ramírez had also been co-opted to work with her on secret tasks. What evidence is there that De las Heras participated in the poisoning of her Italian husband and the death of his collaborator, Arbelio Ramírez? I ask. “The doctor she called to write her husband’s death certificate — the poisoned Italian spy — is the same doctor she hired three years earlier to do Arbelio Ramírez’s autopsy,” says the writer. In the book, “I present the evidence that is in the recording. It’s all documented”, he states. “According to the recording, she poisoned her husband on the same couch where I sat drinking milk. That seems scary to me.” Ramos discovered a recording that links the spy to two men killed in Uruguay Alejandra López/BBC VIDEOS: most watched on g1

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