Juan Erquiaga Azicorbe – International Man of Mystery

Bud Thomas
9 Min Read

Contrary to popular media portrayals, people in the gun industry are some of the most boring, most normal people you’ll ever meet. I mean that in a good way. They are normal family people with an interest in firearms, but they’ve turned it into a career. Most aren’t savvy arms dealers wheeling and dealing like Nic Cage in Lord of War. However, every so often, we get someone best described as interesting, and one of those interesting people is Juan Erquiaga Azicorbe.

Who is Juan Erquiaga Azicorbe?

Juan Erquiaga Azicorbe joins the ranks of people like Samuel Cummings and Heinrich Thomet, who have odd ties to odd people internationally and just seem to be in the right place at the right time. He was a Peruvian military officer who would jump from country to country, designing and selling guns and fairly commonly finding himself in some hot spots.

Juan Erquiaga Azicorbe – The Beginning

Juan Erquiaga Azicorbe started his arms career shortly after meeting famed submachine gun designer Gordon Ingram. It’s easy to see why this relationship started. Ingram had designed a fairly basic submachine gun known as the Model 6 and worked for a company he co-founded called Police Ordnance.

The Model 6 was somewhat successful. It got orders from a few police departments and even the Cuban Navy. Peru’s Army adopted the gun, and Gordon Ingram spent a year in Peru setting up the machinery to build the gun. While I can’t confirm this is how they met, it seems fairly obvious. As we know from Juan Erquiaga Azicorbe’s later achievements, he had an interest in low-cost, simplistic submachine guns.

Juan Erquiaga Azicorbe got a job at Police Ordnance in 1951 and immigrated to the United States. This is where things started to get interesting.

The Cuban Connection

While in the United States and working for Police Ordnance, Juan Erquiaga Azicorbe began to secretly work for Cuban Revolutionaries. The Batista regime was in full swing and was a brutal authoritarian government. While we can look back and say Castro’s government wasn’t any better, at the time, there was some hope that the people of Cuba could live in a free and democratic society.

Why would a Peruvian feel the need to arm Cuban revolutionaries? Perhaps it was simply a sense of duty to arm a revolutionary force he sympathized with. Maybe it was for money? His inspiration isn’t quite clear. Someone caught on, and the police pursued him.

He was either smart or lucky, and he dodged law enforcement and headed to Mexico. From Mexico, he continued to work and support the Cuban rebels. As we all know now, Castro won. With the success of Castro, Juan Erquiaga Azicorbe headed to Cuba to become Castro’s armorer.

Azicorbe set up shop in Cuba and attempted to create domestic production of firearms for Cuba. This didn’t last long. Instead of creating domestic arms production, Castro decided he’d use Soviet-supplied weaponry. Without much to do, Azicorbe headed back to the United States. It’s unclear why, and if he was still wanted.

Some sources claim he was still wanted in the United States, but others don’t mention this at all. With what comes next, maybe it was a mix of both?

Azicorbe and California

Azicorbe headed to California to set up shop in the 1960s. Some sources say he was still wanted, but he seemed unafraid of law enforcement and established Erquiaga Arms Co. According to a newspaper article published in 1965, and available in the CIA’s reading room, the company was licensed by Federal Authorities but was not licensed by the State of California.

He aimed to produce an incredibly simplistic submachine gun known as the MR-64. Additionally, he created a conversion system that could take an M1 Garand and convert it to a magazine-fed design. Erquiaga Arms Co. began producing and converting M1 Garands and produced the MR-64 submachine gun. It’s now 1964, and Castro is an enemy of the United States.

Juan Erquiaga Azicorbe produced guns with the intent to sell them to anti-Castro Cubans. He swapped sides fairly quickly after returning to the United States. A memo from the FBI lists two anti-Castro groups, JURE and Cuba Libre, that united and purchased M1 Garand rifles converted to M-14s from a California company; I think we can assume that Azicorbe and Erquiaga Arms Co. were behind the production of these guns.

It’s worth noting that, according to that same memo, the guns didn’t work very well. Additionally, Erquiaga Arms Co. received an order from Costa Rica for a batch of MR-64 submachine guns. In reality, these guns were intended to be sent to anti-Castro revolutionaries. A batch of MR-64 prototypes was sent to Miami.

The FBI Gets Involved

The FBI intercepted the shipment, but here is where things get murky. Only one was recovered by the FBI. The rest were diverted to the Dominican Republic, where they armed Communist revolutionaries. Either way, Juan made some money on the deal and proved to be more of a shrewd businessman than a thoughtful revolutionary.

So why didn’t the FBI arrest Juan Erquiaga? That’s the big question. It’s tough to say because he had a legit order from Costa Rica, which was placing the order to disguise the production and shipment of the guns. The conspiracy theory is that Juan had friends in the government who also wanted to arm the anti-Castro Cubans.

Shortly after the initial conundrum, he hired Gordon Ingram to work for him and help improve the MR-64. The MR-64 was nothing more than a slightly modified STEN gun. Gordon Ingram helped create some improvements, like a compensator and a weight to reduce the weapon’s rate of fire. They produced nearly 500 MR-64 SMGs, but Costa Rica backed out of the deal.

There was no more official, approved order they could use to siphon guns to anti-Castro rebels. With the official order gone, the FBI raided the facility, seized the guns, and some 100,000 rounds of ammo. Juan Erquiaga Azicorbe fled the country before he could be arrested and remained in South America.

The End

That was the end of Juan Erquiaga Azicorbe and his firearms work as far as I can tell. Was he hooked up with the CIA? That’s all speculation. However, he was willing to sell simple guns to anti-Castro forces, and the CIA was interested in toppling the man.

The former Castro armorer turned against him sounds like a great story, but it’s not something we’ll likely learn the truth about anytime soon. It’s still a fascinating story, and Juan Erquiaga Azicorbe is an international man of mystery.

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