One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution (12 page)

Lalo Vásquez also left Manzanillo that night, taking the same road Celia had, but he stopped in Campechuela, the first town, a little over twenty miles south, to see a man from the 26th of July Movement, Segucha, in charge of local ground operations. Lalo told him to alert his militants and have them await orders.

It was after midnight when Celia left the dinner party; she was accompanied by two men, Adalberto Pesant (called Beto) and Cesar Suarez. The three got into a jeep and went south on the main road, a dirt-and-gravel highway, threading their way past one sugar mill after another—the Teresa, the San Ramon, and the Isabel—as they made their way down the coast. Choosing to ride in these early hours when no one was about, they reached Ojo de Agua de Jerez at dawn on the day the
Granma
was expected, the 29th. They were now a good distance inland. Celia knocked on Crescencio Pérez’s door and when he opened it, proclaimed, “Fidel is coming.”

Segucha’s orders went out on that morning. His urban militants left their houses and fanned out over the countryside. Vásquez had driven farther south, to Niquero, where before dawn he had quietly let himself into an abandoned building formerly used for ice making. The second member of his team was already there waiting. Lalo greeted a young farmer and friend of Guillermo García’s, Manuel Fajardo, a burly country boy with a completely round face, a sharp contrast with Lalo, who was urban and nerdish, with a wiry build.

Receiving Celia, Crescencio promptly excused himself to get dressed. She became impatient, and to spur him on called out, “You’d better get going,” and he came out in his fanciest clothes: white
guayabera
, white pants, and a black lariat fastened around his neck. She noticed that he’d even put on black leather street shoes. “Where do you think you’re going dressed up like that?” she asked. Standing before her, he added the finishing touches: a black felt hat on his head and a revolver tucked into his belt,
concealed under the tails of the
guayabera
. He explained that he would be going from house to house all day, all over the region, and should the Rural Guard stop him, he could convincingly tell them a family wedding was going to take place and he was there to invite all his friends. Celia laughed. Given the number of Crescencio’s children, spread throughout the mountains, the alibi was perfectly plausible.

Crescencio went out into the highlands to start his rounds—later to hold a place in Cuban lore comparable to Paul Revere’s Ride. Celia stayed at his house, the Revolution’s temporary headquarters until Fidel could arrive. She had made this choice in part because the house sat close to three roads: one that connected her to Lalo and Fajardo in the Niquero icehouse, and beyond that, Las Coloradas; a second that went south to Guillermo García’s territory, branching inland, and continuing on to Pilón; the third, the one she’d just taken, linked her with Media Luna and Campechuela. If the boat overshot Las Coloradas, she’d assured the rebels, they would still find many good landing spots north of Niquero, abandoned wharves where they could quickly and easily tie up. Segucha had reception teams all along that stretch of coast, operating out of Campechuela, and already out and waiting.

Crescencio Pérez and his son Ignacio made their visits, knocking on doors throughout the mountains. At
Cinco Palmas
, Mongo did not move—he was Fidel’s point of contact. The same went for Guillermo García. Having been informed that the boat was arriving, he waited at his house in Boca del Toro, east of Pilón; in the event Fidel came ashore along the southern coast, instead of at Las Coloradas, Guillermo would be there to meet him.

Throughout that day Crescencio’s little army of farmers fanned out over the mountain regions in southwestern Oriente, spreading the word to be on the lookout for “The Ones Who Are Coming” (as the story is sometimes called). Parallel groups of urban militants monitored streets or spread out in fields, there to watch the police station, any travel on the highway, or activity on the coast. The transport drivers, who mostly worked for the sugar mills, filled their tanks and took up their positions, driving slowly along the coast, over back roads, scanning the horizon. Not all these teams were told Fidel was arriving. To some, this was just another drill. They were accustomed to drills; Segucha’s people had been
practicing these maneuvers for months, going to their places, to be prepared for the actual moment. But everyone knew that 1957 was fast approaching, and Fidel had made a solemn promise to return before it arrived.

That afternoon in Santiago, Frank—driving his red Dodge—picked up Oscar Asensio Duque de Heredia in front of the Renaissance Bookstore on Enramades. As soon as Oscar got in, Frank handed him a fancy little revolver with “4º de Septiembre” decorating the handle in colored enamel. This was a gift Batista liked to hand out to commemorate the day he’d first taken over Cuba, in 1933. Frank passed Oscar two boxes of bullets, warning him that the gun was loaded. A year before, Oscar had interviewed Frank for his school paper after Frank had been charged with killing a policeman in the town of Caney; the charges had been dropped for lack of evidence, and Frank had denied having any part of it. Now, as Oscar held the pistol in his palm, he wasn’t so sure of Frank’s claim he did not kill that policeman a year earlier. Frank’s enigmatic, almost playful way of handing him the gun that day seemed to confirm it.

Frank drove into the red-light district (what Cubans call a “tolerance zone”) and stopped in front of a warehouse. He got out, took out a batch of keys, and tried several before opening the wide door. He signaled Oscar to stay in the car and went inside. A couple of minutes later, Frank emerged carrying a large bundle so badly wrapped that Oscar could see it held rifles and machine guns. Frank put it in the trunk, but it was too large for the trunk to close properly. They drove to Drucha where he stopped in front of a house, honked the horn for someone to come out, and when he did, Frank told him to stay inside and wait for further orders. That was the pattern for the rest of the afternoon, driving from street to street, zigzagging through the city in the Red Threat crammed with weapons, telling people to stay home, wait, stay on alert. They passed several policemen with shortwave radios, and army units, yet nobody took notice of the bright red car with its trunk flapping open. Oscar at some point looked over his shoulder and was horrified to see the trunk had actually opened completely. He told Frank, who casually pulled over in front of a laundry, got out, and rearranged the weapons. When he caught the “unbelieving eyes of the curious,” to quote Oscar, a little smile appeared on Frank’s face.

It was late afternoon when Frank and Oscar picked up several people on San Geronimo, and then drove around the bay to a remote neighborhood called Punta Gorda, where they stopped in front of a lovely modern house. The place was vacant, and inside Frank led Oscar to a room holding a modest arsenal: rifles, pistols, and more than a hundred hand grenades still in parts on the floor. He told Oscar and a few other young men to assemble them. He warned they had to do this before nightfall because under no circumstances were they to turn on lights. It was after six on a late fall evening, and darkness was closing in.

AS DUSK DESCENDED OUTSIDE THE ICEHOUSE
in Niquero, Lalo Vásquez and Manuel Fajardo asked themselves what to do next. Fidel’s estimated arrival time had almost passed. What if he did not appear that night? Lalo must have gotten word that Frank’s uprising was getting under way, and wanted to ask Celia what she had in mind. He was thinking about their militants who, by the next morning, would have been out for 24 hours. Manuel agreed that if the landing did not happen that night, Lalo should leave and find Celia, ask her for further orders. Lalo did not know where she was, but Celia had told him that in an emergency he was to go to her father’s house and speak to her sister Acacia.

IN SANTIAGO, AT THE PUNTA GORDA HOUSE
, Oscar noticed that Frank kept coming and going throughout the evening with different groups of people. Oscar stopped Frank on one of these trips and asked if it would be possible to bring him a coat and something to eat, as it had gotten cold. Frank gazed at the younger man and said he’d send Oscar home in a car immediately. When Oscar got there, he found his mother worried by his prolonged absence; some of his friends from the Institute had come by to ask where he was. After eating and getting a coat, he tried to fool her with the pretext that he was going on a fishing trip. Knowing better, she hugged him tightly, and Oscar saw tears in her eyes.

Taras Domitro, Frank’s bodyguard, picked Oscar up on a street corner, as arranged, and they drove to Vilma Espin’s house to wait for Frank. When Frank arrived, he lingered on the porch, leaning on the railing, talking to Vilma, a very pretty young woman. Frank insisted on making jokes, Oscar says, “so no one
would suspect the enormous responsibility weighing on him at that moment.” Vilma gave Frank packages that he put in the car, and then he, Taras, and Oscar went to a small grocery store to buy bags of crackers and other snacks. They got back to the Punta Gorda house after midnight and it was full of people, some asleep on the floor. Oscar recognized Baulilo Castellanos, the famous lawyer who had defended Fidel and his men after the Moncada, who was burning, on Frank’s orders, all the written plans for the uprisings. The lawyer kept saying, “It is a shame to have to destroy these. They are documents for history.” All the doors and windows of the house were closed, and Oscar watched the lawyer hold his jacket over the mouth of the fireplace, shaking his head regretfully as maps and lists and drawings crumbled to ash. (Had Celia been in that room, she would have snatched all those artifacts and figured out a way to preserve them.) For Oscar, still in the dark as to what was taking place, the flames in the fireplace demonstrated that Frank’s staff was afraid the plans would fall into the army’s hands, and that the 26th of July’s desperate action was about to begin. Earlier in the evening, Oscar had suggested to Taras that their action had all the marks of a suicide mission. Frank’s bodyguard thought about it a bit, and said, “There is a possibility that part of the army will unite with us.” He was hopeful: at this point anything was possible.

IF LALO AND FAJARDO WERE NERVOUS
waiting in the icehouse, Celia by comparison was in turmoil as she paced the floors of Crescencio’s house. She was the type of person who liked to settle things right away: jump in the car, drive somewhere, talk things over, investigate what was happening, sniff things out, make a decision. Now she could not. She had to wait. She was in the vexing position of the general in his headquarters, in command but remote from the officers in the field on whom she was depending. They were to bring Fidel to her. So she brewed coffee and smoked cigarettes.

WELL BEFORE DAWN ON THE 30TH
, while it was still dark, Lalo left the icehouse and drove to Pilón. He had to pick his way across farm roads edging the cane fields, and probably, on this drive flick off the headlights as he rolled past houses. Arriving at the
doctor’s bungalow, he knocked on the door and Acacia let him in. Following her directions to Celia’s location, he retraced his route, driving north through the sugar plantations, following the contour of the hills, and, by my calculation, arrived at Crescencio’s shortly after daybreak.

THAT SAME HOUR
Frank was starting his uprising in Santiago.

At the house in Punta Gorda, somebody woke Oscar at 5:00 a.m. He went downstairs and met Frank, who pointed to him and then to the red Dodge. Oscar got in the back with Taras, who had a machine gun on his lap, prompting Oscar to pat the little “4th of September” pistol in his pants pocket and check his breast pocket for the box of bullets. Armando Hart and Haydée Santamaria (in Oscar’s eye, glamorous revolutionaries because they had fought at the Moncada), got into the front seat next to Frank. It was still somewhat dark, but the bay was emerging into visibility, revealing the outlines of the mountains behind.

Several such carloads of revolutionaries began to drive slowly toward the city, following the road along the bay as the sun was coming up over the water. They pulled up in front of an old two-family house on San Felix. A few cars had arrived ahead of Frank’s and were unloading their passengers. Waiting on the sidewalk for him, María Antonia Figueroa, Gloria Cuadras, Ramon Alvarez, Luis Clerge, and Enzo Infante bore rifles and revolvers. Somebody pounded on the gate leading to the upstairs apartment. A tall man, heavy with a reddish complexion, came out and asked what they wanted at this hour. Somebody answered, “Open up in the name of the Revolution.” The man stood there, astonished, then asked, “What do I have to do with the Revolution?” At which point Frank stepped forward and said that his house had been selected as their headquarters. “Not my house. Why my house?” the man shouted, and went back inside. The revolutionaries recognized him as the owner of the Cuba Theater; they all went to movies there. Two servants crept out to see what the fuss was about, and Frank softly ordered them to call the lady of the house.

AT CELIA’S HEADQUARTERS
, either Beto Pesant or Cesar Suarez was watching the road when Lalo drove in. Although Crescencio’s house sits in a clearing near the road, it was protected by three
other houses shadowed on three sides by trees. Lalo went into the house, greeted Celia, and he told her of the start of Frank’s Santiago uprising. Underlying this conversation was a single question: What if the
Granma
didn’t arrive soon? What would be their course of action? What should Lalo tell the militants and 26th of July sabotage units to do? How long should they stay out? Should he pull them in, abandon the campaign before it even started?

The
Granma
had been due the day before, and the uprising in Santiago would create a point of no return. This widespread action was intended to distract the military; and if they were lucky, distract them until Fidel’s forces were not only on land but able to join other 26th of July forces and attack a coastal garrison, steal their guns, and escape into the mountains. So, she reasoned, if Frank was now beginning the uprising, he must have word that Fidel had arrived. So Fidel would be brought to her soon.