One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution (19 page)

“IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL WAR THOSE WOMEN WAGED,”
Hector’s sister, Berta, commented. “If the police had figured it out, they would have killed all of them.” This was tough on women in the movement. Elsa Castro describes a night when she’d carried out an action. She’d come home wanting nothing more than to take a bath, go to bed, and put her head “under the covers,” but the final step of her task required changing into a dress and high heels and sitting on a park bench in front of the cathedral—which is just across the park from the police station—in order to be seen by the authorities. She says she was sure that every person who glanced at her could tell what she’d been up to. The women’s hearts were in their throats most of the time, she admits. Some of the women in the movement got so they couldn’t control their bladders when they saw policemen. Elsa laughs softly recalling a time when she was carrying documents for Celia. She’d been sitting in a café and caught her reflection in a mirror. She could actually read the documents she was carrying through her new transparent nylon blouse. As they were so young, dressing well in the latest style was part of the thrill, and Celia’s elegance part of their attraction to her. A realist, Elsa admits that “you lived with something very cold inside your stomach.” She takes a deep breath, then tells me that her sister, also a
clandestina
, had not been able to stand the pressure and had committed suicide.

12. J
ANUARY
7–F
EBRUARY
15, 1957
The Traitor

HAVING RESOLVED MANY OF THE ISSUES
of the landing by getting Fidel into the mountains, Frank and Celia set about augmenting his depleted guerrilla forces. First they sent Beto Pesant, who led a small group of men from Manzanillo.

While awaiting Beto’s arrival, Fidel’s unit was finding sympathizers and becoming familiar with its new territory. Farmers and rancher known to Crescencio let them camp on their properties, got their wives to prepare food, and suggested where they might spend subsequent nights. In this setting, on the evening of January 7, the group arrived at the ranch of Eutimio Guerra, who invited them to warm up inside his house. Eutimio gave them hot coffee with cognac and honey, while his wife and a family friend cooked a pig. After dinner, Eutimio led them to a small outbuilding where they could shelter and sleep. Thus began, almost instantly, the love affair between Eutimio and the band of guerrillas—or between him and Fidel, anyway. Fidel’s brother, Raúl, observed in his journal that Eutimio was between thirty-five and forty years old, and white. He also pegged the structure hidden in their host’s pasture, where he’d taken them to hide, as a venue for cockfights. The popular blood sport was illegal.

Off and on, Eutimio Guerra began to help the guerrillas, becoming self-appointed facilitator.

Once Pesant and his ten new recruits met up with Fidel and his men, they headed toward the highest parts of the Sierra Maestra. It was from these far reaches that they swept down, January 17, on an isolated army garrison, located near the coast at La Plata. In their first high-profile victory, they killed five of Batista’s soldiers and took two prisoners (whom they set free almost immediately); one of the garrison’s defenders escaped. Following the engagement, the guerrillas evaporated into the vast Sierra Maestra forests.

This battle was a blow to Batista. But he stuck to his story that Fidel Castro was dead. So, showing the world that Fidel was alive became the 26th of July Movement’s next goal, and soon an obsession. The M26 leadership seized on the idea that Fidel must become visible, alive and well, to the international press. Faustino Pérez had been sent to Havana to handle just this sort of thing. He sought contact with Ruby Hart Phillips, a stringer for the
New York Times
, offering an exclusive on Fidel’s story. In the days following the landing, Phillips and her editor had fallen for the army’s disinformation campaign, and the
Times
had printed Fidel’s obituary on its front page. Fidel was alive, and the
Times
should acknowledge the fact.

MEANWHILE, EUTIMIO HAD STARTED
to travel full-time with the guerrillas, as their mountain guide. But on January 28, he separated from them. He apologized to Fidel, leaving him and his fighters on their own only because his mother was ill, and pledging to return no later than the end of the week.

January 30 dawned cold—despite the latitude, temperatures drop surprisingly low in the upper elevations of the Sierra Maestra—so the guerrillas rose early and were already on the march at 7:00. A plane flew over; they recognized it as an army reconnaissance aircraft. Shortly after, more planes flew in, and they crouched in the foliage. The incoming squadron dropped bombs at precisely the spot where they’d been camped not an hour before. Shocked, they quickly made plans to reunite the following day, and scattered into the forest.

On February 1, Batista ordered three columns into the region: one to block off the western part of the mountain range, settling in near San Lorenzo; the second poured into El Mulato, the area where the guerrillas were hiding; the third landed on the coast
at El Macho, to cover the south side of the mountain range. The guerrillas were unaware of any of this, possibly because they’d become so reliant on intelligence delivered by Eutimio.

Guillermo García soon knew about the army’s presence. He informed the guerrillas, who then operated very cautiously. On the afternoon of the 4th, they were taken in by one of the more prosperous landowners, Florentino Enamorado, whose house at El Aji was large enough to bunk most of the guerrillas indoors. That evening, Enamorado’s wife and daughters served up all the food the men could eat.

The next morning, the guerrillas split into two groups, for greater flexibility in the event they had to move rapidly. Crescencio took eight men, including his son Ignacio, and traveled away from the area, while twenty stayed with Fidel.

IN HAVANA, FAUSTINO’S PRESS EFFORT
was moving forward. Joined by Rene Rodríguez, sent by Frank from Santiago, Faustino met with Ruby Hart Phillips on February 2. The location for their meeting was chosen to impress. Felipe Pazos was the country’s leading economist and first president of the National Bank of Cuba, and a meeting in his office had been easy to arrange because his son, Javier, was a leader in Havana’s 26th of July Movement. Following the conversation, Phillips cabled Emanuel R. Freedman, the
Times
international editor, who replied two days later that he would dispatch veteran reporter Herbert Matthews to Cuba. This was a coup, as Matthews had made his reputation covering the Spanish Civil War twenty years earlier, filing his reports from the guerrilla front as the Republicans fought Franco’s Nationalist forces.

At the end of the week, on February 5, the guerrillas’ best friend in the mountains, the ultra-sympathetic Eutimio Guerra, rejoined them, announcing he’d come straight back from seeing his mother. He was seemingly unaware of the army’s presence, but his companions noticed that he was acting a little edgy, and carrying a pistol.

THAT SAME DAY
, Celia met with a friend—a man who worked in Pilón and had driven all the way to Manzanillo to bring her information. The week before he was fairly certain he had seen
the man he’d been told served the guerrillas as a guide, Eutimio Guerra, board an army plane in Pilón.

WEDNESDAY, THE 6TH, WAS PARTICULARLY COLD
, especially for the twenty men with Fidel, hiding out of doors not far from Florentino’s house, immobile and out of sight during the daylight hours. At nightfall, Eutimio asked to sleep next to Fidel because he was so chilled. Fidel agreed. The cold again drove them from camp early the next morning. At 8:00, planes flew over and bombed Florentino Enamorado’s house, the residents presumably inside. For 20 or 30 minutes, the guerrillas watched in horror. Eutimio, apparently making a grim joke, said, “I didn’t tell them to attack here.” Soon after the bombing ceased, he excused himself and left the group again.

The previous week, when he’d allegedly visited his sick mother, he’d gone straight to the army, been put in a jeep and driven to Pilón (where Celia’s friend saw him get into a small plane). From the air, he had pointed out where the guerrillas were camped. Now he headed for El Macho to give the army Fidel’s new position. The morning of February 8, the army column at El Macho moved to less than 5 kilometers from the guerrilla camp. Che, writing in his diary early that morning, notes that he’s happy to see the night patrol return carrying five chickens, so he must have been unaware of the army’s presence. He was still writing at 11:00 when planes flew in, surprisingly close, he notes. Little worth recording in the diary seems to have happened for the rest of the day. Che simply observes that it rained all afternoon (and so the army postponed operations, pending better weather). Sometime during the afternoon, Che records, Eutimio returned and spent the night with the guerrillas.

CELIA, OPERATING FROM ONE
of the houses Hector had moved her into in Manzanillo, was extremely busy. Frank, following the
Times
’s confirmation (on February 4) that Matthews was coming, had put her in charge of getting the journalist into the mountains and out again. When Matthews and his wife, Nancie, arrived in Havana on the 9th
^,
aboard a National Airlines flight, Faustino Pérez immediately contacted Celia. She was in the middle of preparing for the journalist’s highly important visit when word
came that the guerrillas had been caught in an ambush. And not just any ambush: she was told that Fidel was dead. A 26th of July Movement ally inside the army, a lieutenant, was the source of her intelligence. She sent an inquiry to the informant and waited for his reply. By the end of the day, he confirmed that an ambush had taken place and all the guerrillas in the skirmish had been eliminated, including Fidel Castro. Celia’s reaction was not hysteria or resignation, but skepticism. She initiated her own investigation, even though she found the lieutenant’s report hard to contradict. Apparent facts went against her gut instinct. The army had released news of the ambush, but hadn’t mentioned Fidel. She saw the twisted logic to this: since the government still officially maintained that he had died during the landing, two months earlier, they could hardly announce that they had killed him again. But she doubted both claims. Her thinking: if they’d killed or captured Fidel, such highly sensational news would find its way to light.

IN THE MOUNTAINS
, on the morning of February 9, a farmer named Adrian Pérez Vargas was walking along the road near Fidel’s camp, carrying two sacks of sweet potatoes. The guerrilla sentry, a new recruit, stopped him and—to be on the safe side—took him prisoner. He relieved Pérez of his machete and led him straight to Fidel. Fidel questioned the farmer, who insisted that a huge number of army troops were right down in the valley below, and had been there since the previous day. Fidel naturally wanted proof of this. “Can you take me to a place where I can see them?”

They set off, and in the course of their walk, the farmer mentioned having seen Eutimio Guerra that morning—down in the valley with the troops. Fidel and Pérez covered four or five kilometers to a point from which the rebel leader, astonished, observed the enemy through the scope of his rifle.

As he returned to camp, Fidel silently reviewed Eutimio’s history: his trip to see his mother and other absences from camp; how easily he passed through enemy lines; how casually he’d been able to purchase things difficult to come by; the sick joke he’d made when Florentino’s house went up in flames. As soon as he reached his men, Fidel ordered everyone who could leave to do so immediately. Only some six kilometers away he’d seen
approximately 140 men camped around houses in the valley, supported by modern equipment, and armed with automatic and semi-automatic rifles. After issuing this order and giving the motivation for its urgency, he announced that Eutimio was a traitor. The guerrillas reacted with surprise and disbelief.

Fidel anxiously waited for two of his men out on reconnaissance to return. It was after 2:00 p.m. when they showed up, insisting while Fidel briefed them that they’d seen nothing out of the ordinary. During this exchange, the guerrilla on lookout, Ciro Redondo, called, “Quiet!” A moment later, Manuel Fajardo gasped, “It’s Eutimio.” A gun went off and a young farmer, a recent recruit standing just steps from Fidel, fell to the ground, a bullet in his head. Everybody ran.

Six men stuck with Fidel: Raúl, Fajardo, Redondo, Efigénio Amerijerias, Juan Francisco Echevarria, and José “Gallego” Moran. They followed a stream, hoping to get to the Macio River and cross it. The earlier group, Juan Almeida, Che, Camilo Cienfuegos, Guillermo García, Universo Sánchez, and Beto Pesant, had taken that route. They stayed on the run six days. On Sunday, February 10, Almeida’s group crossed the Macio River and continued on through the night, finally stopping to hide at daylight. Che, in his diary, mentions that Fidel had ordered everyone to reunite in La Habanita (not far from Pico Turquino).

CELIA, MORE AND MORE
convinced her gut feeling was right, telephoned Guerra Matos on the 11th. He still remembers feeling the force of her will as she told him, in a low voice (he says he had to concentrate to hear her), that it had been three days since the ambush and if the army really had Fidel, or his corpse, they wouldn’t have been able to resist putting the picture on television. “Don’t believe them. This is propaganda they are handing out,” she said, ordering Felipe to drive to Mongo Pérez’s farm,
Cinco Palmas
, to get firsthand information. Felipe told me he “absorbed her conviction,” got into his car and drove to Mongo’s prepared to wait until he had information to bring home to her.

FIDEL AND HIS GROUP
got to the river on Monday, February 11, undetected. That night, Fidel knocked on the door of a house in a place called Tatequieto and the owner showed the rebels a good
place to camp, hidden by trees, in a pasture on his land. The next day he suggested they stay on the property of some friends, offering to show them the way. There, his friends, two brothers, spent the day rustling up potatoes, beef, pork, and coffee to cook for the hungry men. The Almeida/Che/Pesant group got word that Fidel was nearby, and the Tatequieto farmer gave them directions. In less than an hour, the groups reunited. All these local farmers seemed to know about the guerrillas. They knew as well about Eutimio Guerra, and so the guerrillas learned—through this particular grapevine—that the stakes were high: in exchange for Fidel’s life, the army had promised the traitor $10,000 and a farm.