One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution (25 page)

Interestingly, once Celia learned from Camilo that the guerrillas were broke, she sent money ahead to Fidel’s camp, didn’t even wait to carry it herself. She wrote to Arturo Duque de Estrada, covering for Frank in Santiago, before leaving Lalo’s place: “These people need everything.”

Tuesday, April 23, Camilo escorted them to the rebel camp. That day, Celia received her just reward: she was inducted into the rebel army.

I know nothing of this event, except that she was the first woman to be given that honor. It obviously was not freely or casually given, not a token gesture. It had nothing to do with impressing the journalists, otherwise Haydée, who had been with Fidel’s original military group at Moncada, would have been inducted as well. The men had taken the serious step of including Celia as a member of their fighting force, and a month later she went into battle. Several members of the guerrilla force may have recommended her, but only one person could fully approve and carry out the commission. The celebration may have been quiet, or even unspoken, but Fidel tipped his hat to her by deciding to take the television newsmen to the top of Cuba’s highest mountain, Pico Turquino. Fidel chose to be interviewed in front of the statue of Martí erected there by her father in 1953. It is the project she’d helped him realize. This gesture, on Fidel’s part, was respectful, admiring, and generous.

On April 23, 1957, Celia was inducted into the rebel army. Here she is in the Sierra Maestra, in early May 1957. Left to right: Abelardo Colomé Ibarra (from Santiago, he had just joined the rebels), Enrique Escalona (the young 26th of July Movement banker from Celia’s organization in Manzanillo), Camilo Cienfuegos (who had come with Fidel on the
Granma
and became one of his most-valued commanders), Celia (planner of the landing, architect of the Farmers’ Militia), Raúl Castro (Fidel’s brother, then a platoon leader, later the commander of a column), Juan Almeida (with Fidel at the 1953 attack on the Moncada and on the
Granma
), Guillermo García (recruited by Celia to canvass the coast for farmers who would protect the landing guerrillas, who joined Fidel on December 25, 1956, and went into the Sierra Maestra), Jorge Sotus (a member of the Santiago underground, a veteran of the Battle of Santiago), Universo Sánchez (also on the
Granma
, a guerrilla who often acted as Fidel’s bodyguard); crouched in the middle is Luis Crespo (who climbed a tree in the early morning hours of December 2nd, after the landing of the
Granma
, to lead Fidel safely to the house of a farmer). (
Courtesy of Oficina de Asuntos Históricos
)

They stayed in the upper reaches of the mountains for a week, all the time hosting the television newsmen. Celia never rested for a minute, writing to Arturo Duque de Estrada to order him to buy “two pairs of espadrilles, size 36, for Maria” (Haydée Santamaria);
“neo asthma pills” (sounds to me like medicine for Che); all the plastic tarp he can find since “it rains every day and there is nothing to cover with. . . . If it is 100 yards all the better”; three cartons of American cigarettes for the two journalists, “but not Camels”; a pair of glasses for Fidel “at the doctor’s house where I left my suitcase” in Bayamo; a toothbrush “for yours truly”; and “A [Alejando/a.k.a. Fidel] says to send news.”

Taber wanted her to retrieve his personal still camera for the trip down the mountain. Celia asks Duque to get the camera in Bayamo—but she also sends him to Hector Llópiz, in Manzanillo, to find out if Hector had received a large sum—“
la plata gorda
.” If so, he was to get it to her, because “money is scarce.” In her next letter couriered to Duque, she assures him that they are all having a good trip but wants to extract his promise to send everything she wants: “I want you to confirm, with this person who is taking this letter, that all the packages have been sent,” ordering him around in a way she never would with Frank. She also asks him to send 1,000 cans of evaporated milk and tells him that, though she doesn’t know when the journalists are going to leave the mountain, she wants him to have a car waiting for them with all their equipment (left in Bayamo) loaded in it when they do. She ends with: “Now look! Get together with this messenger and pick up all, all [repeated] packages,” and sends everybody in Santiago “a hug.” To use Felipe Guerra Matos’s description of Celia: she was both imperious and impatient.

In her third letter to Duque, dated April 27, 1957, Celia complains that he’s sent the wrong camera, a movie camera when “the one we asked for is for photographs.” She then issues another set of instructions, and in the next sentence implies that if you can’t do this, somebody else can. She encloses a message for Elsa Castro’s brother (although the note is actually written to Elsa): “Have him [your brother] find a camera and film right away because Alejandro says that if they don’t find it or screw up again, the work won’t get done. This thing with the camera makes him feel embarrassed with the Americans. He’s in some temper. We’ve sent the message with two different people so that the darn camera will get here, so, even if you find it, still go and pick up the one that Elsa is sending.” (It’s 1957. A lady does not swear outright, trusts her female friends, and has no problem giving orders.) “Elsa, I
want you to lend me the best camera you have there. It’s needed to make ‘some perfect photographs.’ Whatever you suggest will be paid, but it is very urgent,” she wrote, expecting Elsa to take the camera from her father’s store.

Last, but definitely not least, she remarks that Fidel’s glasses had not yet arrived. This, too, is a threat, for Duque, as Frank’s second in command, surely knows what this means, also. Although it must have come as a shock for Celia to discover that “Alejandro,” when he was in a temper, would break his glasses. But she is going to deal with it, in her own way, of course. Since they can’t win a war with a commander who can’t see, Celia (probably at Frank’s urging) has taken it upon herself to keep a constant supply of replacements on hand. She closes her letter to Duque with a list (in reality, a command): “Send now with Lalo: 1) The American’s camera. 2) Elsa’s camera. 3) Alejandro’s glasses. 4) Cigarettes for the journalists. 5) Raúl’s plastic [tarp] that I already sent for. 6) A toothbrush for yours truly. And nothing else.”

In Taber’s documentary film, the guerrillas present themselves well: a bunch of good-looking young men camped on a steep hillside, stylish in new uniforms—in other words, the opposite of what Eloy Rodríguez had encountered a month earlier. Taber interviewed three young Americans who wanted to join the guerrillas: Victor Buehlman, Chuck Ryan, and Michael Garvey. When Taber and Hoffman left Fidel’s guerrillas, they took two of these boys to Santiago, leaving the oldest (Ryan) behind because Fidel thought they were too young and didn’t want them to get killed. From Santiago, the two boys went home via the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo.

AFTER THE JOURNALISTS LEFT
, the column marched eastward in the first week of May, getting in position to pick up the weapons. Frank had surmised there would be arms left over from the failed assault on the Presidential Palace, and that the Revolutionary Directorate would need to get those weapons out of Havana. He’d sent Nicaragua to inform “Fidel and make arrangements for the weapon delivery.” Nicaragua had accomplished his mission soon after they reached Turquino and left them, going down the southern face of the mountain. From there, he took the coastal road to Santiago.

THE COLUMN, AT THIS STAGE
in the Revolution, was divided into squadrons. The advance guard was led by Camilo Cienfuegos, and had a total of four men. Raúl’s platoon came next. It was followed by Fidel’s command squadron. In it were Manuel Fajardo, Luis Crespo, Ciro Redondo, Che Guevara, Universo Sánchez—Fidel’s tall, handsome bodyguard—and Celia Sánchez. Behind them marched Juan Almeida’s group, followed by a rear guard composed of four soldiers. Each group camped separately; each had a soldier who was designated as the cook. They descended the southern side of the mountain exchanging Sierra pines, palms, and hardwoods for feathery, subtropical vegetation that grows at the mountain’s base. There they posted guards along white-sand beaches and camped under a clear blue sky with huge cumulus clouds overhead. This was documented by a Magnum photographer who joined the column. His photographs of Fidel and his men, armed and wearing uniforms, look like war played out in Paradise. On May 7, while camped on the beach, they got word that Nicaragua had been arrested shortly after he’d left them.

Much to their surprise, José “Gallego” Moran showed up, after leaving Turquino. He walked with a limp, although his wound had healed; his spirits were good; and he had a plan: Moran wanted to recruit men in Mexico and the United States. Fidel agreed, according to Che’s original diary, closely analyzed by biographer Jon Lee Anderson. Perhaps Fidel actually thought sending him out of the country was a viable alternative. More likely, he was stalling. But Che was horrified by Fidel’s decision; to Che, Moran was a deserter, but apparently he confined these thoughts to his diary.

In Santiago, on May 8, or the day before Frank was to go on trial, Taras Domitro implemented a plan to break him out of prison. At first, everything went according to plan: in the morning, Frank feigned illness and was taken in the jail’s van to the hospital while his bodyguard, the big-boned Taras, waited on the street corner along with another July 26th activist. They would hijack the van and kidnap Frank en route to the hospital. As the van approached, something in the scene didn’t look right to Taras. His instinct told him the situation wasn’t safe, and he let the van pass by.

On the following day, Celia celebrated her thirty-seventh birthday camped at the edge of the Caribbean. It was May 9, and
her gift was Frank’s acquittal. This decision was something of a miracle, particularly if the authorities thought Frank had killed a policeman (although it was never proven). How could this have happened? Maria Antonia Figueroa explains that the police thought they’d caught just another student. “He’d been arrested because they were arresting anyone they thought might have taken part in the Battle of Santiago.” The army’s attention, several others claim, was elsewhere. It was focused on a small group of guerrillas who’d escaped from the
Granma
and been rounded up and were being held for trial. Since the trial focused on those guerrillas, as Figueroa points out, rather than students, Frank had been acquitted for lack of evidence of being a guerrilla.

Nicaragua has another version altogether. He explains that the two policemen who arrested Frank (as he drove from Celia’s
marabu
barracks to Santiago) and confiscated the glamorous gold and silver pistol Frank was carrying, had kept the gun. They failed to turn it over. Without the gun, the prosecution couldn’t produce evidence that Frank had been armed. But they knew that Frank was a student leader? Yes, Nicaragua nodded. They thought he’d probably killed the policeman in Caney, I asked, but Nicaragua didn’t answer. He simply looked away. The police, he assures, were aware that Frank was a student leader, but they were unaware that Frank had been the architect of the Battle of Santiago. He had been charged with inciting the uprising, but there was no evidence to support the allegation. Frank had also been accused of carrying a weapon when he was arrested driving the truck, but was absolved because proof—the gun itself—“had evaporated.” In short, Frank had been acquitted because the lawyers and the judge struck an agreement.

FOR CELIA, GUERRILLA LIFE
meant camping on remote sandy beaches for a couple of weeks. I imagine she caught and ate fresh fish, while resting and toasting in the sun. The shipment of weapons arrived on May 18, and unloading the crate was a joyous affair. They had acquired three tripod machine guns, three Madzen automatic rifles, nine M-1 carbines, ten Johnson automatic rifles, and six thousand rounds of ammunition.

Also on May 18 Robert Taber’s documentary aired. In it, other than Fidel, few individuals among the rebels were singled out,
although Taber mentions an Argentinean among them. But he speaks of the two women with the guerrillas, “Celia Sánchez and Maria” (Haydée Santamaria), and of Celia, in particular, quite lyrically. He focuses on a bouquet of flowers pinned to her uniform. He calls it a corsage of woodland’s flowers with the most beautiful odor, and gives them a name: “wild gardenias.” At the time, all Cuban households with TV sets received the three American networks (ABC, CBS, NBC). Cuban viewers most certainly knew Taber was talking about mariposa, a wildflower that flourishes near water; Celia must have gathered near a mountain stream, or close to a waterfall, as they climbed Turquino. The blossoms grow on a stock and have a sweet, pungent smell, and look like small, white butterflies (mariposas) hovering upon a bright-green, hollow, slightly wooden stem. In the old days of the Mambisa army, Cuba’s first guerrilla forces in their two Wars of Independence that started in the 1860s and ended in the 1890s, the Mambisa rebels hid tightly rolled messages inside these stems. Cuban botanist Alberto Areces explains that the flower is so famous, with such a historic reputation, that it was given the status of an “honorary combatant of the Independence Wars” for having played such an important part in the country’s liberation. He says that women sympathizers, usually Afro-Cuban women, carried these surreptitious bouquets, filled with messages, behind enemy lines.