One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution (37 page)

Clodo was arrested again, escaped once more, but this time—in January 1958—she’d headed straight for the commander in chief. Fidel and Celia had heard of Clodo, since her ability to escape had become legend. Story has it that she’d been caught carrying a wounded rebel army soldier, screaming dramatically, “Hang me! He can’t walk,” until one of Batista’s soldiers had threatened to hang him if she didn’t shut up.

In February, Fidel asked Clodo to scout the Sierra del Escambray, which is in the middle of Cuba, and make contact with the Revolutionary Directorate (
Directorio Revolucionario
, or DR) Echeverria’s group, which had barely survived after their attack on the Presidential Palace. Fidel was acting on information that its new director, Faure Chamon, had arrived in the Escambray on or around February 8, and gave Clodo a letter of introduction. It said, according to Faure Chamon in a document in the Council of State’s Office of Historical Affairs Archives: “To the Rebels in Las Villas in Escambray, the person carrying this message can fill you in on details and events of interest.” Fidel asked Clodo to find out what sort of people were fighting with the DR, and to try to get some idea of what they were doing there.

February 1958: European journalist Enrique Meneses takes this picture of Celia riding into camp, behind Juan Almeida, burlap sacks stuffed with food fastened to her saddle. (
Courtesy of Oficina de Asuntos Históricos
)

MEANWHILE, CELIA HAD BEEN TRAVELING
around the mountains asking people to establish new vegetable gardens and build pens to raise chickens and pigs, and trying to explain, all the while, that the fruits of these labors wouldn’t be for them, personally, but for everybody. She tried to convince these farmers that should they all become isolated and cut off from the rest of the country, they’d be able to survive a siege if they had these surplus products. Although logical, it was not an easy argument. Later on, educating the Sierra farmers in the fine art of animal husbandry became the real test. When she tried to tell some of the host farmers that the cows she was giving them represented future food, and furthermore they could expand their herds by producing calves, some slaughtered
their animals, giving the excuse that the cows had broken their legs. But she confiscated the meat, set up a curing house in a place called Jimenez, and took over two industrial-sized refrigerators (from a businessman who had decided it was best to leave the area). These were subsistence farmers, not used to being engaged in agricultural production, and always having trouble feeding their own. Many had been run off their property by the army or Rural Guard and taken refuge in the Sierra.

BY THE END OF FEBRUARY
, nearly all of Celia’s sisters had moved out of the green bungalow. For six months, the four families had been trying to look normal living in the same house. Silvia’s husband had been their only envoy to the outside world. Plainclothes police watched the house from the beginning, according to Flávia, but the neighbors had always helped out by giving hand signals to indicate who the police were, and where they were stationed. There had been several house searches (after someone had thoughtlessly made a phone call to Santiago), which indicated that the phone was tapped, but nothing much happened. Yet, Flávia says, they were aware that the police wouldn’t be putting in all those hours without coming up with something to show for it, so they decided to go their separate ways. Flávia’s family left first; then Griselda and her small son, Julio César, slipped away. Acacia moved in with the Gironas in Havana. Silvia and Pepin waited, with suitcases packed, until the neighbors signaled one morning that the coast was clear: no police were on duty. Then Pepin quickly put his wife, boys, and their suitcases in the car and drove away. Flávia told me that she and Rene had reached the point that they needed to find an income, so they opened a dental clinic in Havana. They bought a house on a major artery road, Santa Catalina. It was on a corner, next to a fire station, across the street from a bar, and in such a completely busy neighborhood that no one had time to notice their two names hanging on the shingle and connect them with Celia. Like Frank’s red car, their house went unnoticed because it was so obvious.

CELIA WAS BACK IN FIDEL’S CAMP
in February for the arrival of a European journalist they’d permitted to visit the column, but only because they wanted him to document the arrival of Dr. Leon
Ramírez, senator from Manzanillo. Ramírez was making the journey to Fidel’s camp to propose a peace plan. “I noticed that something odd was going on,” the journalist, Enrique Meneses, later wrote. “The cooking smelled better, the rebels were polishing their boots and cleaning their arms with more care than usual. . . . Sentries were posted along the length of the road which Leon Ramírez had to take, and every so often the Senator and his guides were stopped and asked for their papers in order to give the impression of a territory under the control of a perfectly correct and well-organized rebel army. Leon Ramírez arrived. After greeting those present, he gave a pistol to Celia Sánchez. ‘I have met and have the greatest respect for your father, Dr. Sánchez. I had thought of bringing you a more feminine gift, but under the circumstances, I feel that this will be more useful.’”

MEANWHILE, HIDDEN IN THE ESCAMBRAY
, Faure Chamon heard that a girl from Fidel’s Sierra was looking for him. He decided to make contact with her and suggested she come along with his group as they moved farther into the mountains, since they were constantly on the move. With Clodo, they headed into an area where numerous groups of anti-Batista guerrillas were hiding, and Chamon recalled that Clodo had asked him: “Who are you? What are you like? What do you call yourselves? Are you students? Who are the others? Where do they come from?” (These must have been, quite literally, Fidel’s questions.) Chamon recognized that she was bright—his description was “quick”—decided to take a chance, and explained his situation with transparency. Two or three days later, they were ambushed by Batista’s forces (at Cacahual), and Clodo became separated from his group. But she knew the geography of the Escambray well enough to make it on her own, ended up joining another section of the DR, led by Ramon Pando Ferrer, and questioned him for a few days. When she’d learned enough, she bade farewell and headed back to the Sierra Maestra. Fidel was delighted with the intelligence she’d gathered, and after this, began giving her assignments.

AT THE BEGINNING OF FEBRUARY
, Fidel gave Celia jobs that were distinctly military. First, he decided to put in some fortifications in the spot he considered a possible “point of entry” for the enemy.
This most vulnerable spot was near the village of Las Vegas de Jibacoa, farther down Pico Caracas. There she moved into a house with a family, oversaw trench digging, and then got to work establishing an armory. She found a building in El Naranjo that suited her needs, and began doing what Fidel asked of her: she procured land mines, detonators, cables, and bombs, and stored them there.

IN MARCH, COLUMN 1 “JOSÉ MARTÍ”
broke up into separate columns, although Che had left earlier due to his frequent attacks of asthma and inability to be constantly out marching; but now, with several new columns, Fidel could expand their sphere of influence. All this was in keeping with Frank País’s goal when he established the second front: grow the rebel forces, confuse the army by occupying new locations, and, simultaneously, take the heat off Fidel’s column. Finally, the rebel army was ready to carry this out, and Raúl Castro left with his own column by March 16. He began networking with freelance guerrilla groups in the Sierra Cristal near Guantánamo, the same groups Frank had scouted earlier (in June 1957), reorganizing them to fit in with the rebel army. He noticed that—unlike his brother’s always-on-the-move column—these groups had never marched, always lived comfortably in houses, and he adopted their style. “I still miss him so much,” Celia wrote her father. “Raúl is the best and most affectionate person that anyone can imagine. . . . For me, for all of us, Raúl’s departure was sad.” In my favorite photograph (shot, it is thought, by Frank), Celia stands beside Fidel, but Raúl’s hand is on her shoulder. “Good officers stayed behind,” she writes, but “he departed with the best captains and the best men, chosen by him, as well as the best weapons.” She tells her father: “Their standard of living is higher than here, in the Sierra. They don’t use plastic, always [sleep in] houses and beds . . . they have telephones, cars,” she observes longingly, and, I suspect, is resolving to make a change to her own quality of life.

The authority of the 26th of July Movement guerrillas had expanded from the highlands, on the western flank of the Sierra Maestra, where Fidel was generally located, to the territories near Guantánamo, to where Raúl had established his second front “Frank País,” into the southern section of Oriente Province, where
Juan Almeida’s new column held the mountain range outside Santiago. Eventually, the rebel army would grow to eight separate commands. Also in March, Che moved his camp to be closer to Fidel. This also meant that Che’s courier, the forty-two-year-old Lydia Doce, was nearby, and could take Clodomira under her wing.

Celia worried about Clodo, and thought the young woman was sixteen (when, in fact, she was 22); when she learned that Fidel was sending this young farm girl to Havana to liaise with Faustino Perez before he and Fidel began to plan a general strike scheduled for April 1958, she intervened. Celia declared Clodo too vulnerable, too young, and would stick out in Havana as a tomboy. She sent Clodo to Santiago to one of her friends (Maria Lara) with a note: “Take Clodo to a dentist and have her teeth fixed; then take her to a beauty salon.” Clodo returned to the camp to show Celia her new look before leaving for the capital. She had to cross through heavily enforced enemy lines to get to Manzanillo, but went with confidence: she walked into an army garrison and informed the chief officer that her mother was gravely ill in Manzanillo. He ordered a soldier to drive her there, and when she left the jeep, sang out, “See you later.” She took a plane for the first time in her life; found Agustín Guerra, the poet who was Celia’s father’s friend, who helped Clodo contact Faustino Perez; then went to see Flávia. Flávia told me that she had made a “general offer” to supply the rebel army with “some things” and had been a bit taken aback when Clodo appeared carrying a long wish list from Celia but resigned herself to filling Celia’s requests. Soon after this someone in the movement found a sympathizer who drove one of the Havana-Santiago long-distance buses. He’d agreed to haul materials, but not weapons, and constructed a false ceiling in his coach to transport Flávia’s items. She says she sent books for everyone; asthma medicine and inhalers for Che; plastic dishes, cups and saucers for Celia; yards of plastic for everyone—much loved as it kept their sleeping hammocks dry; and—not to be forgotten or left unmentioned—cans of peaches for Che, because Celia knew he loved them. Flávia thinks the bus driver left his cargo at a drop-off place somewhere along the Bayamo highway, and is under the impression that Camilo Cienfuegos would come down with a few of his men to pick it up all the parcels she sent.

IN EARLY APRIL, CELIA DEVELOPED
her famous inter-mountain delivery network of mule teams. These teams, whose owners pledged absolute loyalty to her, played a big part in the Revolution’s success. With them, the rebel army could get all the essential materials up the steep mountains: guns, ammunition, gasoline, kerosene, oil, boots, uniforms, and medicine. The teams became the lifeline of the guerrilla army, and some were made up of as many as twelve mules. They transported freight as far as 100 kilometers (still within rebel army–held territory) allowing Celia, in certain instances, to provision the outer columns. Of course, now that the owners of these teams were working for her exclusively, this meant that the mules, owners, and their families had to be fed, paid, and kept happy. Along with being the guardian of all the precious items the teams hauled, she was in charge of goods in the warehouses she set up in private houses to be distributed later on, when the war heated up. Celia also used the teams to haul up furnishings she used to decorate command headquarters.

IT WAS IN EARLY APRIL 1958
, while Celia was away, that Fidel decided to set up a permanent headquarters. He quit moving his column through the countryside in order to fully concentrate on planning a defense strategy against the army. A summer offensive—the Cuban army’s strike against them—was fast approaching when Fidel broke ground on his new command post. He got a few soldiers to build a rough wood cabin: a place in which he could sleep and work. Ricardo Martínez, the former radio announcer, was on the construction team, although he knew nothing about building or carpentry. He followed the orders of a couple of local farmers who were helping them. Martínez says that the farmers cleverly picked trees in various parts of the mountains so no discernible clearing could be seen by army planes, and harvested enough boards to create a cabin. When Celia came back, she took one look at the building and declared herself architect. Thereafter, she exerted design control over all future structures (of which there were several), and although the men weren’t aware of it immediately, began to landscape the place as well. Martínez says she noticed that the hillside had become slippery, and that it was hard to get anywhere without falling down, so she ordered some of the guerrillas to construct handrails. She demonstrated how to
do this, showed them where to make paths; then she suggested covering the paths with small, leafy branches. They were amazed that getting around could be so easy and then she proposed stairs. Doing this design work was a pleasure for Celia—for all of them, as they recall it now. She continued landscaping the new headquarters and never stopped: the final
Commandancia
, as the result, is a masterpiece. Even though fifty years, and many hurricanes, have whittled away at it, Fidel’s command headquarters at La Plata is a place of beauty.