One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution (39 page)

In April, Fidel moved Radio Rebelde from Che’s camp to the
Comandancia
. Its purpose: to get coded messages to Fidel’s outlying columns. The radio’s weak signal traveled to Venezuela, then was beamed back to Cuba, much stronger. Ricardo Martínez says they never anticipated any other use, but before the offensive, on Mother’s Day (which was May 11), the engineers asked the Medina family of musicians (who lived—and still live—within the
Comandancia
La Plata complex) to perform, and Radio Rebelde soon had a popular following. Their style of music is known as
punto cubano
; singers make up their lyrics to suit the occasion. After that initial program, on Sundays Fidel would give the Medinas the war news, and the quintet did the rest, setting Rebel army news to popular music. The station was picked up and rebroadcast by Cuban stations around the region. Half the island was listening to Radio Rebelde, Martínez claims, by the end of May, when Batista’s summer offensive was supposed to start. Using their radio, the rebels, openly acknowledging that a bloody fight lay ahead, started asking for volunteer doctors and donations of medicine.

Old soldiers and current-day historians are in agreement: the telephone was strategically important to the war’s outcome. The new, stationary command headquarters at La Plata with its communications system marked a qualitative change in the rebel army’s ability to carry out guerrilla warfare. Cuban historians go a step further: they say that Celia’s importance lies in the fact that Fidel by this point trusted her implicitly and could ask her to do things, and he would no longer worry about them. They feel confident that Fidel knew that whatever he asked her to do, she’d complete the task.

She’d been instrumental in acquiring a permanent, strategically located headquarters (the location of which is attributed to Celia); an interlocking and complementary communications system of couriers (Celia); a telephone system (largely provided by her); warehouses of food and ammunition (ditto Celia); mule teams to supply the
Comandancia
(Celia); victory gardens around the mountains to sustain the rebel army and their followers (Celia).

25. J
UNE
–J
ULY
1958
The War

CELIA WAS STILL IN LAS VEGAS
when the enemy began to advance toward fragile, rebel-held territory. After a few days, in early June, the army had moved so close that she traveled back up the mountain to the command post for safety. There she helped Fidel contact his commanders as he sent orders to the various columns engaged in battle. Seeing how important it was to have someone at the front—Las Vegas, their most vulnerable location—he and she came to the conclusion that she’d go back. She went to Mompié, where she installed a battery telephone, and there, in Mompié, she became the person in the middle, the contact between Fidel and his captains who were fighting in the northwestern sector. Crescencio Perez and his company are one example; the old patriarch was operating close to the Las Vegas front, but mainly she went there to be closer to Che, so she could link him to Fidel.

She was in Mompié on June 5, 1958, when Cuban air force planes, loaded with napalm-headed rockets supplied by the United States, destroyed the house of a farmer named Mario Sariol, Fidel’s friend. When this happened, Fidel wrote his most-quoted resolution: “Dear Celia, When I saw rockets firing at Mario’s house, I swore to myself that the North Americans were going to pay dearly for what they are doing. When this war is over, a much wider and bigger war will commence for me: the war that
I am going to wage against them. I am aware that this is my true destiny. Fidel.”

Aware of her own destiny, Celia seemed to harden her resolve to create an archive of their war documents. Subconsciously, perhaps, she is paying tribute to her dying father who taught her how to study history, the joys of discovering and collecting primary sources, and she’d learned from him how to manage records. In short, he’d taught her all the techniques as well as the pleasures of being a good historian. She’d been making copies of Fidel’s messages for quite some time, and now began to ask the other commanders to do the same, and give copies to her. This project was by no means rubber-stamped by Fidel. Nor did it go by without discussion by the others. If anyone were to capture these documents—an altogether reasonable argument against her project—it could be disastrous; it increased the vulnerability of the rebel army, therefore it was too dangerous. Maybe it was Fidel’s letter, declaring his destiny, and she reflected to herself that she knew her own contribution. Some commanders were already sending her material. Camilo Cienfuegos asked her to send him an accordion file so he could start collecting documents from his column, and she seems to have decided that the time had come to confront Fidel. “Tell me if you’ve taken care of this,” she wrote, and handed her letter to a messenger at 2:00 p.m. Fidel answered her letter at 5:00 p.m., probably as soon as he got her message, demanding: “What is all this sermon about papers, the archive?” But he didn’t say no, and she never let Fidel’s grumbling stop her.

DURING THE EARLY BATTLES
—throughout June and July 1958—Celia’s strategic importance was getting messages from Che that provided Fidel with accurate information of the Cuban army’s advance. Che would send her letters by courier, and she conveyed Che’s messages to Fidel via telephone. Likewise, Fidel would call Celia with orders for Che, she’d write them out, and have a courier take them to Che, who’d moved his column closer to the Las Vegas front. There were days in June that were the most precarious of the war: Fidel held onto a few square miles of northwestern slope of Pico Caracas because Che, closer to the mountain’s base, held off the advance of Batista’s troops. Las
Vegas fell to the Cuban army on June 10, but Che continued to move back and forth, striking wherever he could. Batista’s forces poured into the area in huge numbers, but partly because of the effectiveness of the telephone, the Cuban army could not gain a foothold. We can see a piece of that story unfold, moment to moment, because of Celia’s archives.

Che moved around from skirmish to skirmish; on June 8 an American showed up in his camp in Las Vegas and Che quickly sent a note to Celia, asking Fidel what to do. She replied the same day: “Fidel says to leave the gringo there. According to our intelligence he’s from the FBI and has come to eliminate Fidel.” According to Cuban historian Pedro Álvarez Tabío, it was Frank Fiorini, who became famous during the Watergate break-in when he worked for the CIA under the name of Frank Sturgis. “Since you are coming in the morning, I’m not writing [at any length],” Celia added, as a postscript, and “Today I’ve heard a new word.” The rebel leaders could be completely flummoxed by the sometimes apocryphal language of the mountains, and amused, as was probably the case in this instance. “Until tomorrow, Celia Sánchez 6/8/58.”

Cuban army troops were advancing on all fronts: from the east, they were pouring into Estrada Palma, which was too close to the rebels’ training school at Minas del Frio. “I’ve just talked to Fidel,” Celia writes him from Mompié, at 3:30 p.m. on June 10. “He says he hasn’t had time to write you . . . he only said to tell you to choose someone responsible there [the officers’ training school]” to lead a defense.

Two rebel soldiers told Celia they’d seen an army tank going up the mountain toward Las Vegas, and had counted, along with the tank, twenty-five foot soldiers. She quickly fires off a note to Che; “They say that the tank stopped when some soldier yelled out to be careful, that in those branches there was a mine. The tank stopped in front of the mine and the mine exploded, the explosion was not great . . . but something happened. . . . According to what we’ve heard, after the mine exploded the soldiers continued to the peak and later retreated. If this is so, they were coming as an advance.”

Rebel platoons scattered around the base of the mountains held onto the area. On the 15th, she wrote Che that she’d got his message “in code, half is missing; Fidel says for you to come here,
and if that’s not possible to quickly send a copy of your code and an explanation of it.” Then the Cuban army made another drive.

On the 17th, planes hit a rebel hospital. Fidel called at 11:15 a.m., and she took down this message: “Che: Fidel sends this message over the telephone for you: The soldiers are going down toward Lucas’s house, send the seven men with automatic weapons. . . . We’ve been fighting since 7:00 a.m., Fidel.” She adds her own intelligence: “You also must hear the plane flying over the place where Horacio is. We hear mortars and sometimes we hear machine guns. It seems that the soldiers are advancing through there.” She notes the time as 12:10 p.m., and hands it to a courier. Che answered her at 2:10: “Celia: Tell Fidel I’m carrying out his orders . . . We have to remember that there is a hospital with wounded. For now, I am going to take them outside. I also have given orders to Raúl [Castro Mercador, no relation to Fidel or his brother] to extend his lines and to Fonso [Alfonso Zayas Ochoa] to make a gradual retreat. I’ll let Crescencio [Perez Montero] know what’s happening. If you think some weapons can be left here, let me know. I’m sending you the ones you asked for, and I’m reminding you that we have a tripod here with 500 bullets.” Then writes: “Commander in Chief: Tell me what my job is.”

About seven hours later, she got this: “Celia: I’m sending you the book [for the code]; try to send me the first volume. Pass this message to Fidel: Commander in Chief: I am ordering the immediate transfer that you ordered but I’m letting you know that because it appears that resistance in the area of Las Vegas has been set up, our advance troops are at Loma de Desayuno. I gave orders to take the summits around Las Vegas. . . . If you have a detonator I need it here. I have three personal bombs and five grenades. Che June 19, 9:25.”

The next morning she wrote: “Che: I received your message and I sent it over the phone to Fidel. He says that all the changes are very good. Tell Crescencio’s group to retreat toward La Maestra… and to move the hospital back, he thinks the best place is El Roble, he doesn’t think La Plata is safe… Last night Fidel told me that he could not send you a detonator [but] that he’ll send you a car battery; it was low on charge and recharged this morning. . . . Another thing that Fidel keeps asking for is the reinforcement he requested yesterday. Celia Sánchez 6/20/58 11:25 a.m.”

Meanwhile, Fidel had received a report of the Cuban army’s advances from the sea. They were unloading troops to advance on the
Comandancia
from the southern side of Caracas Mountain. He must have been out in the field because he wrote her a note. “Celia: Send Che the entire message from Pedrito so that he can understand the situation here.”

The following day Fidel wrote, “Send the two large bombs to the little store [Tiendacita de La Maestra] and send for the large square bomb that was left behind in Las Vegas.”

She composed a note, fixed the time at 11:58 a.m., and sent it to “Che: . . . soldiers are fixing the road with tractors, Fidel says to make trenches for the tanks and put the mine near a ditch.” In the afternoon, she sent another. “Che: Gello brought news that Las Vegas was taken; that from Minas del Infierno, with binoculars, you can see soldiers. I paid no attention to this. We haven’t heard one shot. Now we can hear some sort of celebration. Fidel says to select the ten best men from the school; he is going to arm them and give them Beretta practice. He wants you to start moving Raúl and Anelito’s group to the road toward Las Minas del Infierno and Mompié. Cover those positions with Crescencio’s men; Horacio and Lara’s people should reinforce Raúl and Angelito; he, Fidel, will come [down] to give the weapons of those who were in Las Vegas, Horacio and the Laras, to the ten boys he asked you for, and the five from Las Vegas that he’s bringing and who are already trained in shooting. This will be when we learn the motive of or how the entry to Las Vegas occurred. . . . The reinforcement of the seven boys arrived here 15 minutes ago. I told Fidel that they are going to eat now, sleep, and leave at 5:00 a.m. They are tired.” And she added a postscript: “I received the [code] book. Celia Sánchez 6/20/58 5:45 p.m.” She adds: “Tomorrow two men are going to install a telephone there to connect only us. This is going to resolve [the problem of having so] many messengers, even though we are the only ones communicating.”

On June 23 and 24, another battalion (the Cuban army’s eighteenth) started moving up toward Fidel’s command headquarters. They’d landed on the beach and were making their way up the La Plata River toward the
Comandancia
. From higher ground, the rebel army’s Captain Ramon Paz attacked and drove
off the battalion, although he was fighting with a single platoon of men.

ON JUNE 24, CELIA’S FATHER DIED
in Havana. A news bulletin was read hourly over Radio Reloj, the powerful 24-hour news station broadcast from Havana: “The longtime representative from Niquero to the National Medical College has passed away.” The announcer was Mas Martín, a 26th of July member (who would later marry Inez Girona). Che heard the broadcast and wrote: “Celia: I suppose you’ve learned of your father’s death. I wouldn’t like to be the bearer of this news. Between us there is no space for formal condolences; I only remind you that you can always count on me. A brotherly hug from, Che.”

THEY WERE IN SUCH DANGER
that Fidel called in Camilo Cienfuegos and Juan Almeida to help him resist the army’s advance. On Wednesday, June 26, he came down the mountain to get Celia in Mompié. They waited as Che made his way from Las Vegas. The rebel army was conceding territory. Fidel ordered Che to stay with them in Mompié, because it was too dangerous for him to go back to Las Vegas. By the next day, Thursday, June 27, Las Vegas had been overtaken. Defeat and her father’s death had arrived at the same time for Celia.

IN HAVANA, BEFORE HER FATHER’S DEATH
, a last-ditch attempt to capture Celia Sánchez was mounted by the army. They were so convinced that she would appear at her father’s bedside, that during the last weeks of his illness they put plainclothes detectives inside the hospital (from both police and military forces). Clodo and Lydia had been posing as friends from Media Luna and switched their guise to family from Santiago. Visiting the hospital was a menacing prospect for Celia’s sisters, so the Girona cousins went to see Dr. Sánchez, and many people traveled from Oriente Province for that purpose, such as Elsa Castro and Maria Antonia Figueroa. They went for Celia. Figueroa says she made friends with an Oriente family who often visited another ward, so the guards thought she was one of their family. Then she’d slip into Manuel Sánchez’s ward at night, where the nurses were 26th of July supporters.