One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution (45 page)

On the morning of January 1, 1959, Celia is joined by her sisters, Griselda and Acacia, in Palma Soriano. (
Courtesy of Oficina de Asuntos Históricos
)

No more fighting would be necessary. Fidel and Celia prepared to enter Santiago.

FROM THE FEW PHOTOGRAPHS
I’ve seen, it looks as if there were few in the party that drove down from Palma Soriano to Santiago: the two comandantes, Fidel and Celia, a few bodyguards, Celia’s stalwart helper, Felipe Guerra Matos, her sisters Acacia and Griselda, and two radio engineers, packed into a two American cars. Celia donned her 26th of July uniform, rather than the olive green tunic and trousers she usually wore, and a cloth cap, perched on the back of her head so the bill stood up. (The detail makes her easy to find on contact sheets.) She is talking to soldiers in jeeps, most likely telling everybody what they’re to do next (and which they receive as orders). In frame after frame, she’s surrounded by hundreds of soldiers, all in rebel army uniforms. By nightfall, columns from the entire eastern end of the country came pouring into Santiago. By midnight, most had arrived.

The victorious 26th of July leaders made their way to the balcony of the town hall, on the edge of the old Plaza Cespedes. People crammed the verandah and balconies of the old Hotel Casa
Grande; they filled rooftops, side streets, the steps of the cathedral. Strings of bare bulbs hung around the square, and a pair of klieg lights illuminated Fidel as he prepared to speak—accepting the surrender of Santiago’s garrison.

“What greater glory than the love of the people?” he began. “What greater reward than these thousands of waving arms, so full of hope, faith, and affection toward us? . . . No satisfaction and no prize is greater than that of fulfilling our duty, as we have been doing up to now, and as we shall always do. In this I don’t speak in my name. . . . Physically, Frank País is not here, nor many others, but they are here spiritually—and only the satisfaction that their death was not in vain can compensate for the immense emptiness they left behind them.”

BEFORE DAWN
, Celia and Fidel left Santiago. They traveled in a motorcade of just a few cars that seem in photos to be emerging from a fog, at the front of the caravan composed of the command staff, followed by guerrilla soldiers loaded into trucks and jeeps confiscated from the Moncada (driven by ex-
batistiano
soldiers). Slowly, the victory march rolled along, stopping in each city to accept the surrender of former government forces. At each stop, Fidel would explain everything, the future and the past. The caravan grew as it continued westward, army regulars, in numbers, joining the rebels—Cuba’s new army.

The slow pace was strategic, writes historian Hugh Thomas, to allow Camilo Cienfuegos and Che Guevara to get settled in Havana. Camilo had seized the Cuban army’s military stronghold in Havana, Camp Columbia, at approximately the same time Fidel led his victorious troops out of Santiago; Che arrived in the capital on January 2, and took command of the ancient La Cabaña fortress. The 26th of July was, by design, occupying seats of military power closely associated with Batista’s ascent.

Nothing happened fast. At each stop, local boys who’d taken part in the war as members of the 26th of July Movement, soldiers and
clandestinos
, slipped back to their neighborhoods, welcomed as heroes. Photographs provide a sense of these small celebrations: a house filled with candles and flowers, on the table a cake covered in icing; young girls dressed up in their prettiest clothes; and neighbors crowded in along with mothers, aunts, sisters, fathers, brothers, uncles—all with radiant faces. The local hero, wearing a 26th of July armband, stands before them, savoring this unrepeatable moment. Those young heroes would leave again at dawn, to rejoin their squadrons and continue west with Fidel, to the next towns and provinces, and eventually Havana.

Celia in Santiago, on January 1, 1958, dining in the home of Arsenio Cervea. The fighting is over, Santiago has surrendered, and she is about to take her place in the victory cavalcade, west to Havana. (
Courtesy of Oficina de Asuntos Históricos
)

Manzanillo’s women quickly raised $5,000 (a staggering sum) and presented Celia with a gold Rolex wristwatch, in remembrance of her years among them—planning the war, hiding in their homes, asking for support. They wanted her to have something elegant, and useful in her new life in Havana. They no doubt anticipated she’d become Cuba’s new first lady. The richest of them kicked in the most but, as I understand, everyone gave. They were proud of Celia, and proud of themselves. She’d asked them to risk their lives to make this revolution. As young wives and daughters, they’d donned high heels and their nicest skirts to smuggle, in their petticoats, everything from film to explosives. Older women had carried passports and documents; farm girls had served as the backbone of the rebel army’s communications system; young women had served as telephone operators; others had done whatever they could as saleswomen, housewives, and maids to flummox Manzanillo’s police force and the local garrison. They’d often defied their families. Fidel clearly cast a larger-than-life presence in these stops, but in some cities along the route it was Celia the people most wanted to see.

The victory cavalcade moved so slowly that it only got to Camaguey on January 4, having covered less than fifty miles a day. Photographs show people waiting by the highway for a long string of vehicles to appear, for their chance to throw flowers, while others wait in their newly washed automobiles, eager to join the caravan. The foreign press poured into Cuba to cover the story, traveling east from Havana to meet Fidel’s triumphal march. They encountered the 26th of July’s ad hoc protocol: journalists who wanted to see Fidel needed to speak first to Celia Sánchez. They met a woman in uniform, notebook in hand, cigarette between well-manicured fingers, and the story goes that when they heard she was Fidel’s command partner, at least some of them thought of “Maid” Marion, Robin Hood’s soul mate, the woman of the forest who helped him rob the rich to help the poor.

FROM MY PERSPECTIVE
, this marks a watershed in Celia’s life story—not that she was aware of it or would have cared. Having finally reached the point that she was known by those around her as Celia Sánchez—a figure in her own right, though to an extent still “the doctor’s daughter”—in foreign eyes she was becoming identified as “Fidel Castro’s . . . something.” No one could pin down that “something.” For various reasons, the questioners found it vexing, and a mystery emerged: “Who is this unusual figure, relative to Fidel?” For Cubans, it’s not irrelevant, but hangs somewhere in the background. She was Celia, their heroine. All, or so many of them still feel, knew her personally. Celia Sánchez Manduley is too formal, almost an insult. When I started this project, people would correct me: Celia is Celia just as Che is simply Che, and Fidel only Fidel, etc. But the mystery persists. It played a part in my attraction to her life story, and though I don’t imagine I’ve solved it definitively, I believe I’ve been able to shed some light. The greatest illumination reached me, to my surprise, not in retracing Celia’s life in the mountains, during the war, but in following her through victory when she lived in Havana, a leader in post-Batista Cuba. It was to prove radically different from her rugged existence in the mountains, and, in my estimation, far from the life in the capital she had probably anticipated.

Early in January 1959, somewhere on the victory cavalcade route, Felipe Guerra Matos stands by Celia as she speaks with Dr. Bernabé Ordaz. Ordaz was a physician who, as a clandestino, was imprisoned on 13 different occasions before coming to the Sierra Maestra, where he was in charge of the hospital Celia designed at the
Comandancia
La Plata. Ordaz also took part, with Fidel’s Column 1, in battles, and shortly before this picture was taken, had received the rank of comandante. Perhaps they are discussing Havana, where Ordaz would become director of the psychiatric hospital. (
Courtesy of Oficina de Asuntos Históricos
)

WHILE EN ROUTE TO HAVANA
, and the next chapter of her life, Celia kept a part of her heart in the Sierra Maestra. She arranged for the purchase of toys in late December, as she had for years, and made calls to her old vendors in Santiago even as she waited in Palma Soriano between Christmas and New Year’s Day. She intended to pull together her King’s Day festivities for less privileged children, just she had in Pilón. On January 6, at her behest, a Cuban air force plane flew over the war-torn parts of the Sierra, targeting the houses of families who’d supported the rebels, and dropped toys. Buying toys, locating a plane and pilot—charming a former
batistiano
—and advising him where to drop his payload was among the things with which Celia was occupied, notebook always in hand, in Santiago and on the march west. Her friends from Pilón don’t know who helped her that year, and suspect she made all the arrangements on her own. Celia was sending her comrades in the mountains a message: I will not forget you or your children. Thank you for your help. Together, we have won the war.

Celia’s decision and effort to sustain the tradition she’d established for King’s Day exemplifies her role after victory. She interprets victory in her own manner and decides how best to serve the Revolution. She chooses her own projects, and quietly goes about achieving them, for the rest of her life. It is safe to say, thanks in some measure to the power she held as a member of the revolutionary government and her close association with Fidel, that most of Celia’s projects got accomplished. She always seemed to remember what winning the war meant, that the 26th of July had obligations after victory. In this way she remained loyal to Frank, to the people who helped her, to the combatants and
clandestinos
and friends who had been with her in Manzanillo and Pilón.

Part IV
HAVANA

30. J
ANUARY
1959
Arrival in Havana

THE HUGE CAVALCADE ARRIVED
in Havana on January 8 via the old industrial city of Guanabacoa, wending its way on the old harbor road past freight yards, factories, and refineries along the port, to the Presidential Palace. The country’s new leadership was to give a press conference there, in the Hall of Mirrors. The newly appointed president, former judge Manuel Urrutia, was waiting with his wife. Celia and Fidel joined them on the stage. I’m not sure when—maybe it was before Camilo Cienfuegos arrived from Camp Columbia—Fidel looked around at the mirrors and rococo moldings, and at the gaudily painted ceiling, and told those assembled that he didn’t like the idea of having a palace, but since they couldn’t afford to build another seat of government, “We are going to try to figure out a way for the people to have affection for this building.” Between his fingers he held a long, slender cigar.

After the press conference, Celia, Fidel, and Urrutia left for Camp Columbia. They got into the head car, one of Batista’s, driven by Batista’s driver, and rode through old Havana. When they reached La Rampa, the street that ascends from the sea to the heart of Vedado, the first street to be lined with tall buildings housing airline offices on the ground floor and underground nightclubs, Fidel spontaneously declared that he didn’t want to ride in Batista’s car any longer. The vehicle was closed in by tinted
windows and had been bullet-proofed. He leapt out, got into Juan Almeida’s open jeep, directly behind—also driven by one of Batista’s soldiers—where he could see and be seen; from there, he could drink in the pleasure of the crowds.

Celia rode in the front car, and when it reached Camp Columbia, the driver took the wrong entrance (by the San Alejandro Art School) but immediately realized his mistake. Before he could turn around, Celia got out and went into a house just inside this gate. Almeida’s jeep pulled in behind, and he and Fidel also went inside the house, as did the next group of commanders coming off the parade route. They’d been traveling since dawn and were exhausted. Some chatted, some took quick naps, until they all agreed that they’d better get on with the official ceremonies. In the distance, they could see the stage that had been constructed for the event inside Camp Columbia, and decided that the least complicated way to get there was over the fence, then walk to the podium and get the ceremony—their official acceptance of control of the camp and of the Cuban military—under way.