One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution (24 page)

IT WAS DURING THIS PERIOD
, while Celia was at the farm, that the owner unexpectedly paid a visit to consult his manager, Rene Llópiz. The owner rarely came to the property. He knew nothing of the transformation of his
marabu
grove and unwittingly walked into the farmhouse to find Celia. He knew perfectly well, of course, that she was being hunted by the chief of police, and reacted as would any normal person: told her to leave his house because she was putting him in a lot of danger. Celia fired back that she had no intention of leaving. In fact, she said that he was the one who should go.

From his point of view, although he must have known that Celia was tough, being a guerrilla leader, she was still Dr. Sánchez’s daughter. She was also the sister-in-law of a fellow rice grower, Pedro Álvarez. The owner was not going to turn Celia over to the police or military, but that didn’t mean he wanted her to stay. From Celia’s viewpoint, she had to throw him out of his own house. She had to get him out of there before he grasped what was going on. She was aware that he probably thought she was only hiding there, considered her to be a regrettable but temporary fugitive, an inconvenience. He could live with that, but if he stayed for any length of time, he’d figure out that she and Rene were involved in an organized operation. She must not allow him the opportunity of even sensing this. One of the upstairs bedrooms was what she called her “central warehouse” for storing uniforms and medicine. Of course, she also had a substantial number of men hiding in
his formerly abandoned
marabu
grove, something he’d never figure out if she’d didn’t let him. Therefore, he could not stay and she could not go. She threatened him. Historian Pedro Álvarez Tabío writes that “she insinuated fierce consequences that would supposedly come about if he used indiscretion or denounced them to the enemy.” I never found out what those “fierce consequences” were.

WHEN THE FIRST GROUP OF SOLDIERS
left the
marabuzal
, the nation had been focused on Havana because two days earlier, on March 13, José Antonio Echeverria’s militant organization, the Revolutionary Directorate, had attempted to assassinate Batista. The attack was quite large in scope. It took place in two parts of the city. Echeverria and a small group of men stayed close to the university, which is located in the Vedado section of Havana. There they captured Radio Reloj (Clock Radio), which continuously broadcasts news bulletins every minute, punctuated by an announcement of the time of day, followed by the words: “Radio Reloj.” Echeverria told the nation what was taking place, over the airwaves, as his soldiers machine-gunned their way into the Presidential Palace several miles away in Habana Vieja, the old part of the city. In order to defend two parts of the city, the army sent out over a thousand troops from Camp Columbia. By the time the army’s soldiers and tanks got to the palace, the Directorate’s men had gained access to the door leading directly to Batista’s apartment (an elevator door, off the main courtyard). The Directorate’s men were killed and the assassination attempt ended, but only because the elevator car happened to be at the top, according to historian Hugh Thomas, who tells us that had the elevator door opened immediately, Batista would have been killed. The attack at 3:30 p.m. was planned to coincide with Batista’s lunch with his family. It lasted several hours, and various small battles took place in those two parts of town. The Directorate had snipers on the roofs of all the tall buildings near the palace, and these fired down on the army’s troops. The same happened in Vedado, where small battles, generated from sniper fire, prolonged the conflict. Echeverria left Radio Reloj when he knew they’d failed at the palace, but he was gunned down on a street just outside the walls of the university. (A bronze plaque
marks the spot on Jovellar, just off Calle L, and is covered in flowers every year on March 13.) A few of his men escaped and went into hiding.

AS CELIA WORKED TO ASSEMBLE
a second group of soldiers, Fidel asked her to take on a new assignment. Robert Taber, a producer for CBS and a journalist, had sent word that he wanted to interview Fidel for television. This was a wonderful opportunity for the movement. Everyone with a television set would be able to see Fidel, in the flesh. Celia began making arrangements for Taber’s trip, and elicited Felipe Guerra Matos’s help. She devised a plan for Felipe to drive Taber and his cameraman, Wendell Hoffman, in and out of the mountains.

ON APRIL 15
, Taber and Hoffman arrived in Havana. It was the beginning of Easter Week. They had to wait in a hotel until Maundy Thursday, when Haydée Santamaria arrived to pick them up. Armando Hart and Faustino Pérez were arrested as she watched through the windshield. Haydée acted as if nothing unusual had happened, even though she was married to Hart; she could do nothing but drive the journalists to Manzanillo.

CELIA WAS IN MANZANILLO WAITING
for Haydée and the TV journalists. Pancho Saumell and his wife, owners of a rice plantation, had agreed to let her meet the journalists in their beautiful home, just off Manzanillo’s Cespedes Park. She sat in the living room under Moorish arches, walls wainscoted with cobalt and bronze-luster tiles, with Nicaragua, who had been sent by Frank. (Frank, by April, was keeping up his general’s role from jail.) Nicaragua would accompany the group, and when they reached Fidel inform him of a large shipment of arms that Frank had just purchased from the Revolutionary Directorate. Nicaragua’s mission was to ask Fidel to name the best place for delivery of the weapons.

As Celia and Nicaragua sat there, expecting the journalists to arrive at any moment, there was a knock on the door. Enrique Escalona dashed in with the news that Armando had been arrested in Havana. The owners of the house, the Saumells, had been hovering and were having a change of heart. Perhaps their intention of doing something to help Celia had waned with Nicaragua’s arrival, especially if they overheard phrases like “extra guns” or “weapons left over from the assassination attempt” or “attack on the Presidential Palace.” Expressing their reluctance, the Saumells, asked Celia and Nicaragua to leave before Escalona’s arrival. What happened next must have confirmed all the worst flights of the Saumells’ imagination. Just as Enrique was telling Celia and Nicaragua what he’d heard about Armando, a bomb exploded outside on the corner. Within minutes, the police poured out of headquarters, close by Cespedes Park, and began to enter all the houses in the vicinity. At first, Celia and Nicaragua tried to climb over a back wall, couldn’t manage it, and came back inside. They left the house through a small side door that opened directly from the living room into the street, which was filled with policemen and patrol cars. They walked past all this activity very naturally, appearing to be curious but uninvolved onlookers.

Felipe Guerra Matos came out of a building nearby. He was unaware of what was going on. Later, the police found his car parked on the square with a pile of political pamphlets on the backseat. Escalona had borrowed Felipe’s car earlier in the evening, had parked on the square “for a minute,” thinking he’d just dash into the Saumell house with news for Celia about Armando’s arrest. The police confiscated the pamphlets, and started hunting for Felipe Guerra Matos. (At this point in my interview with him, Guerra Matos, still angry about Escalona’s carelessness forty-five years before, jumped to his feet. He had to walk around the room several times before he was calm enough to finish the story.)

Celia and Nicaragua returned to the Saumells’ house when police activity died down, reasoning that it was the safest place to be since the police had already been there. By now the owners were adamant. Mrs. Saumell asked Celia to leave, and Celia, of course, objected. The two women were in the middle of their heated debate when another knock sounded at the front door; this time it wasn’t the police, but a soldier. Celia and Nicaragua disappeared through the same side door. They returned at midnight. By this time, the owners were beside themselves and, according to Nicaragua, Pancho Saumell paced the floor, going around in circles and holding his head, but stopping fairly often to peek through the shutters to check the street, while his wife lurched back and forth in a rocking chair, sobbing and moaning
that she was going to die. Celia took one look at the situation and announced that she was going to bed, leaving Nicaragua to deal with the distraught owners. When she got to her room she found the Saumells had dismantled the bed, so she simply went into the nursery and crawled into bed with their child.

The next morning, the Saumells woke Celia at 6:00 a.m. demanding she leave immediately, and she replied that she wasn’t going anywhere without a cup of coffee. Celia had had a good night’s sleep and was refreshed, whereas Nicaragua hadn’t had a wink; he had spent the night sitting up with the owners, who were so unnerved he worried that they might call the police. Celia liked and respected the owners, but they were just a small detail in comparison with getting Fidel on American television. Downstairs, Mrs. Saumell refused to make Celia’s coffee, on principle. Celia went to the kitchen and put water on the stove and was in the process of looking for the strainer when there was a knock at the door. Haydée Santamaria urged them to get into her car, but Celia refused, still insisting that she needed to drink some coffee first. She returned to the kitchen, compromised by sipping a bit of liquid through the grounds, and left, to everyone’s relief. On the road, Haydée explained that she’d gotten away when Armando was arrested, had picked up Taber and his cameraman, and driven to Manzanillo. When she arrived, she’d looked for, but couldn’t locate, Felipe Guerra Matos, then heard that he was in jail. Not knowing what else to do, she’d driven the Americans on to Bayamo, and left them at the home of a dentist she knew.

On the previous evening, when the police found Felipe, they jailed him for being in possession of political pamphlets. Someone notified Rafael Sierra of Guerra Matos’s arrest, and Rafael quickly set out to find a replacement. He selected a 26th of July member from a landowning family like Guerra Matos’s, who owned property in the mountains—in this case a coffee plantation—and had every reason to be driving around the countryside doing business with North Americans. Lalo Sardinas drove into Manzanillo as soon as he got Sierra’s call. He saw all the police activity, had trouble locating Rafael, but eventually they got together and drove to Bayamo.

Now assembled in Bayamo, but without Felipe’s roomy station wagon, they needed to take two cars to accommodate Celia,
Nicaragua, Haydée, Sierra, Lalo, Taber, and Hoffman, plus all the television equipment. They all had to reduce their luggage; even the journalists left pieces of equipment behind at the dentist’s house. They got to the sugar mill in Estrada Palma that night. From there, they left on foot, walking along the only road from the mill toward Providencia, the next small town. They thought they’d be able to pass through the town unnoticed at night, but on the Saturday night before Easter, lots of people were out and about. By Celia’s account, “People were dancing in all the houses, and each time a dog barked, Lalo worried we’d be discovered.” Lalo had decided that six strangers (Sierra must have driven one car back) would be fatal and they’d have to change their route. Lalo had them walk in the fields to avoid passing through Dos Gruas and Naguas, although these towns contained very few houses. Walking in fields would have been hard going at any time, but it was especially grueling in springtime: the ground was soft and muddy, and they were carrying a weighty camera, a heavy tripod, large cans of film, luggage, and were traveling in the dead of night. The journalists and Haydée hadn’t slept in 24 hours and were exhausted. Haydée was wearing a new pair of boots, and blisters soon formed on her heels. But Celia was fine. She had had a good night’s sleep, liked being out at night, and was wearing a pair of flat-heeled cowboy boots embroidered with little stars (as documented by Taber and Hoffman, in a film now in the Museum of Radio and Television in New York City). In the morning, Lalo located a businessman (Chiche Lastre) he knew well enough to suggest he hide six people in his house.

IN HAVANA, ON THE SAME SATURDAY
before Easter, the police stormed an apartment near the university where the few surviving leaders from Echeverria’s failed assassination attempt were hiding. From this group, Frank (in jail) had arranged to purchase the Revolutionary Directorate’s leftover arsenal. They’d been in the apartment at 7 Humboldt (now a museum) for over a month, since the Directorate’s failed assassination attempt against Batista. The police killed all the people inside the apartment.

IN FIDEL’S CAMP UP IN THE MOUNTAINS
, they heard that the army was searching for a group with two women, two gringos, and
two others. Fidel was alarmed and ordered Camilo Cienfuegos, by then considered to be his most reliable platoon leader, to select “any man” (or so the story goes) but save the group, “no matter what.” Later they heard, again through the grapevine, that the six had been discovered in a house near Santo Domingo, where they’d been hiding, and the house was under siege. Actually, Lalo’s group slept all day and left Chiche Lastre’s house after dark, following the Yara River, walking in the riverbed—a route that was both rocky and slippery, but much easier going then the night before, when each step they took had caused them to sink into the soft ground. They made good time, covering twenty miles on those two nights, and reached the property line of Lalo’s farm early in the morning. Lalo hid Celia and Haydée in one of his coffee groves, warning them to stay out of sight because the Rural Guard patrolled nearby roads. Later, while Celia and Haydée were sitting under coffee trees, they thought they saw one of Batista’s soldiers coming toward them. According to Haydée, Celia had been worrying about her father, wondering whether his instruments were being cleaned properly, as she watched the soldier approach. At first, only his helmet was visible, and they had to deal with their fear until they could see Camilo’s big smile.