But Olga was oblivious to the companies or the names of American mobsters. All she knew was that Batista was basking in the glory of opulent hotels and gaming houses while just a few hundred miles away, her own people were steeped in poverty without enough medical clinics or schools.
Their biggest disappointment was that Batista had once been one of their own. A mulatto born in 1901 to a poor farming family in Banes—a town dominated by United Fruit Company—Batista knew what it meant to be exploited. And in his first term as president in 1940, he kept his promises to the poor to build schools and hospitals.
To the simple, fun-loving guajiros, Batista was like Benito Juárez—the legendary Mexican president of the nineteenth century who overthrew a corrupt regime and helped rebuild the country to its earlier glory. Batista launched massive public works projects, except none of the wealth he created trickled down to the poor, who watched as the hotels and casinos lit up the Havana skyline.
Though he was defeated for reelection, Batista wasn’t going to give up. From his palatial Florida estate, he plotted his return. In 1948, he won election as a senator, and in 1952, he led a coup to take back the presidency. This time, he returned with a vengeance, suspending the Constitution, banning labor strikes, and shutting down press freedoms. He prowled Havana “like a panther,” chewing up his adversaries.
He would unleash the dreaded SIM, his secret police, on political opponents and anyone else who mocked his authority. Tired of the abuse, the poor people and students struck back. They began forging underground alliances to rescue their country.
For Olga, her own beginnings in the movement began in her cramped, cinder-block home when her mother would cry in the darkness because she didn’t have enough to feed her five children. To Olga, her family was poor and nothing was ever going to change. As a little girl, she would watch as her parents headed to the tobacco shacks, where they would spend hours tying bundles of green leaves, barely earning enough to survive.
But it wasn’t the hunger pangs that pushed Olga to the edge of desperation. It was her little brother, Roberto, who haunted her dreams and shattered her soul. When he was just nine, he stepped on a rusty nail while trying to rescue a cat trapped under a bridge during a rainstorm. Three days later, he shook uncontrollably from an infection raging through his body. Olga’s parents managed to find someone to donate a tetanus antidote, but days later, they discovered the medicine had long expired.
As he lay in pain in bed at San Juan de Dios Hospital on December 11, 1948, Olga gave him her favorite shirt—slipping it over his shriveled body—before he took his last breath.
She remembered him being laid out in a coffin in her family’s home, her mother and sisters sobbing. Then the long walk to the cemetery—seven blocks away—and the procession of people. The entire day, she refused to cry. “When I hurt inside, I can’t cry,” she recalled.
She tried to act as though she could move on, but the pain was overwhelming, waking her up in the middle of the night. Roberto, why did you have to die?
She already knew the answer: Her people were dirt poor, living in a shack with no running water or toilet. They should have been able to buy him the proper medicine to keep him alive.
By the time Olga returned to school, she was angry. No longer was she the little girl who skipped along Calle Independencia, playing with the other children. She became withdrawn—and alone.
She began spending more time talking to dissident teachers about subjects that had never before interested her: politics and war. She knew that Fidel Castro Ruz and his 26th of July Movement were already in the Sierra Maestra mountains, four hundred miles away, leading the cause. But in Las Villas Province, in the heart of the Escambray mountains, this is where the revolution would be won.
Batista’s men, who vastly outnumbered the barbudos—the bearded revolutionaries—had armored cars, submachine guns, grenades, and even B-26 bombers, all courtesy of the American government. If the rebels didn’t get more supplies, more weapons, and soon, Batista’s men would chase them into the swamps and all would be lost.
They needed a volunteer, someone who could slip in without being caught. Olga had nothing to lose. Her brother was dead. Her family was poor. She wasn’t going to finish school. She agreed to board the bus.
She told everyone at the school that she wasn’t afraid. But she was terrified. In Havana, police attacked one protester by stripping off her clothes, holding her legs apart, and thrusting a metal rod into her vagina, nearly killing her. When SIM officers barged into her hospital room, nearly a dozen nuns gathered around her bed to protect her. Around the same time, police tortured a young man by tearing off an ear, smashing his foot, and crushing his testicles.
As Olga stared out the bus window, she could see another checkpoint in the distance. The bus began to slow down.
Just look straight ahead, she thought. She counted the seconds. They needed to keep moving. They needed to make it to Manicaragua.
3
William Morgan was about to head into a foreign country that was sliding into a revolution. He didn’t know a soul. He didn’t speak the language. He knew nothing about the rebels or the dictator.
And yet, he would soon be boarding an airplane for Havana with everything he owned clenched in his hand.
As he walked into the concourse of Miami International Airport, he looked over and spotted Chao and some others gathered at the gate, all waiting to board the same flight.
For Chao, it was risky to bring Morgan. If he turned out to be a government agent, they could all be in danger. But if Morgan was truthful, he could bring much to the conflict. At twenty-nine, he was older than most of the rebels in the mountains, and with his army training, he could be invaluable.
God knows, they needed some military knowledge.
The young people heading to the mountains knew nothing about combat and even less about guerrilla warfare. Nada. And that’s what the war in Cuba was about. They had never fired M1s. Or lived in the brush for days on end. Most of them had never killed a man. They did not know what it was like to watch someone’s head explode from rapid fire or their guts spill out from a .12-gauge shotgun blast.
It was just a matter of time.
Their generation was like so many others in Cuba that had spawned revolutions over the past hundred years. It happened during the war of independence, when thousands of young Cubans took up arms against the Spanish at the dawn of the twentieth century. No one inspired the youth more than the legendary José Marti, the poet warrior who died in the conflict.
Then there was the revolt against President Gerardo Machado three decades later—eventually leading to the bloodless coup that brought in Batista. The cult of the pistolero would become a rite of passage, a kind of machismo that inspired each generation to rub out the last.
Morgan had only known Chao a few days, but already he could see the blond-haired, blue-eyed Cuban had taken up the torch. Chao and his friends could have been doing anything—going to the beach, getting an education, getting laid—but instead were restless to go home.
Chao’s mother moved to Miami to get her brood away from the political turmoil of their country—the classic immigrant story—but the young Cubans weren’t interested in blending into the American tapestry. They wanted to move back.
Chao stood next to the others at the gate, the veins bulging in his neck as he jabbed a finger in the air to make another point. As Morgan watched the young Cubano, he saw glimpses of himself as a younger man. “The Americanito,” as Chao was called, was like a jitterbug ready to throw himself into the fire.
Maybe, just maybe, Morgan could recover what he had lost. He could reclaim what had slipped away. He gripped his suitcase as he walked to the tarmac. It was late December, 1957. Morgan had no idea at that point whether he’d ever come back. He was about to bolt into the sky with thirteen young men to fight an entrenched army that was hell-ben
t on wiping out every last one of them.
4
Unaware of much of the bloodshed, William Morgan could still feel the tension when he stepped into José Marti Airport. Cop cars were lined up along the terminal building, and men roamed the sidewalk with billy clubs and submachine guns.
With a white suit, white shirt, and dress shoes, Morgan looked like a tourist from Kansas on his way to the Nacional for a round of roulette and a daiquiri. His companions, however, had more to worry about.
They were young, Cuban, just the kind of travelers who were attracting the attention of Batista’s guards. The government had been keeping lists of revolutionary activists in Miami, and anyone in the entourage could have been stopped.
Batista had assured the public the revolution was a joke and that he would stamp out the rebels like cockroaches, but the truth was that he had been quietly fretting about the impact they were having on his country.
He ordered police to patrol the Havana neighborhoods where activists had been holding demonstrations, and he had his dreaded secret police infiltrate the student groups at the University of Havana. He tried publicly to downplay the attack in March on the presidential palace, but the brazen daytime assault had come within a floor of the dictator’s office before it was finally repelled. Some forty-five rebels died in the bloody mess, leaving Batista shaken and angry over the embarrassing near miss.
A month later, he got his revenge when his secret police raided an apartment in Havana and killed four of the conspirators.
Shortly after Chao and Morgan and the others passed through customs, they waived down a driver at the curb. With no more checkpoints, they just needed to get to the safe house.
Havana looked more or less the same, except for the new hotels piercing the skyline. The Riviera loomed high above them, an architectural wonder that had just opened with a gaudy party and Hollywood celebrities. Just beyond the Riviera, the Hilton, another monstrous symbol of opulence and prosperity, stood just two months from opening.
But beneath the glitz was a city on the edge, one that had become a magnet for raging young men looking to topple it all.
Amado had cleared the way for them with the other rebels, but Morgan didn’t have to speak Spanish to know, as soon as they stepped into the safe house, that they were in trouble. The place was under surveillance, and no one knew when the secret police would knock on the door. Amado’s contacts were supposed to show up days ago, but something had happened. No one was coming.
This wasn’t good. Morgan and Chao now had to scramble to find someone in Castro’s underground network to help them. The problem was that not only had Batista killed some of the urban organizers helping Castro, but the SIM had infiltrated key rebel groups. Make one wrong move—one bad contact—and they were walking into a trap. Morgan’s mind churned as he looked out the window.
He had an idea, which he floated to the group through Chao. The Cuban students were the most likely suspects, so why not let an American make some of the contacts? By reaching out to some of the rebel groups, Morgan might be able to hit the right cell without drawing attention. They had to do something.
A pay phone stood just beyond the stores outside their window. Morgan could take the names and numbers and start calling. Many spoke some English, and if not, they would know someone in the group who did.
After the sun slid into the harbor, Morgan quietly slipped out and made his way to the phone booth. Despite the recent shootouts between the guerrillas and soldiers, the streets still thronged with tourists streaming into Havana. For all of Batista’s blunders, he still controlled the mainstream media and effectively suppressed news of revolutionary successes.
Not far from the phone booth, Morgan saw a figure emerge from the darkness. At first, he didn’t know what to expect, but as the man came closer, Morgan began to make out his face.
They both froze.
It couldn’t be.
But it was.
In front of Morgan stood Roger Rodriguez, the former medical student who was steeped in the underground movement in Miami and had frequented the Bowery, the club where Morgan had worked.
“William,” he said, walking over to hug Morgan. Many a night at the bar, Rodriguez had talked to Morgan about the problems in his country, and now their paths had crossed again.
Morgan remembered the young, idealistic student who always pledged to someday return. None of the young people liked Batista, especially Rodriguez. Maybe Morgan could get the help he needed. He knew he was taking a chance, but he opened up. Morgan needed to make contacts. He and his friends wanted to go to the Sierra Maestra.
“You want to go?” Rodriguez asked, puzzled. Morgan wasn’t Cuban. He had no ties to the island.
But Morgan didn’t have time to explain. He reached into his pocket and took out a list.
Rodriguez looked at the piece of paper under the streetlight. “My friend,” he said, holding up the paper, “you’ve been deceived. These guys are with the forces of Batista.”
Rodriguez, now a doctor, had been entrenched in the revolution for more than a year. He knew which groups had been infiltrated. The police would show up at the nightly underground meetings to break up the gatherings and threaten everyone. Then they would make arrests. Morgan needed to get out.
“You’ve got to go back,” Rodriguez said. “You are going to return to the United States.” It was too dangerous for an Americano. Morgan didn’t speak Spanish. He didn’t understand the politics of Havana, where so many people were turning on one another.
“I only got twenty dollars in my pocket,” Morgan said. “I am going to the Sierra Maestra.”
Rodriguez could tell that Morgan wasn’t going to relent. If Rodriguez left him on the streets, he could easily be set up. It was a difficult position. He thought for a moment and offered an alternative: If Morgan could wait, Rodriguez would put him in touch with another rebel group. It wouldn’t be easy, but he could direct Morgan to an entirely different stretch of the country. Castro’s militia already had hundreds of guerrillas. But this group needed help. They were young, inexperienced, desperate for reinforcements, and holed up in a dangerous area. Batista’s soldiers were moving in, and the rebels needed weapons, ammunition, and other critical supplies.
When Morgan returned to the safe house, he and Chao said good-bye. They had grown close, but Chao had come to Cuba to head to the Sierra Maestra, not the other mountain chain. It was better that they separate for now. Someday, if they survived the fighting, they’d see each other again.
Now, all Morgan had to do was wait for Rodriguez. The tension had mounted in Havana as more rebels were rounded up. Protesters hauled in for questioning grimly went missing.
Esteban Ventura Novo, the dreaded police captain who dressed in all white, had been arresting the very people who were supposed to be helping Morgan and the others. It was no wonder that no one had showed up to escort them to the mountains.
By the time Rodriguez finally arrived with another rebel to drive, he had found out that Ventura’s men were watching the very house they were occupying. There was little time to spare. Rodriguez served as guide, and Morgan sat tight and held his passport in case they were stopped.
Rodriguez knew the routes to take to avoid the checkpoints, but still, he couldn’t take any chances. The police were getting wise to the movements.
As they sped along a back road out of the city, the driver pointed to the police stopping cars along La Rampa, the main drag. It had become so dangerous that they would soon be forced to find new routes out of the city. If they could make it to Las Villas Province, they stood a better chance of making it to their destination—in one hundred more miles.
If they kept moving, they could stay alive.
5
As the car approached Sancti Spiritus, the landscape rolled into gentle foothills. For hours, Morgan had been watching the vast expanse of planta
tions leading to the center of the country. It was hard to believe this serene land with palm trees rising into the blue sky was about to turn into a war zone.
Men rode on horses across grassy fields that seemed to stretch in every direction. In the distance, the tops of the mountains rose into the clouds.
As planned, the driver rose up a hill and entered the town, turning down a maze of streets until they pulled in front of a drugstore. Moments later, Reinol Gonzalez bounded out and held out his hand. For months, the pharmacy owner had been helping the cause, moving medicine, gauze, syringes, and other supplies to the rebels.
“You are the Americano,” he said, nodding to Morgan.
Gonzalez formed a critical link in the underground movement, offering his store as a way station for young men on their way to join the cause.
Roger Rodriguez needed to get back to Havana, but he would leave Morgan that much closer to his destination. Somehow their encounter at dusk at the phone booth had been more than a coincidence.
For Morgan, it would be a long time before he could thank his old friend. For the first time since arriving in Cuba, Morgan was on his own.
Gonzalez escorted him inside, where they waited.
Morgan learned the underground movement was far more than what he saw in his brief stay in Havana. Runners went from town to town on horseback, collecting guns and clothes for the rebels. In every town, messengers ran critical information to the mountains, including army troop movements. The patchwork of people was a lifesaver for the rebels.
By morning, two dark men in fatigues came inside and greeted Gonzalez. Faustino Echemendia and Efren Mur had been going back and forth between the pharmacy and the mountains for days, helping volunteers reach the rebel camp. Both were farmers who had grown up on the land. They knew the mule trails and winding, narrow paths that snaked like arteries into the lower mountains. Wiry and tough, Echemendia resembled the street kids whom Morgan hung out with in Toledo. Any mention of Batista made his eyes narrow and he cursed under his breath.
The Yankee Comandante Page 3