As Morgan pushed open the door of the station, the employees recognized him and waved him in. He then proceeded and opened the studio doors. As he entered, the audience applauded. “¡Comandante Morgan! ” they cheered, rising to their feet.
He had become a hero to the Cuban people. Newspapers editorialized in his favor, and civic groups pushed for the government to extend citizenship to him to make amends for the loss of his status as an American. He was bigger now than he had ever been.
Morgan obviously wasn’t scheduled to appear on Castro’s national address, but he had burst on set with cameras rolling. Castro was still delivering his speech. Ever the showman, the leader acted as if nothing was wrong. But Olga, who arrived moments later with the escorts, could see his head held straight up and his arms folded.
The two men walked away from the microphone and talked away from the audience, with Castro chewing on his cigar. Olga watched as the Cuban leader’s eyes narrowed. The escorts nervously held their weapons. Morgan, who had been talking intensely in Castro’s ear, backed up, spun around, and walked off the set, the audience cheering. No one heard what they said, but Olga could see that Castro was enraged.
As they walked outside, Olga pulled close to Morgan. “He is going to come after us,” she said, shaking her head. “He isn’t going to forget this.”
Even Morgan had a breaking point. Just before dawn, he slipped out of the apartment and climbed into his Oldsmobile with a couple of his men. If he could make it out of the city just for a day, he might be able to rest. He might be able to stop the spiraling.
He had spent barely any time with Olga and even less with little Loretta. The long talks he had with Olga in the mountains about what they would do after the war—it was all becoming a blur. It never seemed to end. Just when they thought they could move on, something else came along. He rarely spoke about his children in Ohio, but Olga could tell that he longed to visit them. He wanted all of his family to be together. He would do whatever it took to protect them and the Second Front, but it all was falling on him. The turmoil of Havana was consuming his life.
The sun was rising as the Oldsmobile sped toward the first row of foothills. The smell of rich earth filled the air as the open expanse of coffee plantations spread out before their eyes. In the distance, the guajiros tended the rows of tall, green coffee plants. This was the Cuba for which he had fought. These were the people who had stirred him, these were the people who mattered.
The car followed a dirt road and came to a clearing. Thick vines covered several shacks that surrounded a larger decayed wooden building. From just beyond the trees came the sound of rushing water.
“El Río Ariguanabo,” one of the men said, the Ariguanabo River, a waterway south of Havana.
Morgan walked toward the clump of trees and forlorn buildings. Pushing aside the branches, he peeked inside one of the huts. In the darkness, he saw a row of brick cauldrons filled with green, dank water. At the next hut, he pulled his knife from his leg holster and sliced through gnarled, twisted vines to get inside. Puzzled, the men watched him. He eyed the shacks and paced off the distance between them and the river. It appeared that ditches had been dug to allow water into the structures. The place looked like a fishery, but no one could say for sure.
Morgan got back into the car, the guards following. On the drive back to Havana, he asked about the river, the site, and the local wildlife. Something had clicked with him, but no one could figure out what it was.
He couldn’t sleep. Morgan had been walking the halls, stepping out on the balcony and coming back in. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the stop he made with his men. It wasn’t some desolate corner of Cuba. To Morgan, it represented something far different.
In that moment, he saw a place where they could become self-sufficient. If he and his men could get enough building materials and dig a network of ditches, they could build a hatchery. No one would bother them. No one would threaten their way of life. It would get them out of Havana, but more importantly, it would allow them to make money to survive. They would never need the government again.
The idea of creating a farm for fish and frogs—food that could be packaged and sold to restaurants—was real, Morgan told his men. The river was teeming with sunfish and bass that could be delivered to restaurants in Cuba and Miami.
The Second Front didn’t have a lot of choices. They had nowhere else to go. They either had to leave the country altogether or stay and try to do something in it. All he wanted from the government was to let the Second Front fend for itself on its own land. Morgan would do the rest. It was time for the rebels to take control of their destinies. It was time to assemble their resources and make a stand.
40
Drenched in sweat, Morgan jammed the shovel into the dark, thick muck and turned it over. In just a few motions, he had dug the outline of a trench that would run all the way to the river. Another one a few feet away would run in the same direction.
Morgan had already figured out the layout of the conservation site. Now he needed the men to do the digging. He had taken out books on hatcheries and fish breeding and had even found a conservation map of the land southwest of Havana where the Ariguanabo River meanders into dark lagoons.
He was determined to learn everything he could about fish breeding and another species turning up everywhere: frogs. In the late 1950s, frog legs had become a delicacy at restaurants in the United States, and Morgan saw the potential.
Olga and his men were witnessing a different side of Morgan. They had always known him as a rebel fighter. To see him poring over books and drafting paper was almost out of character, but at the same time, they could see him carrying out his tasks with the same passion that he showed in the mountains.
He had lined up an American investor to buy the concrete bricks and cement to start building the holding tanks for the water. Frank Emmick promised to stay out of the way and let Morgan do the work. Morgan was grateful that Emmick was willing to turn over several thousand dollars, but he remained leery of the Ohio contractor’s ties to the US government, including the CIA. It seemed like every investor who had come to Havana after the revolution had bragged about their government connections. After what Morgan had just gone through with the FBI, he wanted nothing to do with the feds.
For him, the hatchery was all that mattered. He had never designed anything in his life, and the level of technology and science required to create a successful conservation site was beyond anything he had learned in school. The design had to be scientifically sound with just the right lighting, temperatures, and chemicals.
Morgan had pressured the government to turn over the land and even prompted the agriculture ministry to loan a few trucks to the project. Nothing like this had been done in Cuba. He was putting everything on the line.
41
With the sunlight streaming through their bedroom windows, Olga gently nudged Morgan. It was early, but something was wrong. She needed to go to the clinic.
She had been feeling nauseated for days, but she didn’t want to bother him. He had been waking up at dawn each day, driving to the hatchery, and working eighteen-hour stretches before dragging himself back home in the dark.
Morgan hadn’t noticed how sick Olga had been, but he took one look at her now and knew she was ill. By the time they reached the Sacred Heart clinic, the nurses were waiting. Morgan was worried. Olga rarely complained about her health and never asked to see a doctor. She spent most of her waking hours taking care of everyone else, including members of their entourage.
Both of them had been under intense pressure, but Olga was always better at dealing with it than he was. Morgan walked down the hall, trying to collect his thoughts. Members of his entourage came into the clinic, but he didn’t have time to talk. A nurse came out of the examination room, motioning for him to come inside.
Olga looked up from her bed. She wanted to t
ell him herself before anyone else. “You are going to be a father again,” she said, smiling faintly.
Morgan’s eyes widened. He couldn’t believe what he had just heard. With everything swirling around them, this was the first good news in a long time. He wrapped his arms around Olga and kissed her. “I know this is going to be a boy.”
Olga smiled. To her, it didn’t matter whether it was a boy or a girl. What mattered was that their children could live in the peace and freedom for which their father had fought. What mattered was that he would never have to fight again.
Olga and Loretta Morgan in the penthouse apartment in Havana Courtesy of Morgan Family Collection
Soft music from the radio drifted through the penthouse as Olga rested on the sofa, cradling Loretta in her arms. Every day was getting more difficult, but she didn’t want to say anything. She had been watching Morgan throw himself into the project, and the last thing she wanted to do was complain. For the first time in their marriage, he was trying to make a life for them.
After laying her daughter down in the crib, Olga heard the wail of sirens outside her window. At first, it didn’t mean anything. Fire trucks passed along the Malecón all the time. But the sirens didn’t stop. One emergency vehicle after another raced along the promenade in the afternoon sun.
Stepping outside on the balcony, she strained to watch a steady stream of trucks and ambulances speed along the road. This was more than just a car accident. She walked inside and waited for the noise outside to calm down, but sirens were still blaring in the distance. Now she worried. Hours earlier, Morgan had left the penthouse, with a few stops to make in Havana before driving to the hatchery.
There was no way to reach him at the site and no way of driving there, so she began making phone calls. She tried members of the Second Front, including Menoyo, but she couldn’t reach anyone. She called one of the government offices where Morgan was expected to stop, but the lines were busy.
She paced. Alejandrina tried to get Olga to calm down, but she couldn’t. Olga was determined to find out what was happening. Before she could make another call, the music stopped on the radio and a man’s voice broke over the air. It was urgent. Two massive explosions in the harbor appeared to have come from a docked vessel. It was still too early to report the damages, but scores of people were injured.
The announcer broke off without giving any more details. That explained the sirens, but now Olga was panicking. She wanted to rush down to the harbor, but it was too far to walk. She tried to reach the government office again, but the line was still busy.
All she could do was turn on the television. A report came over the air with more news: There were mangled bodies everywhere, on the docks, floating in the water, lying in the streets. Chaos churned as emergency workers tended to the injured. Some of the people had died.
The two explosions—half an hour apart—came aboard a French vessel, La Coubre, which had docked six hours earlier in the harbor. The government was investigating, but there were few details. Olga hung on every word coming over the television and radio. The same reports described the bloodied bodies and a thick, black mushroom cloud lingering over the harbor. By now, teams of photographers and reporters had descended on the waterfront.
At the time, the government didn’t even know if it was an attack. There was no way Olga was going to rest until she found out if her husband was safe. As soon as the phone rang, she jumped.
Running across the room, she picked up the receiver. It was Morgan. He didn’t have much time to talk. He had rushed to the harbor as soon as he heard about the explosions, stopping to help injured dockworkers. “It’s very bad,” he told her.
No one knew who or what had caused the explosions. It was like being back in the mountains: Morgan was gone and Olga was left alone to wait.
Castro was beside himself. He walked up and down the harbor dock, pointing to the vessel and then to the smoke billowing over the water. There was no way this was an accident, he said. Even as rescue workers were carrying bodies to the ambulances, he demanded answers.
It was no secret the ship had brought a cache of weapons for the Cuban military: seventy-six tons of Belgian munitions. The first blast rocked the harbor at 3:10 p.m., the impact hurtling crew members onto the dock and into the water.
Castro, along with rescue workers, rushed to help when another explosion went off from the ship, injuring even more people. Fidel’s bodyguards jumped on top of him to protect him from the falling debris. Crew members were burned beyond recognition, and the stench of burning flesh and diesel fuel hung in the air.
Castro told reporters that it was a direct attack on Cuba by its enemies. It was clear this was carried out by people who hated the revolution. He not only wanted to find out who was responsible, but it was just as important that the country demonstrate its unity. They would show the world that they weren’t going to stand idly by while the culprits escaped. They would hold a memorial service for the dead. It would be as public and visibly moving as anything they had ever held. Then they would do everything possible to bring the killers to justice.
Not far from the entrance to the harbor, the comandantes gathered on the Malecón. Castro was ready. He asked that Che and his handpicked president, Osvaldo Dorticós, join him at the head of the funeral procession. Putting on a show of strength for the international reporters was critical.
Thousands of mourners were expected to line the roadway for the symbolic march as well as television crews. To demonstrate unity, Castro made a surprising request. He asked the two major comandantes of the Second Front to join the others: Morgan and Menoyo.
Both sides were seen as vastly different—one on the outside and the other, running the government. But this is where Castro excelled. It would show the nation and others that Cuba was standing together against the outside forces that did not want it to survive.
The truth is the “Maximum Leader” was shaken by the blasts. Not since the revolution had anyone struck so close to the inner sanctum of the government.
Castro would make this point by including both men at the front of the column. Morgan and Menoyo were both leery of Castro—now more than ever—but they had witnessed the carnage and suffering at the docks. This was the same Cuba for which they had fought. They agreed to join the others at the Malecón.
But Castro had plans beyond the funeral march and services. He was positioning himself to unload on the United States in a way he never had done before. Taking a page from the Spanish-American War six decades earlier, he was about to announce the fiery explosions as the work of the American government. “It could not have been an accident,” he said before the procession. “It had to be intentional.”
He pointed out that America refused to sell arms to the new government and that it didn’t want the Cubans to obtain weapons elsewhere. “What right has any government to try to prevent Cuba from getting weapons, weapons which all governments get for the defense of their sovereignty and dignity?” he intoned.
La Coubre became a turning point not just for Cuba’s relations with the United States but also for Menoyo and Morgan as they walked in line with Castro in the procession.
In most cases, the United States would have ignored Castro’s anger, but the diplomatic corps in Havana fired back. William Wieland tossed the press release across his desk to Enrique Patterson, the Cuban chargé d’affaires. Wieland wanted to make sure his counterpart read every word on the page. It was one thing to have political differences—especially after America’s years of supporting Batista—but it was another to accuse America of bombing La Coubre.
“It’s unfounded and irresponsible,” he told Patterson.
Relations had been tense between the new government and the US embassy, but now they were deteriorating rapidly. The United States had issued its own press release that blasted Castro for trying to use the Coubre tr
agedy to stir up anti-American sentiments. Castro’s remarks were “calculated to transform the understandable sorrow of the Cuban people into resentment against the United States,” said Wieland.
But Castro wasn’t going to budge. At every step, the United States was trying to undermine his leadership. The Americans wouldn’t sell him arms. They wouldn’t support his reforms. Now they were preparing to cut all sugar purchases, seriously hurting the economy. Some 80 percent of the country’s exports depended on sugar. Without it, they’d go broke.
These differences were even weaving their way into the 1960 presidential campaign. Democratic candidate John Kennedy accused the Eisenhower administration of ignoring the crises unfolding in Cuba and the impact of losing the country as an ally at the height of the Cold War. But what Kennedy didn’t know was that on March 17 Eisenhower had approved a covert plan to overthrow the new government by creating a secret paramilitary force to invade the island. No one knew when it would happen, but training would begin soon.
Patterson pushed the press release back across the desk. He would pass on the United States’ sentiments to the Cuban government. But the truth was that his government didn’t give a damn what the United States said anymore. Cuba was done with America. Both sides were approaching the brink.
42
It was time for the Second Front comandantes to meet. They had done all they could to protect their men and survive within the new government. They had put aside their differences to support the leadership during the Trujillo conspiracy. They remained quiet during the agrarian “reforms.” They had stood with Castro after the Coubre tragedy. But now the government had gone too far.
The Yankee Comandante Page 20