Cuba is an island about ninety miles south of Florida, which I reckon is just about spitting distance. Well, for a world champion spitter, that is. If the seeds are right. And he’s got a good wind behind him. Maybe it ain’t. But I’m going to say it is ’cause it works real good in this report.
When Christopher Columbus landed on the island in 1492, he claimed it for the likes of Spain. I reckon it was a good thing to do, bringing civilization to the natives and such. Of course, he brought smallpox, too, but nobody’s perfect.
Four hundred years after Columbus did that, the folks on the island started getting tired of being ruled by the Spanish. A fella by the name of José Martí, who I reckon was an ancestor of my buddy Carlos Martí, started a group in 1892 that was looking to get Cuba’s independence from Spain. Of course, Spain wasn’t too happy about that, and that started a war. And, since the war was happening just ninety miles south of us, and since somebody went and blew up an American ship in the Havana harbor, the US got involved. That was the Spanish-American War, which went on until 1898, and it eventually wound up with Cuba getting freed from them Spanish folk.
After all that mess, it was real good for the Cubans to be their own nation and such. They was so thankful for all that America had done that they went ahead and let America have quite a bit of control in their country. We bought up a lot of land, put a whole mess of our business down there, and even started heading down there for vacations. There was casinos and resorts built up, and it turned into a real nice place to visit. Even Walt Disney spent some time down there. Mickey Mouse, too, so you know it was nice.
Well, I reckon it was nice for us. And nice for the wealthy folks in Cuba. But there was a whole mess of folks in Cuba that didn’t take too kindly to what was going on in their country. Those were the folks that was seeing all the poor people who couldn’t get jobs, and seeing all the bad junk the American mafia was bringing down from the States, like drugs and prostitution and stuff. They also was seeing their own president, a fella by the name of Batista, who wasn’t concerned with nothing more than making and keeping money. He even had a solid gold telephone, which sounds real neat until you think of all them folks that didn’t have no bread.
Then, in 1953, there was a fella that started listening to all them folks that didn’t have no bread. His name was Fidel Castro, and he started preaching that the way to fix Cuba was to get rid of the government they had, get rid of all them Americans, and turn their country into one where everybody got to be equal. Which sounded real good on paper, I guess, but it turned out to be a real bloody revolution that didn’t get done until 1959.
While that revolution was going on, there was a bunch of Cubans who had a feeling that things wasn’t going to be too good under Castro. They left the country and moved up the ninety miles to Florida, mainly to Miami. They started new lives there, making new businesses, caring for their families if they was able to bring them, and all the while really missing home.
Meanwhile, Castro took over and the revolution that looked so good on paper really started to stink. For one thing, all that property that was owned by Americans, he took it and said they didn’t own it no more. Didn’t pay them for it or nothing. He also didn’t take too kindly to anybody in Cuba being better off than anybody else. So Cuban folks who’d made money or owned property saw theirs get taken away too. And if they spoke up against it, they’d find themselves staring down the business end of a rifle.
Well, all this stuff reached the ears of President Eisenhower, and he told his buddies that worked with him that they needed to come up with a plan. But he didn’t want no plans that involved US troops invading and taking over the country. He wanted a plan that would be the Cubans overthrowing their own government, ’cause he reckoned that would look better in the papers.
Eventually his buddies put a plan together. They’d recruit all them Cuban exiles that was living in Miami, them bakers and doctors and musicians, to band together and invade Cuba on their own. We’d provide them air and naval support, but the invasion would be theirs and we’d just be assisting our allies. I imagine they all high-fived and patted each other on the back ’cause they liked that plan so much. And President Eisenhower signed off on it, so you know they all started dreaming of big raises.
And that’s just what they did, they went to Miami and recruited a bunch of Cubans who was now American immigrants and told them all about the plan. And I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if that plan didn’t look real good on paper, and so a whole mess of them Cubans signed up for it. They all started training there at the Orange Bowl for a while before they got transported down to Narnia, I mean Nicaragua, and really got trained. The bakers was learning how to shoot a man, the musicians how to sneak around land mines. It was a real strange time for them.
But then President Kennedy took office. When he heard about the invasion, nicknamed at that time Operation Pluto, he didn’t like it nearly as much as Eisenhower did. So they asked him what he wanted to do about it. But he just hemmed and hawed and didn’t make no decisions, and the time for the invasion kept getting closer.
It was finally the week before the invasion and all them Cuban-Americans was ready with their American-American friends to pull off the invasion of the century. The leaders, back in Washington, went to Kennedy to get his final approval. I imagine they handed him a slip of paper that said, “Do you want to invade Cuba, circle YES or NO.” And then Kennedy pulled out his presidential pen and circled both of them. ’Cause that’s basically what happened.
The invasion went forward, but the American support didn’t. All them Cuban exiles went and attacked a beach and they was confronted by all of Castro’s forces. But they wasn’t scared, ’cause they reckoned them airplanes with bombs would be there any minute. But them airplanes didn’t come. Them Cuban-American exiles got left like sitting ducks. Or pigs, I reckon. ’Cause they was in the Bay of Pigs.
The end result of the Bay of Pigs invasion wasn’t what they’d been told would happen on paper. Instead, all them exiles we sent on the mission got captured by Castro and was held inside his prisons. Castro used the aftermath of the invasion to show the world how powerful and strong he was, and how stupid people was to attack him. Kennedy eventually told the world that he’d messed up, and on paper that should have ruined his presidency.
But, because he was honest with folks, it actually made him look better. Even though there was over a thousand Cuban exiles who was sitting in Castro’s dungeon because President Kennedy had bailed on them, America decided he was still a pretty cool president. And the world decided that Castro was a pretty powerful fella. And a whole mess of people forgot about them fellas in them dungeons that had just wanted to go home.
But, who knows, maybe they won’t be forgotten forever. Maybe putting them down on paper like this is a start.
Well, I reckon that takes me to the lesson that can be learned from the Bay of Pigs invasion:
There’s lots of people or plans that look one way on paper, but when you put them in the real world, things turn out differently.
Oh, there’s also a lesson I learned from Eddie:
If you want to get your butt whooped by a bunch of girls, put a sign on their restroom door that says BAY OF PIGS.
So, there you go, Mrs. Buttke, that’s my report. I sure hope you decide to put me through to seventh grade. When you make your decision, let me know. I’ll probably be out hunting.
About the Author
Isaiah Campbell was born and bred in Texas, and spent his childhood reading a blend of Dickens, Dumas, and Stan Lee. He dreamed his whole life of becoming a writer. And also of being bitten by a radioactive spider. Unfortunately, only one dream has panned out. For fifteen years he taught and coached students in writing and the arts before he finally took his own advice and wrote The Troubles of Johnny Cannon. He lives in New Mexico with his wife, three children, and his sanity, although that may be moving out soon. He occasio
nally searches the classifieds for the bulk sale of spiders and uranium but hasn’t had any luck yet. Find him online at IsaiahCampbell.com.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Campbell, Isaiah.
The troubles of Johnny Cannon / Isaiah Campbell. — First edition.
pages cm
Summary: In 1961 Alabama, twelve-year-old Johnny tries to keep his promise to look after his disabled Pa when his older brother leaves for military service, but secrets from the past, Cuban politics, and racial tensions would make the task challenging even for his hero, Superman.
ISBN 978-1-4814-0003-9 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-1-4814-0005-3 (eBook)
[1. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 2. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 3. Race relations—Fiction. 4. African Americans—Fiction. 5. Amateur radio stations—Fiction. 6. Cuba—History—Invasion, 1961—Fiction. 7. Alabama—History—20th century—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.C15417Tro 2014
[Fic]—dc23
2013019540
The Troubles of Johnny Cannon Page 23