Companero
Page 21
Carlos Franqui harbors no doubt about the meaning of this message: “In his note to Che, Fidel vigorously disapproved of the importance given to the Student Directorate,” not to mention Gutiérrez Menoyo.26 Despite this criticism, the agreement did help achieve Castro’s goal, which was to unite all the opposition forces and bring them under his command. Gutiérrez Menoyo—who spent twenty years in a Cuban jail after the Revolution—describes the cordial relationship he had with Guevara:
Once that incident was put behind us, I met with him. We signed the pact for agrarian reform, and the operational pact, which he even took a picture of. It must be in the archives, locked up until they decide to tell the true history of Cuba, and not just a part of it. After that, our relations were fine; they operated on the northern coast while we were on the southern one. We even sent arms to reinforce Camilo Cienfuegos’s position at the siege of Yaguajay.27
The unity among opposition forces in Las Villas allowed Che to disrupt and effectively block the elections scheduled for November 3 by Fulgencio Batista. As its military situation crumbled, the dictatorship was increasingly pressured by its reluctant allies to seek a political solution to the war. The most obvious, supported by the U.S. and important business sectors, was to organize early elections which would not include Batista. They would pave the way for a decorous retirement by the former sergeant, and usher in a new government. They would also foreclose any possibility—no matter how remote—of Fidel Castro and his Rebel Army reaching power. Castro understood the maneuver perfectly, and put all his effort and imagination into foiling the plot. He appealed to the population not to vote, to sabotage the elections in urban areas and disrupt them in the countryside. Eighty percent of the electorate answered his plea. In Che’s words,
The days before November 3 were days of extraordinary activity: our columns mobilized in all directions, almost completely blocking voters’ access to the voting booths in those areas. In general terms all transport, from Batista’s soldiers to merchandise, was stopped. There was practically no voting in Oriente; in Camagüey the percentage was a bit higher, and in the western zone … the population obviously stayed home.28
During those final weeks of the struggle, Che’s fierce asceticism began to yield before the hard realities of administration, alliance politics, and the idiosyncratic reactions of the local population amid exceptional circumstances. For instance, after taking the village of Sancti Spíritus, Che tried to ban alcoholic beverages and the lottery. The villagers revolted, and Che was forced to back down on his attempts to impose on them his own habits and experience from other Latin American countries. He also tried to regulate relations between men and women within his column, especially as it grew in size during the struggle against Batista. There, too, he had to give in to the temptations of the tropics and the reality of combat conditions: sexual puritanism did not exactly flourish among the youthful, irreverent troops. Che finally reconsidered, authorizing relationships as people saw fit.*7
In early November, at El Pedrero, Guevara met the woman who would become his second wife. His principal companion for the rest of his life, she would give birth to four of his five recognized children. Aleida March was a young and pretty clandestine militant of the 26th of July Movement in Las Villas. Pursued by the police, she took refuge at Che’s camp in the Escambray. Just twenty-two, she was an exceptionally attractive woman; a Cuban who knew her well recalled days after Che’s death that “she was one of the most beautiful women in Cuba and her preference for Che could not but provoke some resentment against that damned Argentine who had carried her off as a war trophy in Santa Clara.”29 A bright university student with a white, urban, upper-middle-class background, she soon became his closest friend and assistant. She was at his side without interruption in the last few weeks of the war and during his entry into Havana.
Yet Aleida did not bewitch Guevara with the exoticism of a Hilda Gadea or a Zoila Rodríguez; rather, she seemed a watered-down version of Chi-china. Undeniably beautiful, and more similar to Guevara than the other women who were close to him, she lacked the complex otherness of Chichina. Che was deeply in love with her and the intensity of his passion lasted for years. But a distance grew between them almost from the outset. Some attribute it to the Revolution; others to the fact that Aleida soon lost her good looks. Others still point to a feminine possessiveness which survived her husband and extended to his children, his records, and his memory. Years later, Pepe Aguilar, Che’s childhood friend from Alta Gracia, who kept closely in touch with him until his departure from Cuba, accurately described Aleida’s dilemma: “She was difficult to get on with, and besides she was terribly jealous of everyone and everything that had been close to Che before she knew him.”30
By November and December 1958, Che was able to cut communication routes through the center of Cuba, blocking transport across the island. His luck held despite constant combat and unnecessary risks. His only injuries occurred while jumping from a rooftop: he seriously twisted his wrist (necessitating a plaster cast) and cut himself just above the eyebrow. Both injuries became part of his legend, as the photographs depict him entering Havana with a bandaged arm and a scar on his forehead.
Military victories followed one another in quick succession. The town of Cabaiguán, where Che’s troops captured ninety prisoners, seven machine guns, and eighty-five rifles, fell on December 21. A couple of days later they took the city of Placetas, also with weapons and prisoners. Batista’s troops were openly demoralized, less willing to fight with each passing day. His soldiers surrendered even when they had the military advantage; they sensed how the civilian population was increasingly hostile to them, and sympathetic to the rebels. Che’s column’s relentless advance led him to conceive and prepare the assault on Santa Clara, a city of 150,000 inhabitants, the capital of Las Villas province, and the largest urban community in central Cuba. It would witness the greatest battle of the war, sounding the death knell of Batista’s dictatorship and consecrating Che Guevara as a revolutionary hero and military strategist.
The principal barracks of Santa Clara housed over 2,500 soldiers and ten tanks. Another thousand troops were stationed on the city outskirts. Guevara launched his attack with 300 men—most of them exhausted, undernourished, and inexperienced. He was informed, in addition, that enemy reinforcements were on their way from Havana by rail. The armored traint which would become part of the Guevara legend, consisted of two locomotives and nineteen cars; it carried fourteen machine guns and 400 well-equipped soldiers. Che knew that the battle might last several weeks. As late as December 28, he suspected that it would take a month.31 With the city surrounded and Batista’s forces quartered in their barracks, on the dawn of December 28 Che’s column began moving into Santa Clara. The comandante himself traveled in a jeep at the halfway point of the column. His men were divided into several platoons. They arrived at the university, then went on to capture a radio station; on the way, they came upon a light tank, which killed five guerrilla fighters and wounded several others. At the same time, the soldiers from the armored train, perched on the hill, opened fire on the column.
During the morning, rebel student reinforcements arrived by another highway and approached the Leoncio Vidal army headquarters, where most of the army troops were concentrated. In the meantime, Batista’s air force was bombing and strafing Che’s men, as frightened city residents took shelter in their homes. The military requested more reinforcements, but rebel troops outside the city and on the highways were able to block them; air support from Havana was also called in, and failed equally to materialize. At sunset of the first day of the battle, the soldiers were still quartered in their barracks. Then, under the cover of darkness, the civilian population began building barricades against the army tanks, as more rebels entered the city during the night, in small groups. With the army grounded and the passive complicity of the population, Che was able to disperse his forces throughout the center of Santa Clara. The field was ready for the next day’s co
mbat.
Che understood that the crux of the battle consisted of stopping the armored train, preventing army troops and tanks from leaving their garrison, and mobilizing the civilian population. According to Oscar Fernández Mell, a physician and officer in the Rebel Army, if instead of taking refuge within the city, the enemy had organized its defense from higher, fortified positions, the Rebel Army would have required more time to take the provincial capital. It would also have suffered more casualties.32 The secret lay in the army’s refusal to fight; that was the crucial element Che had to work with. When the officers commanding the armored train succeeded in evading combat and approached the army headquarters in search of protection, they found that the tracks had been removed the day before. What followed was a spectacular derailment. Three of the twenty-two cars fell off the track, overturning immediately; the others were pounded by rebel fire and Molotov cocktails. The troops inside the train were caught in an unbearable combination of heat, bombs, and gunfire. They soon begged for a truce, and negotiated their surrender with Che that afternoon.
The train episode was decisive. Thanks to the weapons they were able to capture, Che’s troops entered Havana several days later with much more firepower than any other opposing group—including, especially, the Student Directorate and the Second National Front of the Escambray. Gutiérrez Menoyo suggests a different interpretation of the train affair because his group was the most adversely affected by the surrender to Che. According to him, the capture of the train was a decisive operation whose history has not been fully clarified. The train was under the command of a Lieutenant Rossel; Gutiérrez Menoyo recalls he was the first person to whom the military broached the issue of surrender. He offered guarantees for the troops, and a promotion for Rossel; the soldiers decided to surrender to Menoyo. Then, recalls Gutiérrez Menoyo, “Lieutenant Rossel’s brother spoke to Che Guevara. I don’t know what he offered that I didn’t, but the fact is that they surrendered the train to him. Cuba still commemorates this as the heroic assault on the armored train, but that train was surrendered.”
The capture of the train allowed the rebels to launch their final offensive against Santa Clara and then Havana. As Gutiérrez Menoyo remembers, “I discussed this two or three times with Guevara and asked him, what did you offer that I didn’t? He only laughed and never confessed the truth to me. If they had surrendered the train to me, there was an incredible amount of supplies there and that would have allowed us to launch the final offensive. Che never gave me a specific answer.”33 Antonio Nuñez Jiménez, who was a member of Che’s column and has written about the armored train, categorically denies this account. He insists that Gutiérrez Menoyo had nothing to do with the train, and that there was a derailment rather than a surrender.34 In a strange footnote to history, Fulgencio Batista asserts that the train was indeed surrendered by Rossel, “who deserted after having received 350,000 dollars or one million dollars from Che Guevara.” In his view, the train was not captured but bought.35 Conflicting testimony abounds on the issue. Ramón Barquin, the only Batista officer to be jailed by the dictator for conspiring against him, states that the train was handed over as part of a deal; Ismael Suárez de la Paz (Echemendia), the 26th of July’s man in Santa Clara, swears there was no such arrangement, just a straightforward surrender.36
Che asked Aleida March to stand before the derailed train, saying, “Aleida, I’m going to take a picture of you for history.”37 The episode was indeed crucial to the final outcome. The booty was enormous: six bazookas, five 60-millimeter mortars, fourteen machine guns, one 20-millimeter cannon, 600 automatic rifles, and one million rounds of ammunition.38 It was the largest seizure of enemy weapons of the entire war. Almost 400 soldiers were taken prisoner. News of the capitulation spread rapidly through the city and into army headquarters, with devastating effects on morale and an explosive impact on the inhabitants of Santa Clara.39
Combat continued on December 30. Guevara’s forces advanced, but not without difficulty. At police headquarters they met with strong resistance from 400 Batista troops who refused to submit, fearful of reprisals from the civilian population: the troops had engaged in summary executions for minor offenses and treason, as well as torture, in the previous weeks. This bastion, along with the Leoncio Vidal garrison and its 1,300 troops, were Batista’s last hope in Santa Clara. As the sun rose upon the final day of the year, the army had not yet surrendered and the guerrilla offensive seemed to stagnate. But police headquarters was soon overrun, leaving only the military garrison. That was the situation when the New Year dawned on Santa Clara.
Negotiations for the garrison’s surrender began at sunrise, but were immediately overshadowed by events in the rest of the island. During the New Year celebrations, Batista fled the island in a scene made famous by dozens of subsequent films. The impact in Santa Clara was decisive: “Of course [when] Batista left, there emerged favorable conditions so that on the fourth day of the attack on Santa Clara the war was over.”40 An improvised military junta, led by General Eulogio Cantillo, still attempted to avert the army’s complete collapse and the rebels’ final victory. Cantillo broadcast by radio an order to all base commanders throughout the country, instructing them not to give up and insinuating that he had reached an agreement with Fidel Castro in Oriente: “What we have just done here in Columbia [Havana’s principal military base] has the approval of Dr. Fidel Castro.”41
For his part, Castro broadcast a radio proclamation from the outskirts of Santiago. He denounced the attempted coup d’état, rejecting any negotiation with the besieged garrisons, and instructed Che and Camilo Cienfuegos to proceed to Havana immediately. Minutes before Che’s ultimatum to the Santa Clara officers expired, troops began streaming out and throwing their weapons to the ground. The battle was over. The population took to the streets in celebration, acclaiming Che and his bearded revolutionaries, who immediately began the march to the capital. The Revolution had triumphed.
It is up to historians to determine just how decisive the battle of Santa Clara really was. The biographer must ask different questions. Was the revolutionary triumph in the capital city of Las Villas due to Che’s military genius, or did it have more to do with politics and psychology? Santa Clara, together with resistance in the Sierra against the Batista offensive of May–June 1958, was the only battle of the war really worthy of the name. Without it, Batista might not have fled. And if the dictator had stayed on, his army might not have collapsed as it did after his New Year’s Eve departure. The existing balance of military power—still unfavorable to the rebels—might have lasted longer. Without the seizure of the armored train, the Leoncio Vidal garrison would probably not have capitulated. Without the booty from both victories, Che’s column would not suddenly have become the strongest unit in the rebel army. Without Santa Clara, this astounding CIA analysis (drafted one month before Castro’s triumph) might have come true:
Castro has failed to convince the majority of the Cuban people that his personality and program, in preference to Batista’s, are worth fighting for. Cuba continues to enjoy relative economic prosperity, and a large part of the population, probably concerned that revolution would jeopardize their well-being, appears to hope that there can be a peaceful transition from authoritarian to constitutional government.42
It is also true, however, that only six guerrilla fighters died in the battle of Santa Clara, in a war in which Batista’s army lost fewer than 300 men. Moreover, the Batista army’s destruction was imminent; as Castro said to Che on the eve of the battle, “The war is won, the enemy is collapsing entirely.”43 Without Santa Clara, the process would have taken longer, with fateful consequences in many areas. But the final outcome would have been the same. Che Guevara’s troops were not the sole military factor involved, nor was the struggle exclusively military. Granted, one should not minimize the sacrifices made by thousands of Cubans to topple a corrupt and heinous regime, nor should anyone underestimate the military aspect of Batista’s overthrow. But all accounts a
gree that the victory of January 1959 was not only or even primarily a military one. Che’s role was doubtless crucial in the final days of the war. His composure, determination, lucidity, and spirit of sacrifice were invaluable in Santa Clara. Without his leadership skills, his implacable centralization of all decisions, his detachment and sense of strategy, victory would have been impossible under such adverse conditions. Guevara’s complete concentration on the requirements of the struggle, his disdain for any sentimental distractions, stand out in this passage from his memoirs:
I rebuked a soldier for falling asleep in full battle, and he replied that he had been disarmed for having fired without orders. I answered with my customary dryness: “Go win yourself another rifle, go up to the front line unarmed … if you are capable.” In Santa Clara, [I was] encouraging the wounded … a dying man touched my hand and said, “Do you remember, comandante? You sent me to get a weapon … and I won it for myself.” It was the soldier who had fired without orders, who would die minutes later, and he seemed happy to have proven his bravery. That’s what our Rebel Army is like.44
Nonetheless, there were other considerations involved in the battle of Santa Clara. Acknowledging them does not detract from Che’s accomplishments; rather, it highlights them. First of all, Batista’s troops refused to leave their barracks; when they did venture out, they declined to fight. Morale was abysmally low. The soldiers were full of misgivings: they did not receive requested reinforcements, had lost the support of the United States, and felt—quite rightly—that their officers might betray them at any time. In contrast, the rebel fighters were devoted to their cause, had genuine (if limited) combat experience, and one crucial advantage: the enthusiastic support of the civilian population, which proved decisive in the street-bystreet combat for the city. Finally, though Che was the highest commander in the field, he also had two critical human elements in his favor. He was backed by superb lieutenants, men like Rolando Cubela, Victor Bordón, Fernández Mell, and Faure Chomón, among others, and by the faraway figure of Fidel, who continued to design the overall plan of the war.