One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution

by Nancy Stout

  In New York, the three Girona cousins, Julio, Celia, and Inez, gathered in Celia Girona’s living room that evening to watch the CBS documentary. Celia Girona worked in the Cuban Mission to the United Nations and eagerly looked forward to the CBS special program. Inez recalled that they had been stunned, but not surprised, when they saw Celia with the guerrillas. Both Girona sisters had visited Celia the previous summer (1956) in Pilón, just as Celia was knitting together her two clandestine networks, militants and farmers. They recalled that she’d spoken of her activities: the dinner parties, her committee activities to raise money for the toys, her great coup of getting the archbishop to visit Pilón during Easter Week, and of course her garden, as if these were the center of her attention. She’d built a rock pool and her sister Chela had sent her some large goldfish as a birthday present (not the kind of gift you’d associate with giving a revolutionary). The Gironas sat together long after the CBS program was over, taking in what they’d just witnessed; then Inez recalled Celia had bragged that she was so thin and fit she could run through a cane field and nobody would be able to see the stalks moving. They had discussed this little detail, while sitting together after the program, and concluded that she’d been “in training.”

  On May 18 no doubt most TV sets in Cuba (all major cities) were tuned to the special program about their country. When that program was over, the cat was out of the bag: Fidel had won another victory over Batista’s censored media. That night, Celia finally graduated from being “the doctor’s daughter” to Celia Sánchez, the woman who helps Fidel Castro.

  16. MAY 28, 1957

  The Battle of Uvero

  WHEN CELIA HAD BEEN A MEMBER of the rebel army just over a month, she went into battle. On May 23, the rebel army was still camped near the beaches on the Caribbean when a boat loaded with men and arms, organized by the anti-Batista Authentic Party, tried to land. The Corynthia was quickly intercepted by the army, blown up as it landed, with only one survivor. Although the 26th of July Movement had had nothing to do with this landing, Fidel vowed he would strike back because the troops on board had been fighting against the same dictatorship, supporting the same cause. He vowed to let his presence be known and make the army pay for such easy annihilation. He would attack the army outpost at Uvero.

  The garrison protected a small sugar refinery and a lumberyard located on the edge of the Caribbean; there was a small wharf for shipping. The garrison consisted of four guard posts and a barracks house. This clump of buildings lay in a cove, was backed by a high hill, and faced the water. It was isolated, served only by a single coastal road and a coastal ferry.

  Fidel explained how they’d execute their attack. The trick would be to take the four guard houses by surprise; and this wouldn’t be easy, since each one was manned by three or four well-equipped soldiers.

  They got to Uvero on the night of May 27, Celia at Fidel’s side. “She wore a uniform but nothing on her head,” Eloy Rodríguez recalls, who traveled with Raúl’s platoon. “Our groups reached the place at the same time. I saw her. She didn’t look nervous. She looked very natural.” She, with Fidel and the rest of his unit, set up command headquarters on the top of the hill. From there, Fidel could overlook the barracks below. Juan Almeida was to lead his soldiers in attack against the guard post at the bottom of the hill, directly below Fidel, and carry out the first strike. Raúl’s and Camilo’s platoons would move forward, take on the other guard posts, while Guillermo García and Jorge Sotus led their men against the barracks house. Crescencio Pérez and his platoon were posted on the coastal road, ready to hold off reinforcements the army would send in.

  Among the rebel army’s soldiers was tall young man recruited from one of the Sierra families, Pastor Palomares. Barely out of his teens, over six feet, he stood out among his comrades.

  Celia carried an M-1. She had been allotted one of the most coveted guns, and Eloy Rodríguez remarked that some of the men were jealous. The M-1 semi-automatic carbine was a perfect gun for a small person like Celia: compact (35 inches), light (5 lbs. 6 ozs.), and accurate. The gun was manufactured by Colt at the end of the Second World War. The U.S. army moved on to a newer design in the Korean War, but the rebel army acquired M-1 “surplus” weapons whenever and wherever they could (Florida is often mentioned) preferring this gun above all others.

  Fog filled the cove that night, and not all of the guerrillas moved into the correct places. It was still dark when the battle started. Fidel opened the battle thinking it was dawn. He located the barracks using the night-vision telescopic-sight on his rifle, and fired the first shot. The problem was, he could see the barracks before it was visible to the others. His first shot marked the location, but some of his shots landed near his platoons. “So we started the battle by shouting at Fidel, who was up on the hill, trying to tell him to stop shooting,” Rodríguez recalls. “He was firing on his own troops.” His shot also marked his position, and the barracks answered his fire. One of the army’s first shots killed Julio Diaz, who (according to Eloy) stood next to Raúl.

  Their battle was meant to be a classic guerrilla action: Fidel and his men would surprise the garrison, carry out a lightning attack, and duck out quickly. They’d leave Uvero before army reinforcements could arrive, simply melt back into the lower regions of the Sierra, and disappear. It was meant to be a short, sweet, bloodless battle, fought according to the basics of guerrilla warfare. Instead, the battle went on for almost three hours of constant engagement, and they lost several men. The longer the guerrillas fought, the more disconcerting their position became; they were aware that additional army troops were in the vicinity. When those reinforcements came, Fidel’s command post would be the most vulnerable, isolated on the hill.

  On May 28, 1957, Column 1 is leaving one of Batista’s military posts after attacking it in the Battle of Uvero. This was Celia’s first combat engagement. She stands with her back to the camera, facing Fidel, ready to make her way to Santiago where she’ll explain to Frank all that has taken place. (Courtesy of Oficina de Asuntos Históricos)

  In the battle, Almeida attacked the most dangerous of the four guard posts, because it was closest to the barracks. He took out the post and positioned his men to cover Raúl and his men as they advanced. Almeida was wounded in several places early in the attack. When the soldiers in the barracks finally surrendered and the fighting had stopped, twenty men were dead (six guerrillas and fourteen from Batista’s army); thirty-five were wounded (fifteen from the Rebel army and nineteen of Batista’s men). The Battle of Uvero had lasted such a long time because army reinforcement never arrived. “The first shot did away with the enemy’s transmission equipment,” Eloy explains. The rebels only realized after the battle that they’d knocked out the transmitter; then army soldiers, after they’d surrendered, told them they hadn’t been able to communicate out. “That enabled us to fight for the three hours,” Eloy told me, “and gave us more time to leave the place. We used the lumber company’s trucks and left after we buried the dead.”

  The guerrillas left with their wounded, except for two who were too injured to be moved, and drove to a place, not too far from there, where Che had established a medical camp. He stayed there all through June, bringing Almeida and the other wounded guerrillas back to health.

  My sources tell me Celia fought well, but they provided no specific details. After the battle, she went to Santiago to brief Frank, disguised as a domestic going to the city to look for work. A few days later, Herbert Matthews flew in to hear their story; having read his article, I believe he was relying on her account.

  She went to her sister Silvia’s house. Pepín, Silvia’s older son, then eleven, recalls seeing his Aunt Celia that day. After school, he’d gone to the Vista Alegre Tennis Club but found he needed something and had gone home to fetch it. He saw his mother standing in the doorway, and when she caught sight of him, she’d called out sharply, “Pepín, come here.” This had surprised him; it was something Silvia never did. Then Celia opene
d the door of a car parked at the curb. He’d gone over to lean down and give his aunt a kiss. He claims he wasn’t surprised to see Celia looking fully pregnant, but he had been disturbed by the woman in the driver’s seat. When he went inside his mother immediately said, “Now, you can’t say you’ve seen Celia,” but he wanted to know why Celia was riding in a car with this woman, the wife of a famous medical officer in Batista’s army. Silvia simply replied that Frank had sent the car. This left Pepín to conclude—later in life—that the officer’s wife also worked for Frank.

  ON JUNE 4, UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL reported that 800 U.S.-trained and -equipped Cuban troops were being sent to the Sierra Maestra. This caused some comment in the U.S. Congress, because it had approved weapons shipments for Cuba’s national defense against an outside invader, not for Batista’s use internally, against his own population.

  IN JUNE, FRANK MADE PLANS to open a new front. He was on fire with new ideas a week after getting out of jail. He sent a memo, dated May 17, 1957, to all the directors: “I am going to create more fronts rapidly in order of effectiveness and importance; work with all the places in the provinces and cities in regions that could be used as future fronts, study them, make contacts.”

  He studied the geography of certain regions, considered locations for their access routes; he mapped all the possible ways of supplying a new group of guerrillas. Location wasn’t the only consideration. He was looking for an individual who, like Celia, was familiar with his or her region. Soon he’d narrowed his list of locations down to Baracoa, Guantánamo, Mayari Ariba, and Miranda. Frank took care to reassure all the directors of the 26th of July Movement that he was creating the new front to distract the army and take the heat off Fidel, not to replace Fidel. On the other hand, he was making it known, candidly, that he was pretty fed up with all of them.

  While in jail, Frank had had time to study the 26th of July Movement as an organization. He was critical of the way they had been using their money, and began to acerbically comment on their lack of discipline. In a conversation I had with her, historian Julia Sweig said, he spared no one, and let everyone know that he didn’t like what he saw. He had already begun restructuring the organization on the national level while he was in jail. Now he worked around the clock to come up with a new national plan. This is why—or at least the reason given—Frank didn’t leave Santiago for the relative protection of the Sierra Maestra. People feared for his life; they sensed that from the moment he left jail, he’d be hunted down by both police and military. Fidel wanted him to join him the mountains, where Frank could be protected. Everyone told him to get out of Santiago. To this, Frank clearly stated that he needed more time to get things right.

  He called a meeting at the end of May to formally announce that he wanted to open his second front. He set a date: the middle of June. Present at the meeting were Lester Rodríguez (Fatty), Taras Domitro (Frank’s bodyguard), and a young man named Oscar Lucero Moya. Frank thought Lucero could be turned into a version of Celia.

  FIDEL URGED FRANK TO COME into the mountains. Now, whenever Frank went out, he was accompanied; often it was by an older woman, a member of the 26th of July Movement who posed as an abuela, a grandmother. She carried Frank’s ID in a pocket sewn in her petticoat, and if they were stopped by police, she’d do the talking: “Officer, this is my grandson. He’s taking me to the hospital. He didn’t have time to get his wallet.”

  He moved frequently but to fewer and fewer safe houses. Yolanda Portunado recalls her family’s anxiety when, out of the blue, their milkman observed that they’d been drinking a lot of milk. Frank had been staying with them, and Portunado’s mother ordered more than usual. (Many years after this incident, Yolanda broached this subject with their former milkman, who couldn’t recall the conversation and became very sad when he found out it had been Frank they were hiding.)

  IN THE FIRST WEEK OF JUNE, Celia was back in Manzanillo—the place she didn’t want to be. To soften the blow, she’d found a note from Fidel greeting her as “Querida Novia”—Dear Girlfriend. The short note was followed up by a long letter sent on June 15: “We have such pleasant memories of your presence here that your absence has left a real vacuum.” Who doesn’t want to be missed? The letter covers many issues, most of them about business, but Fidel expresses his professional gratitude to her and to Frank, and fears for their safety. “You and David [Frank] are our pillars. If you and he are well, then all goes well and our minds are easy.” In three sentences he manages old-fashioned concern and last-ditch resistance: “Even when a woman goes around the mountains with a rifle in hand, she always makes our men tidier, more decent, gentlemanly—and even braver. And, after all, they really are decent and gentlemanly, all the time! But what would your poor father say?” And Fidel’s brother, Raúl, began to write to her now; he addresses her in his letters as Querida Madrinita, which my translator swears is best construed, in this context, to mean Dear Little Patroness. Giving people what they need is something Celia had trained herself to do. Money is always good, but a pair of new boots can be even better, under certain circumstances. The same old revolutionaries who probably groused about her possession of an M-1 still shower her memory with praise for the little things she gave them: boots, a watch, a Catholic medal.

  Back in Manzanillo, Celia had to confront two huge problems. One was José “Gallego” Moran. He had been around since the end of February, when she brought him down from the mountains to a Manzanillo clinic. Moran had not gone to Mexico and the United States, the assignment he’d sought from Fidel. He’d been working with the local 26th of July Movement in Manzanillo and moving about, whenever he felt like it, to the mountains and Santiago. They didn’t know what he was up to, and he was someone they fundamentally distrusted. Frank had warned Rafael Sierra, who took over while Celia was with the rebel army, to keep Moran on a short leash. He did not: Moran had been popping up in various places since the rebels had left the CBS television journalist on Pico Turquino and come down to the coast. Moran was an ongoing problem. She had to solve it.

  Upon her return, she encountered the second grave problem. Sierra had authorized some “boys” to join Fidel in the mountains. Only Frank and she had authority to do this. Although I don’t have all the pieces of this story, I learned certain details: she didn’t initiate this group, but she didn’t stop them, either, and helped Sierra outfit them before they left Manzanillo. The outcome was disastrous. While Frank was voicing his disgust for the 26th’s general ineptitude and lack of discipline, Celia, his star pupil, was providing him with a shining example. I gained a clear picture (if not a full understanding) of this situation from the letters Celia sent to Frank, asking him for help. The boys were unseasoned, she told him; they thought 40-pound backpacks were too heavy; they’d been barely trained; they lacked discipline, they ate up all their rations on the first days; and some “ran off” (she does not call it desertion) and threw their weapons and ammunition in the underbrush (which must have left Frank reeling). Celia, by now, had processed well over a hundred soldiers through her eccentric barracks, and had done so very professionally. Yet this one group of men jeopardized her marabuzal operation, which was becoming the lifeline of the rebel army, and she was faced with the responsibility of finding them, punishing them, and explaining why this group had become derailed.

  IN SANTIAGO, FRANK SENT OSCAR LUCERO to the mountain zone of his birth. It was in a region northeast of Santiago, near the Miranda sugar mill, within the range called Sierra Cristal. Frank had already made a trip there, liked what he saw, and had informed Fidel. Fidel gave Frank his blessing in a letter written on June 4. In mid-June, a base camp was set up on a farm near the Miranda mill (today called Julio Antonio Mella) not far from the town of Palmarito de Cauto. In Frank’s plans, the 26th of July Movement Second Front, or M-26 SF, would attack a small army garrison protecting the Miranda mill. After a lightning attack, his guerrillas would escape into the Sierra Cristal.

  In Santiago, the movement’s greates
t threat came from the paramilitary force Los Tigres, led by Rolando Masferrer, who had issued a press release that infuriated Frank. Masferrer announced that he would be speaking at a recruiting rally in Santiago on June 30, and Frank decided that would be the date to launch the Second Front’s inaugural attack at the Miranda mill. He also went to work on ways to disrupt Masferrer’s speech during the rally.

  On June 26, Frank’s hand-picked forces began to leave Santiago; there were around forty men he’d assembled from clandestine groups all over the country, with Rene Ramos Latour (Daniel) as their leader. Daniel was the first to leave Santiago and head for a farm where weapons were stashed. He traveled with Oscar Lucero, familiar with the area, as his second in command. Taras Domitro was quartermaster; Raúl Perozo Fuentes, Miguel A. Manals, and Luis Clerge were platoon leaders; and José R. Balaguer (later to become architect of Cuba’s famous health system) was their doctor. On June 28, the remaining M-26 SF soldiers left Santiago by train, and got off at two stations, Miranda and Bayate, a way station up the line. The group at Bayate waited, then left when no one showed to pick them up. They stopped a car going to Miranda and, anticipating who they might be, a clearly sympathetic driver said, “I’m sorry for you, but they saw you in the station. An army sergeant dressed in civilian clothes. He called the garrison near the Miranda mill to send a delegation to meet you.” The army put troops in three stations in the region: Miranda, Bayate, and Palmarito de Cauto, and detained everybody who even went near them. The SF Bayate men broke up into two groups. One group hid near a cemetery, drew fire, and Rene Medina, one of Frank’s soldiers, was shot and died shortly afterward. The rest made it into the mountains. Daniel, on the farm, ordered his men to remove all weapons they’d stored inside the farmhouse and bury them. Then they left, moving carefully through the countryside. That night, they were able to elude the army, and crossed the Rio Cauto by constructing a bamboo boat that carried two at a time, for seven crossings. Daniel was leading thirteen men; they made it out of the zone and sent a messenger to Santiago to get Frank’s help.