One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution

by Nancy Stout

  “Fidel is talking too much,” was Celia’s comment, according to Julio Girona, who sat with her. That pretty much sums it up. She didn’t particularly like the free-for-all atmosphere that had developed. Again, as in the Sierra, Fidel seemed to be following his own script. After ten days of pure drama, the Cuban delegation left on the 28th.

  BACK IN HAVANA, the new government was confronting resistance. Every day, on her way to work Celia saw long lines of people at the Central Bus Station; and when she asked what was going on was told that they were trying to get tickets. There were no travel restrictions, no official reason why people couldn’t travel to other parts of the island. She went about solving the issue in her own style: she contacted photographer Raúl Corrales and asked him to investigate the situation by taking pictures. He told her he would need a car and a driver.

  That evening he and the driver went to the station. Corrales left the car but instructed the driver to “stay, but don’t talk to me.” His assignment had been to find out what would happen at midnight, when most cross-country buses rolled out of the terminal headed for all parts of the island. When Corrales took out his camera, he was detained by security and accused of being a foreigner because of the way he was dressed: “I had recently returned from Spain and owned a nylon shirt. No one else had these yet in Cuba.” Corrales replied that he was not only Cuban, but a photographer on assignment (not mentioning Celia) “for one of the new government offices.” Hearing that, they put him in a police car and took him to the nearest police station while his driver drove to Once to inform Celia.

  Half an hour later, Celia arrived in her jeep at the police station, alone, wearing her military uniform with a pair of high-heeled shoes. Corrales laughingly commented that she knew how to make an entrance. She jumped out of the jeep and walked smartly into the police station, paused in the entrance to smile at everyone, then saw Corrales and said, casually: “Corrales, how are you? Are you waiting for someone?” With that, she swept into the commander’s office.

  Word traveled through the station the minute they saw her arrive, and the station chief was waiting; he asked what he could do for her. She explained that Corrales was photographing “transport” and she’d been in too much of a hurry to give him papers. “Do you mind giving him the necessary paperwork?” she asked. The station chief assured her that everything would be taken care of. She left, and Corrales went back to the bus station with a bunch of documents.

  “The same man that caught me before, caught me again,” Corrales continued, and this time security took him to the administrator of the bus terminal who asked Corrales what he thought he was doing. He answered he was taking pictures of the Central Bus Station and the long-distance buses. Corrales says: “People were sleeping on the floor. There were no tickets. The ticket windows were closed. If you wanted refreshments, there weren’t any, not even in the bar. A few bottles of baby formula were available, but only about one per fifty persons. The situation was terrible.” The administrator—a candidate for the “burnt up with prejudice and wishful thinking category” that one British diplomat used to describe a good many people in Cuba at that moment in history—looked at the police documents and said, “Don’t you have another document? The police have nothing to do with this. I run this place. If you want to work here, you must have a document from the Ministry of Transportation. That is the only thing I will accept.”

  By this time it was about 3:00 a.m., but Celia was still up, waiting for Corrales. She listened to his account, told him to go home and get some sleep. In a few days she sent this message: “Go and take all the pictures you want” along with a letter signed by no less a person than the Minister of Transportation. That night he found the situation to be the same, but they had to let him take photographs. From that night on, he made a photo-documentary report for Celia. Soon they discovered what was going on, since some buses never pulled out of the station. “I was troubled because I realized that there was always a line of people for the Santa Clara and Oriente buses,” Corrales told me and explained that this was a form of resistance. These two places symbolized the 26th of July Movement: Che’s defeat of the Cuban army at Santa Clara, and Fidel’s ability to defeat government forces in the mountains of Oriente Province. Both had assured the success of the Revolution for the 26th of July Movement. “It was terrible. They were telling the people that these buses were out of order. It was anarchy. I did my photo work showing that there were long lines, no buses, no toilets, no glasses, no refreshments.”

  Celia continued to call Corrales and ask for more photographs. “As soon as I started taking pictures, everything would work well, because buses would arrive from another station to pick up people. My camera had become an engine. I printed copies of my photos and Celia knew what to do with them.” She showed them to people in high places and to the minister of transport. She gave them to the press. This was her process for implementing change. She was throwing light on the situation, putting it in high relief—the way late afternoon sunlight strikes the face of a building and brings up every detail—so that all the bad things would stand out brightly on the surface.

  She and Che came up with some unorthodox solutions. “When Che was minister of industries, there was one point when cigarettes were bad, with pieces of stems in them . . . people called them ‘firemen’ because they kept going out.” Sergio Sánchez had been explaining how Celia and Che schemed together. “At Once, she set up a paper bag for people to put examples of the bad cigarettes in. Then she sent the bag to Che.” Every once in a while you see a film clip of Che dealing with Cuban matches, which famously didn’t light (for the same reason that the buses didn’t leave the station, I suppose). He struck match after match in an appearance on television, making viewers aware that he was unable to light his cigar. And the problem eventually stopped.

  CELIA RARELY TOOK VACATIONS, but sometimes—after a meeting—called for a military plane and would fly to Pilón, where she’d get into a boat still wearing high heels. She’d fish until dark, usually with an old friend who also liked to fish, Wilfredo Fernández Soriano (the “Teacher” ’s brother). They’d fish for snapper. Celia preferred a very simple manner of fishing: she held a line, never a pole, and fished in the same way as Santiago, Hemingway’s fisherman in The Old Man and the Sea. She would wait with the line in her hands until she felt a tug, then haul in her catch. After one of these trips, she’d fly back to Havana refreshed, and resume working.

  35. 1961–1963

  The Bay of Pigs Invasion

  “IF YOU CAN’T STAND UP TO CASTRO, how can you stand up to Khrushchev?” John F. Kennedy aggressively challenged Richard Nixon during the final months leading up to the 1960 presidential elections. Kennedy blamed Eisenhower for tolerating Batista; and Nixon—Eisenhower’s vice-president and Kennedy’s opponent—for being weak. Finally, on October 6, Kennedy delivered his most famous challenge in Republican Cincinnati, Ohio. He labeled Nixon indifferent to a “communist menace 90 miles from our shores,” and called for funding anti-Castro guerrillas. As it turned out, Eisenhower was already doing so.

  By the end of October 1960, Eisenhower announced an economic embargo against Cuba on the eve of the election. Although Nixon lost, in early January, and with only a few days remaining in office, Eisenhower broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba. This was a very odd thing to do just days prior to Kennedy’s inauguration. Very little was said about it at the time, although Senator Albert Gore Sr. of Tennessee did go on record calling it “inadvisable” to take such a step when there was about to be a change in administrations. On January 10, the New York Times reported jungle training camps in Guatemala. In other words, the planned invasion of Cuba was not a particularly well-kept secret, but was not discussed in Congress.

  “BY THE TIME OF THE INVASION, we’d already made many laws; the United States had taken some measures against Cuba, such as declaring an embargo, the economic blockade, and we replied by nationalizing U.S. industries,” Castro said as he discussed the
cause of the 1961 invasion with Brazilian writer Frei Betto in 1985. The United States cut off our sugar quota, “and we nationalized some industries and all the sugar mills. We responded to its measures by taking measures of our own,” referring to the Agrarian Reform Law that changed landholdings, and nationalized American assets worth $1 billion. Still, Fidel told Betto that though he’d been anticipating an invasion, they had been surprised by the attack on Cuba’s air bases on April 15, 1961.

  “I stayed up the whole night at the command post, because there were reports that an enemy force that had been detected just off the coast of Oriente Province was going to land.” The command post was Celia’s apartment on Once. “Whenever such situations arose, we divided up the regions,” Fidel said, and he continued: “I stayed in Havana. . . . I was told of the possible landing; I stayed alert, and at dawn I saw some planes flying near the command post—which was a house here in Vedado.”

  Raúl had gone to Oriente; Juan Almeida to the central part of the island; Che was put in charge of defending the Pinar del Rio region west of Havana. And, just like the old days in the Sierra Maestra, Fidel sent Celia to the front while he stayed at command headquarters. It had worked before, why not again?

  “The landing began that same night,” Fidel told Betto, “at around midnight [between April 16 and 17]. They tried to destroy our Air Force so as to control the skies, but we still had more airplanes than pilots: eight planes and seven pilots. . . . At dawn, they were in the air, heading for the Bay of Pigs, as soon as we realized that that was where the main attack was being made.”

  Celia drove at breakneck speed to the Zapata Swamp. She went to the house attached to the Australia sugar mill. From there, she collected information and phoned Fidel. He took notes as she spoke, making notes of what she told him, with a few lines between points and below that a list of what he had to do:

  “CELIA SAYS:

  That she communicated with Australia Sugar Mill and was able to confirm that the ship attacked Playa Giron and another [ship] [attacked] Playa Larga.

  That the militia [illegible] groups [are] with the people, however, these need support and reinforcements. Given at 03:29 on the 17th.

  [That] South of Havana at Playa Rosario ships are approaching the beach.

  [That] I notify the School of Militia Cadres in Matanzas of the mobilization. That the men [who are] there should be prepared/ready to leave.

  FIDEL:

  Cojimar’s Special Column is ready.

  Alert the two Reserve Battalions.

  [Send] One company to Playa Larga and another to Aguada de Pasajeros from the forces at the Escuela de Matanzas.

  That the battalion from Australia [Sugar Mill] advance toward la Playa.

  FIDEL:

  Company from Covadonga

  Company at Cayo Ramona

  [Send] Anti-tank battery to Covadonga and another to Giron.

  Move 120 Mortar on Giron.

  [Send] Captain Fernández with troops from the School in Matanzas toward Jovellanos.

  Place to [put a] post in southern zone toward Pinar del Rio is Cubanacan.

  -----------------------------

  [Order] Universo [Sánchez to] move four anti-tank batteries.”

  [The end of third page]

  (This document was a gift from the Cuban Council of State’s Office of Historical Affairs, a.k.a. “Celia’s Archives,” to George Washington University, in honor of a North American and Cuban conference held in March 2001 to discuss the Bay of Pigs, forty years after it occurred.)

  FOR FOUR DAYS, from April 17 to April 21, a small army and a tiny air force (but, as Fidel noted, they still had seven planes), augmented by a large people’s militia (armed by the USSR), waged a battle led by Fidel and his officers.

  “The rebel army consisted of only 25,000 men,” historian Jorge Castaneda writes. “Castro had no choice but to arm the population. He would never have done so had he not been certain of their loyalty and support. The resulting 200,000 militiamen played a central role in Cuba’s victory. They allowed Castro to deploy lightly armed, mobile forces to all possible landing points, forming a huge early-warning network.”

  The CIA and White House plan called for “freedom fighters” recruited among the disenchanted Cuban exile community to land on a beach near the Escambray mountains. The Americans were sure that there was enough dissatisfaction among Castro’s army and militia that dissidents would spontaneously join the invaders and oppose Castro’s government. Not only did this fail to happen, but those reaching shore received no assistance from the offshore boats, and were bombarded by the rebel army. And the small but effective Cuban air force kept the rest from approaching the coast. The rebel army sank one of the boats; the fatal shot was fired from a tank on the beach. CIA troops who did land couldn’t escape into the Escambray without confronting the Zapata Swamp. About 1,200 men were stranded and had to surrender. (Over the next twenty months, these men were held in prison in Havana until Cuba exchanged them for money, baby formula, and medicine.) Celia’s workers on the hotel project at Guama could see and hear the battle. Caignet said it was like fireworks.

  SOMETIME IN 1961, Fidel asked Celia a second time if she wanted to marry. They’d just been through the most harrowing experience since the war. Circumstance—that favorite raison d’être of José Martí followers—and victory over the Americans may have caused them to revisit their vows to stay as they were: in a partnership that many Cubans disapproved of or were bewitched by. Celia’s solution was this: she had an additional floor constructed on the roof of the building at Once, an apartment for Fidel.

  BY 1962, LACK OF SHOES, due to the American embargo, had become a national problem. Celia turned to supplying Cubans with footwear. First the government tried to reorganize the existing industry by closing down small cobbler shops and opening factories. Bad workmanship, a shortage of cowhides, and any number of other problems were the basis of bad production, and people complained bitterly about the product, accustomed as they were to American-made shoes. Shoes were rationed. Certificates to purchase them were mostly issued by the unions, but some were distributed by the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, which existed in every neighborhood. These two groups, the unions in particular, discussed who needed shoes and who could wait for them. The CDRs took care of distribution to housewives and nonunion workers. Inevitably, people of revolutionary spirit were favored over the less politically inclined. This was a perfect situation for a dispute, and protests broke out everywhere. In this climate, Celia opened a factory in Havana to produce plastic shoes. She bought molds from Italy and gave priority to hiring women; and since the majority of the workers in this factory were women with children, hers was one of the first factories to set up a day-care center.

  ALSO IN 1962, Fidel reminded Celia that it was time to assume responsibility for the child they’d named Eugenia and baptized in the cave near Altos de Naranjo, whose father, Pastor Palomares, wanted them to raise her and give her an education. Celia wrote a letter to the grandparents. She waited and heard nothing, then sent three telegrams, and these, too, went unanswered. Fidel sent a man to get the child.

  “I felt very proud,” Eugenia Palomares told me. “There was someone called El Morito who came on horseback. I came to Havana with a small box that held my three dresses and my only shoes.” Celia arranged to have a woman meet them in Providencia, and bring Eugenia to Havana.

  “When I arrived it was night. Celia was waiting. I didn’t know her but my grandmother told me: when you get to Havana you’ll meet your godmother who is a very thin woman, and your godfather is tall with a beard. You should ask for their blessings.” Asking godparents for their blessings was a traditional courtesy in Cuba. “I said to Celia: Give me your blessing, Godmother,” Eugenia recalls. “I hugged and kissed her. She did answer me, but not like my grandparents, who said: Santica mija, God bless you. Celia presented me to Ernestina, the cook, very affectionately, and to some other people I think were guards. The
y looked at me with pity. After all these years, I now realize her reason: my body was weak and my spine was curved from carrying wood and pails of water for my grandparents. I was very thin, but my belly was bloated from parasites. My grandparents only knew about herbs.” On that first day, Eugenia felt that Celia had snubbed her greeting. This was followed by a sense of inferiority when she sensed how shocked they were at her appearance.

  The next morning, she woke up feeling sad. “I missed my grandparents, their house, the mountains, everything. I had never seen electricity, a television, air conditioning, or a gas stove, since ours had been wood. Or seen floors. The floors in our house were of earth. Or walls. Ours had been made of planks and parts of the palm tree. Or a ceiling, since ours was made out of pieces of zinc and palm. I’d never heard this way of speaking, or known these kinds of people. All of it made me cry.” Ana Irma Escalona took charge of the situation. “She combed my hair and showed me how to wash, because I’d never seen a bathroom.”