The Girl from Guantanamo

by Donald Lloyd Roth

  During his earlier legitimate presidency, Batista had enacted progressive policies, and the country had entered a time of relative prosperity. Cubans were hopeful that Batista would govern as he had previously. But instead he suspended the 1940 Constitution and revoked political liberties including the right to strike. A stagnating economy was widening the gap between rich and poor Cubans and Batista now aligned with the wealthiest landowners.

  In his earlier Presidency, Batista had enjoyed the support of Cuba’s Communists who he now rejected, gaining him a strong following in the halls of Washington, DC, American corporate board rooms, and the backrooms of Las Vegas. The wider Batista opened the doors to American businesses, the more he and his cronies profited personally. Batista enriched himself with graft from the large US companies that had taken over nearly all of the cattle ranches, mines, and utilities. They also controlled the country’s oil industry and owned 40 percent of the sugar farms. Additionally, the US was supplying two-thirds of Cuba’s imports.

  Batista turned Havana into a gambling mecca which resulted in his further lining his pockets. He had established close ties with American organized crime figures Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano who envisioned Havana becoming The Monte Carlo of the Caribbean. Moreover, with the head of the of the Cuban nation in their hip pockets the Mafioso enjoyed immunity from the law in a sovereign nation just 90 miles from the US. Prostitution and drugs also became big business, with the Batista regime taking kickbacks from all the action. Everyone at every level of power, from the police to the president, was on the take.

  From the moment Batista took power, Fidel Castro had fought back using the legal system. Castro claimed the widespread corruption that plagued Havana caused a degradation of the quality of life for working Cubans. But with the courts firmly under the thumb of Batista’s government, Castro’s legal challenges were easily rebuffed.

  Castro decided to escalate the fight by starting a revolution. He and his younger brother, Raúl, began arming their movement to forcibly overthrow Batista. Based on the eastern end of the island in Santiago, far from Havana, Castro’s “Movement” aggressively recruited young men willing to die to secure their country’s freedom.

  In his rhetoric, Castro seized on Batista’s cozy, colonial-like relationship with the United States. He decried Cuba being a puppet of the US economy, since the Americans took the country’s raw materials and sold the products made from them to the Cuban people for many times the manufacturing costs.

  Castro declared war on Batista on July 26, 1953. Along with Raúl and more than one hundred armed supporters, he led an attack on the Moncada army barracks in Santiago. His goal was to arm his civilian revolutionaries and have them turn Batista’s army against the ruler. The attack was ill conceived and failed miserably. The majority of his men were killed in the skirmish.

  Fidel and Raúl Castro were arrested and put on trial for conspiracy to overthrow the government. In court, Fidel delivered a moving speech that became the basis for his “Manifesto of the 26th of July Revolution.” Castro told the court, “Condemn me, it does not matter, because history will absolve me.” He and Raúl were sentenced to lengthy prison terms. But after their supporters pushed Batista to release them, the Cuban president, feeling that they posed no real threat, granted a general amnesty to all prisoners in 1955.

  The Castros fled to Mexico, and began again to plot the overthrow of Batista. They were joined by the charismatic Ernesto “Che” Guevara, and Camilo Cienfuegos, a fearless fighter and gregarious revolutionary who had also fled Cuba.

  After a year of training, on November 25, 1956, eighty-two men sailed in a sixty-three-foot wooden yacht called the Granma. They left Tuxpan, Veracruz Mexico in a boat which was designed to accommodate far fewer people. The target landing spot was a town in Oriente Province called Niquero where Celia Sanchez, Fidel’s confidante and also one of the founders of the 26th of July Movement, was waiting with men, trucks, jeeps, food, and weapons.

  In addition, on November 30, the day scheduled for arrival, a young revolutionary leader named Frank País, led a rebellion in Santiago which was supposed to coincide with the arrival of the Granma.

  Neither of these supporting efforts of the 26th of July members already in Cuba succeeded. While Frank País was able to escape, most of his force were either killed in battle by the police or were captured and executed. Nor were the personnel, food, and weapons made available by Celia Sanchez received by Fidel and his men.

  This was because the Granma, leaking and running days behind schedule, ran aground in swampy marshes well offshore at a spot called Playa de los Colorados before dawn on December 2nd. Wading to shore in marshy high water was difficult. Many of their weapons and supplies had to be left behind. The Cuban Coast Guard spotted the vessal, and troops were summoned to conduct a manhunt.

  The rebels moved toward the Sierra Maestra. Because they were unable to find anything to eat peasants and farmers gave them food and water along the way. Nevertheless hunger persisted and the rebels sucked on pieces of sugarcane discarding the empty husks along their route of march.

  On December 5 the Cuban Rural Guard, who were alerted to their presence by a peasant guide and aided further by the trail of sugarcane stalks, surrounded the rebels at Alegría de Pío and annihilated them. Of the eighty-two who made the trip from Mexico, though estimates vary, it is clear that no more than one to two dozen survived and regrouped as they reached the safety afforded by the Sierra Maestra. There the remaining rebels began recruiting peasant fighters dedicated to Castro’s ideals. When news of the assembled rebel forces reached Batista, the president assembled and dispatched an overwhelming military force to stop the rebels. But the rebels, under the fearless leadership of Guevera and Cienfuegos, proved to be more dedicated fighters in the rough mountain terrain.

  Although it was Fidel Castro’s forces that ultimately succeeded in the revolution, it would be misleading to portray Castro’s forces as the only anti-Batista rebels in Cuba. There were several other armed groups capable of hostile subversion. Among them were the Orthodoxo with which Fidel had been associated when he was a student, the Autentico Party, a highly violent group which had been aligned with Prío, and the ultra radical Directorio which actually pulled off an assassination of a high-profile official at a Lanskyowned nightclub.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It was in the late afternoon of a hot day in the late summer of 1957. Pilar witnessed an argument her father had at the gym that triggered a series of monumental events in her life.

  As 1957 progressed the intensity of the rhetoric over the progress of the revolution in Cuba escalated at Kid Gavilan’s training camp. Gavilan’s inner circle openly talked about how to help revolutionary leader Fidel Castro overthrow Batista. The gym became a gathering place for a growing anti-Batista movement taking shape in Miami. One of the most popular ideas was funding arms shipments to the rebels.

  On that afternoon at the gym, Pilar witnessed her father getting into a heated argument about the sugar business with a local businessman wearing a white fedora. The man, whom Pilar had seen a few times, was telling Miguel that Batista’s actions of pairing Cuban sugar plantation owners with American businesses was beneficial to the Cuban people. Miguel had spent his life in the sugar business. His brother Jorge relied on it to make a living. Miguel strongly believed that Batista was wrongly trying to cut his government in on both sides of the transaction without any regard to the farmers or the Cuban people.

  “What Batista’s government did,” Miguel said, escalating the conversation by raising his voice as he spoke, “was let Coca-Cola pay very little for our sugar and then add water and coloring to sell their soda back to Cubans for one hundred times the price of that sugar.”

  “You think small like a worker living in those peasant huts!” the man shot back, referring to the one-room shacks inhabited by the majority of sugar plantation workers in Cuba.

  Miguel knocked the guy’s hat off. “And you don’t think at all!” />
  Their old friend Salazar quickly stepped between the two men to prevent them from coming to fisticuffs. The man picked up his fedora, slapped it against his hip and stormed out. Salazar put his hands on Miguel’s shoulders and whispered to him that the fight wasn’t worth it, not in front of Pilar, who had witnessed the altercation.

  The gym manager told Miguel to take the rest of the afternoon off. Miguel stuffed his gear in his bag, and he and Pilar left.

  Pilar had paid only cursory attention to the details of the revolution. Since the death of her cousin Alicia, her life also seemed very far from Cuba. That afternoon, she asked her father to explain what was going on. For the next hour, Miguel and Pilar sat on a park bench while Miguel gave Pilar a long history lesson about her country. Miguel grew very emotional talking about what was happening in their homeland. Though it was now approaching ten years since the Ruiz family arrived on US soil, he had always viewed his family’s stay in Miami as temporary, a way to get a leg up financially so Pilar did not become the wife of a struggling sugar farmer.

  “Pilar,” Miguel concluded his analysis, “Fidel’s revolution must succeed. It is our country’s best chance to be free, and probably the only hope that we can ever want to live there again.”

  Salazar, who had witnessed Miguel’s argument with the man in the fedora, would use the events of that day to turn Pilar’s world and that of her family upside down. Though no one at the gym would know the details for years to come, Salazar was passing information to the increasingly concerned US government about the brewing pro-Cuban revolutionary activities in Miami. Salazar was a smooth operator who had won over everyone at the gym—from the employee’s children like Pilar, whom he had known for years, to Kid Gavilan himself.

  The day after Miguel’s argument Salazar was questioned by FBI agents who demanded that he provide them with names of prorevolutionaries. They told him that he was being paid to do a job, one that he was doing poorly up to that point, and Washington was growing impatient. Though Salazar had no hard information, he had to give the agents something. He told them that Miguel was one of the key figures.

  Two days later, very early on Sunday morning, there was a loud knock on the front door of the Ruiz’s house in Little Havana. The knock was followed by voices shouting Miguel’s name. Pilar knew immediately that something was horribly wrong by the harsh tone of the muffled voices. She ripped her covers off and ran into the family room. Maria grabbed Pilar’s arm and took her into their bedroom. Miguel moved toward the door.

  The voices grew louder and could clearly be heard. “Miguel Ruiz! Open the door. We are FBI agents. Miguel complied. Two well-built tall men wearing dark suits, white shirts and thin gray ties pushed their way in. One of the men extended his hand clutching a silver badge.

  “Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mr. Ruiz,” the man said. “Please get dressed and come with us.”

  The men were firm, but once they saw that Miguel was compliant and not overly aggressive, they stood just inside the front door while Miguel made his way back to the bedroom. He hugged Pilar and kissed Maria, telling her to call Pablo Hernandez. Though he and Pablo disagreed on Cuban politics, Teddy’s father was the only lawyer Miguel knew. He was certain that he would help because Teddy and Pilar were the best of friends. Miguel quickly dressed and returned to the waiting agents.

  Pilar peered around the corner as the two men in suits that looked oddly like uniforms led her father to a black car. She was confident that he could handle whatever happened next. Remembering his recitation of the history of the revolution and knowing his passion was tempered with practicality, she was not afraid for him. She then turned to her mother, who was trembling.

  “Mama, call Mr. Hernandez now,” she said.

  Miguel was driven to a small building in the warehouse district north of downtown Miami. He was placed in a conference room and given a cup of lukewarm coffee. A long wait ensued. Finally, two different men dressed similarly to the agents that had brought Miguel to the facility entered the room. They sat down at the table across from him.

  The older agent named Grimes was carrying a file. He placed it on the table. He told Miguel that inside was “information certain to prove” that he was a member of the 26th of July Cuban Revolutionary Movement in Miami.

  “The United States government supports the lawful government of Cuba. It will not allow this rebellious activity on our shores,” Grimes said.

  “Names. We want names,” chimed in the second agent.

  For the next hour, Miguel told them he was not involved in any revolutionary activities and did not know anyone who was. They asked him about the preparation of arms shipments to Castro revolutionaries. Miguel kept telling them that this was just talk, merely guys at the gym jawboning with each other and talking macho.

  “Who was talking? Give us their names.” said the agent.

  But Miguel wasn’t going to throw more innocent men like himself under the bus. He clammed up.

  Getting nowhere, the agents then played their hand. Grimes told Miguel that until his memory improved they were detaining him under the immigration statutes.

  It was true that Miguel had obtained a visa to visit the US. But neither he nor, as far as he knew, any of the other members of Kid Gavilan’s team had felt a need to renew the visa when it expired or to seek a more permanent status. The immigration process had seemed to be more of a welcome mat than a suspicious investigation of credentials. But clearly the officials had kept track of who entered the country—if only to have something to hold over people like Miguel when needed.

  Miguel was permitted to call his lawyer with Grimes hovering nearby. He reached Pablo at home. Pablo was already aware of his plight, having heard from Maria. He told Miguel to say nothing until he arrived and asked him to put the agent in charge on the phone. Miguel handed the receiver to Grimes, who provided the address of the detention center.

  After an hour, during which Miguel sat alone with his hands folded in his lap, Pablo arrived.

  Grimes escorted Pablo into the conference room. Pablo had already spoken to the agents about the charges against Miguel. A tricky conversation ensued, as Miguel was initially not certain whether Pablo was acting as his lawyer or secretly rooting for the FBI agents. “My friend, they are detaining you indefinitely for immigration violations,” Pablo informed him. “They are allowed to take such action. But what they want from you is information, in exchange for which they offer you help in convincing the Immigration and Naturalization Service to validate the legality of your status in this country. That is the real issue.”

  Miguel told Pablo he had no such information. “I may disagree with the Cuban president and want change, but that does not mean I am a revolutionary. Nor do I know anyone who is a rebel,” he said.

  Pablo was sympathetic, leaving his personal politics aside. As one of the most accomplished Cubano lawyers in Miami, he spoke very clearly about the law and Miguel’s predicament.

  After about twenty minutes of discussion, Pablo leaned forward and motioned for Miguel to come closer. Miguel leaned across the table. “They may try to pressure you through your family,” Pablo whispered in his ear. “I assume Maria and Pilar’s immigration status has the same flaws as yours.”

  Betraying little emotion, Miguel told Pablo to deliver a message to Maria: she was to find his friend Salazar and have him arrange for her and Pilar to be taken by boat to Santiago. They were to stay with his brother, Jorge, until Miguel sent for them to return or until he joined them in Cuba.

  Pablo nodded and stood up. In a loud voice, as he knew Grimes was listening, Pablo told Miguel that he would file the necessary immigration petition the first thing the next morning. Miguel understood that Pablo was buying his family a day or two so that Pablo could deliver the message to Maria and Pilar to leave Miami immediately.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Havana Supper Club on Collins Avenue was the late-night destination for the well-dressed men who hung out at Kid Gavilan’s gym du
ring the day. Miguel had stopped in once or twice at the fashionable club in the late afternoon with Pilar on their way home from the gym. She had seen Salazar there, holding court in a booth in the back. She prayed that she would be able to find her father’s trusted friend there that night.

  Maria stayed home to make preparations for the journey to Cuba; Pilar went to the club. She arrived in a taxi cab around 9 p.m. in hopes of finding Salazar and convincing him to sail her and Maria to Santiago the following morning. The area in front of the club was bustling. Valets sprinted back from parking the luxury cars of the patrons.

  As Pilar emerged from the cab, she noticed three women entering the club wearing tight-fitting, shiny dresses and adorned with gold jewelry. Pilar was wearing a knee-length sundress. She wore no jewelry except for a Mickey Mouse wristwatch she had treasured since receiving it soon after the family arrived in the US. She was not at all intimidated by the simplicity of her attire. Miguel had told her that Salazar was a stakeholder in the establishment, and she assumed that once she gave his name at the door, it wouldn’t matter that she was underdressed.

  The club was private, members only. A beefy man squeezed into a tuxedo nodded at people as they entered. When Pilar reached him, he smiled and held up his right hand.

  “I need to speak to Señor Salazar,” she said.

  “Who is asking?” the doorman replied brusquely.

  “Tell him it’s Pilar Ruiz,” she said.

  The doorman motioned to his burly colleague standing nearby. He gave the man instructions and asked Pilar to wait. About five minutes later, the bouncer returned. He mumbled something to the doorman.

  “Mr. Salazar is in a meeting, but he will meet you in the lounge in fifteen minutes,” the doorman told Pilar. He pointed to his colleague. “Martinez will escort you to his booth.”