Uvero earned its place in the history books on 28 May 1957 when it was the scene of a guerrilla victory described by Che Guevera as having ‘a greater psychological impact than any other in the history of the war’. Yet this battle lasted only two and three-quarter hours. A small wooden barracks almost on the beach, beside an enormous Babun lumber storehouse, was defended by fifty-three Batista troops and attacked by eighty guerrillas. These included one US citizen named Charles Ryan and Celia Sanchez, the first woman to fight in the Rebel Army’s front line. A doctor’s daughter from nearby Media Luna, Celia had supplied most of the weaponry used on this occasion. The Batistas lost fourteen dead, another fourteen captured, nineteen wounded – and six who ran away. Six guerrillas were killed and two seriously injured. In our day of proliferating small (and not so small) arms, and the indiscriminate bombing of ‘suspected terrorist’ homes and villages, Cuba’s civil war seems a mere skirmish.
Che wrote:
This battle was one of the bloodiest of the revolutionary war. It was an assault by men who had advanced bare-chested against an enemy protected by very poor defences. It should be recognised that on both sides great courage was shown. For us this was the victory which marked our coming of age. From this battle on, our morale grew tremendously, our decisiveness and our hopes for triumph increased also. Although the months which followed were difficult ones, we were already in possession of the secret of victory. This action at El Uvero sealed the fate of all small barracks situated far from major clusters of enemy forces, and they were all closed soon after.
The victors took with them to their mountain hideouts the fourteen prisoners (soon to be released: their nuisance value was considerable) and a loggers’ truck with all the medical equipment and weaponry they could collect. Then as now, but for different reasons, Uvero was not where one stocked up on food.
Some of the easiest Sierra Maestra tracks were (and still are) those gouged out by loggers. Throughout this area the Rebel Army received much help from a childhood friend of the Castro brothers, Enrique Lopez, who worked for the Babun brothers – close friends of Batista & Co.
Rachel’s cruising had been fruitless and we held an emergency meeting under the mango tree. Without food we could walk no further. Our guide-book mentioned a campismo with canteen at La Mula, some ten miles to the west. Most campismos are off-limit for tourists but surely three starving children would soften official hearts – Cuban hearts being peculiarly susceptible to juvenile charms.
‘Let’s swim before we hitch,’ pleaded Rose, echoed by her sisters. That cake had worked wonders. But Uvero’s sloping beach proved swimmer-unfriendly just then: romping waves were ebbing too fast. Back on the road, our luck changed; a grossly over-crowded truck-bus was about to depart for Pilon, via La Mula. Boldly we forced our way on, having got the message that every stationary truck-bus is a challenge to be overcome.
A large black man took Clodagh on to his knee, I took Zea on to mine, Rachel and Rose stood. The young woman who formed the other half of a Rose sandwich guessed our destination and was sympathetic. She doubted if the campismo, wrecked by Dennis, had yet reopened. But perhaps we’d be allowed to sleep there because of the niños …
We were put down on a long bridge spanning a gorge between high spurs, their bases palm-fringed. Here began another cornice and below lay the campismo, looking dormant, its wide gate closed. Most of the concrete cabins had new tin roofs. Slithering down a dusty embankment we surmounted piles of hurricane débris, found an opening in the damaged fence and were not warmly welcomed by a pot-bellied caretaker with a crew cut and a livid diagonal scar across his golden-brown back. No, we couldn’t camp here and there was no food – or electricity, or running water. Nor could we swim (tempting waves sparkled twenty yards away) because Dennis had piled tons of mingled seaweed and tree-trunks against the malecón. And there was no nearby beach. At this point a Trio riot might have been forgiven but all three stoically accepted how things were, shared a litre of water (happily we’d been able to refill our bottles in Uvero’s bakery) and asked for their sudoku books and pencils. Grudgingly, the caretaker had agreed to our heat-dodging in the spacious circular pavilion, furnished with new café tables and surrounded by badly mangled palms. When functioning, this simple campismo must be an attractive spot. Where else in the world are such affordable resorts now provided by the government?
Rachel and I pondered the ethics of the situation. If we waved a CP20 note (a fortune in rural Cuba) would the caretaker suddenly find himself able to feed us? Probably yes, but perhaps only by depriving others of their rations. The libreta system undoubtedly works; we saw no Cubans anywhere looking undernourished. (Only during the worst of the Special Period did malnutrition strike, for the first time since 1959.) It would therefore be cruel (‘unethical’ too weak a word) for relatively rich foreigners to rock the rationing boat.
In a report for the organisation ‘Sustain’, by Courtney Van de Weyer, we are reminded that in Britain, from 1940–1953, ‘Rationing resulted in a restricted, yet nutritious, diet for the wider population. Limited as it was, it is often suggested that the British population has never been healthier than during those years. Certainly infant mortality decreased and children’s general health improved. The rations provided the poor with more protein and vitamins, and the rest of the population ate less meat, fats and sugar.’
Rachel now proposed going backwards for a mile or so to a tiny cove glimpsed from the truck-bus. There we could swim, eat raisins and sleep before continuing west to Las Cuevas, the next village. If it proved foodless we’d have to admit defeat and take a vehicle – if possible onwards to Marea del Portillo, otherwise back to Santiago.
The Trio approved of that little cove, its patch of sand separated from the ocean by a climbable rock barrier through which waves surged to form a pool some three feet deep and fifteen yards wide. Our arrival was observed by a young woman who immediately hurried down from her hillside bohio, with toddler at foot, to warn us that beyond the barrier flowed dangerous undercurrents. Appalled by the notion of our camping out she invited us to stay – but tentatively, uneasily, not with Miguel’s light-heartedness. We hesitated, thinking ‘rice and chicken’. She would however be taking a risk by entertaining us and she looked quite relieved when we declined her invitation.
A low headland, grassy and scrubby, overlooked our cove to the east and there I found an ideal – by my standards – campsite. The Trio had other standards. ‘It’s not level,’ objected Rose, ‘we could roll over the edge while we’re asleep.’ ‘There are lumpy stones under the grass,’ reported Clodagh after an inspection. ‘The grass has prickly things in it,’ added Zea.
Rachel and I, underfed and short-tempered, ignored all this, unrolled five flea-bags and said, ‘Bedtime!’ We then finished the Buccaneros, slapping at mosquitoes while a swollen golden moon slid upwards through diaphanous streamers of cloud. Nearby rose some of the Sierra Maestra’s highest ridges along which, on the night of 27–28 May 1957, Fidel led the amateur Rebel Army to attack Uvero’s barracks. Following a loggers’ track, in total darkness and moving silently as cats, it took them eight hours to cover the ten miles from their La Plata camp.
In Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War Che recalls that at other times the Rebels endured extreme thirst and hunger:
We rationed our water – and with what precision! We distributed it in the eyepiece of a pair of field-glasses; nothing could be fairer. Coming to a mountain torrent we threw ourselves to the ground and drank for a long time with the avidity of horses. We would have continued but our stomachs, empty of food, refused to absorb another drop. We filled our flasks and kept going.
Elsewhere, one man was reduced to drinking his own urine and Che, a chronic asthma sufferer, unsuccessfully tried to coax water from a damp rockface with his breathing apparatus. Now and then minute residues of water were found in parasite plants. And when Fidel and two of his men became separated from the others, and had to hide in a canefield for
several days, they survived by chewing and sucking the cane stalks.
At dawn the others were somewhere else, not where their bags had been laid. Rachel, I deduced, had had a testing time, coping with Rose’s paranoia about falling off the cliff and Clodagh’s absurd sensitivity to a few pebbles. Only Zea and I were feeling bouncy after a sound night’s sleep. With no breakfast to delay us, we were marching west by 6.45 as the sky behind us brightened.
Here was an austerely beautiful corniche. Its sheer naked cliffs – streaked ochre, silver, pink – towered above us as we walked by a narrow pebbly verge, devoid of vegetation, overhanging the dazzling blue sea. This sparsely inhabited area generated little traffic of any sort. We often rested and doled out raisins but those cliffs acted as storage-heaters and by 10.00 exhaustion threatened.
‘Let’s have a long rest,’ begged Clodagh. ‘Where?’ demanded Rose. ‘There’s no shade.’ ‘I’m hot enough to die,’ announced Zea. ‘Best to keep going,’ said Rachel, ‘Las Cuevas must be close.’ And it was.
Around the next bend the corniche ended in a short, wide valley where a few score scattered dwellings, linked by stony paths, clung to steep slopes. Alas! there was no beach; fifty feet below the road rough seas swirled over sharp rocks. Here the Trio took refuge under a row of puny wayside trees while their seniors foraged.
Las Cuevas was dusty, grey, arid and quiet; occasionally a distant figure appeared as we passed the polyclinic, local government offices and a school with the customary playground bust of José Martí, leader of the 1895-8 independence struggle against Spain – reminding me of the BVM statues once common in Irish school grounds. Only water was available in the bakery where a memorably handsome young man interrupted his domino contest to fill our bottles – for free. He regretted having no ship’s biscuits, or anything edible, and informed us that Las Cuevas is shopless.
Rachel broke the bad news to her hungry offspring. ‘Seems it has to be Marea de Portillo or back to Santiago.’ I marvelled as the endlessly resourceful mother produced a box of coloured chalks and at children’s limitless energy. Short of food and sleep, having just walked eight miles – the last hour in punishing heat – the Trio now set about chalking the tree-shaded bit of road and playing hop-scotch. Their parents, I suggested to Rachel, could make lots of money by using them in a TV advertisement for Californian organic raisins.
A trickle of energetic foreigners passes through Las Cuevas, one of the officially approved starting points for the ascent of Pico Turquino, Cuba’s highest mountain (1,974 metres). Yet the few villagers who strolled past didn’t stop to chat, restricting their greetings to silent nods. Unsupervised tourists are still treated with caution in some rural areas.
Sitting on the gravelly ground, using rucksacks propped against trees as backrests, Rachel and I laid bets on when/if a vehicle would appear and in which direction it might take us. To the west the corniche continued for miles, curving around those radiator cliffs, and once a truck came into view, galvanising us. A false hope, its destination was local. When the hop-scotchers gave up at noon Zea and I settled to rummy, the others being in sudoku mode. Not long after an elderly man approached – wiry and fine-featured, wearing a kind expression and an air of authority. Shaking hands with Rachel and me he addressed us both as compañera and introduced himself as Wilfredo. (First names are the norm in Castro’s Cuba; the President being universally known as ‘Fidel’ is not quirky.) Were we waiting for public transport or expecting a friend to arrive? If no vehicle came we could sleep in the Turquino National Park rangers’ hut: he pointed to it, on a ledge beyond the village. Meanwhile would we like some refreshment? A milky hot chocolate drink? Fresh orange juice? Like puppies at feeding time the Trio yelped with excitement.
Wilfredo lived in a larger-than-average white-washed house high above the road and we watched him taking a short cut, nimbly leaping from boulder to boulder. Forty minutes later he descended on a path, bearing litre jugs of hot chocolate and ice-cold pure orange juice – costing a mere NP20. In tiendas tins of imported drinking chocolate are wildly expensive but many Cuban villagers grind their own cocoa berries.
During our four-hour wait two licensed taxis passed, one going each way, their passengers staring in astonishment at the displaced persons by the wayside. Then at 2.40 that local lorry reappeared – bound for El Maja, a village so small we’d hardly noticed it on our ride to La Mula. From there, Wilfredo assured us, a dawn bus departs for Uvero – whence an afternoon truck-bus usually (though not always) departs for Santiago.
Six others climbed on to the lorry’s load of wooden stakes and the driver invited me into the cab. Our situation puzzled him. From where, how and why had we got stranded in Las Cuevas? My explanation that we had walked most of the way from Chivirico because we enjoy walking left him even more puzzled. On arrival in El Maja I offended him by opening my purse. He made a dismissive gesture and said something derogatory about capitalismo. After that, when riding in farm lorries, I suppressed my capitalistic impulse to pay for transport.
El Maja, too, was shopless but I faintly hoped for some other source of beer – perhaps a private enterprise household selling Hatuey? Wandering alone up a side road I discovered that there is more to El Maja than meets the main roader’s eye. Several laneways wind between detached or terraced post-’59 one-storey homes. These dreary little dwellings lack the charm of bohios but are supplied with electricity, indoor loos, showers and fridges, evidence of Fidel’s wish to modernise rural Cuba. I stopped everyone I met (two men, three women) to ask my ‘cerveza?’ question. All emphatically said ‘No!’ and conveyed disapproval of my mission. Possibly Ché’s influence persists in these communities. When setting standards for the Rebel Army, after its victory, the ascetic Che wrote:
Just as it was in the Sierra, the Rebel must not drink, not because of the punishment that may be inflicted by the disciplinary organism, but simply because the cause that we defend – the cause of the poor and of all the people – requires us not to drink, so that the mind of every soldier is alert, his body agile, his morale high. He must remember that today, as yesterday, the Rebel is the cynosure of all eyes and constitutes an example for the people. There is and can be no great army if the bulk of the population is not convinced of the immense moral strength we possess today.
No mere rhetoric, this. When the Rebels became the rulers of Cuba in January 1959, all observers were astonished by their orderly behaviour. The English historian Hugh Thomas puts it well in his monumental The Cuban Revolution:
There was anxiety lest … the successful revolution should spawn endless minor gangster forces roaming violently across the country. In the event, there was little private settling of scores, an almost unparalleled development in such situations in Cuba; and one has only to think of the end of the occupation of France to realise the extent of this achievement by the Cubans.
When I rejoined the others, looking grumpy, Clodagh exclaimed, ‘Poor Nyanya! She needs beer!’ Rachel hid her own yearning and said primly, ‘It’s good to give our livers a rest now and then.’
Again we went backwards, for a mile or so, to a sheltered beach where mountainous sand dunes would conceal our camp from the road and the swimming was safe and the Trio’s mosquito nets could be hung from low sea-grape branches. In the shade of those trees Rachel and I studied the map at length, debating various possibilities, then hatched a new plan. Having bought enough tinned food for a nine-day trek (the Trio would have to do some of the porterage) we’d take a bus to Baracoa and roam through its surrounding mountains on secondary roads. In that much more fertile region bananas at least would be plentiful and to date our nocturnal experiences had been reassuring; it seemed easy to get away with illegal camping.
I unrolled my bag near the waves and for an unforgettable hour lay watching a multicoloured display of distant sheet lightening. We associate lightning with thunder; to me there was something ethereal, mysterious, almost mystical about those spasms of silent brilliance flaring among cloud
banks on the far horizon.
Before dawn Rachel was busy dismantling mosquito nets with the aid of her forehead torch.
‘It’s dark!’ grumbled Zea. ‘Why are we awake?’
‘Because the bus goes early,’ replied Rose, ‘and if we miss it we must walk to Santiago.’
‘I could easily walk,’ said Clodagh. ‘But Mummy and Nyanya are too empty, they won’t eat our raisins.’
As we struggled through the deep loose sand of those high dunes I thought about Ché’s September 1958 marathon expedition from the Sierra Maestra to Las Villas province. His second-in-command, Camilo Cienfuegos, afterwards recorded:
Forty days of march, often with the south coast and a compass as the only guide. During fifteen days we marched with water and mud up to the knees. Travelling by night to avoid ambushes … During the thirty-one days of our journey across Camaguey we ate eleven times. After four days of famine we had to eat a mare.
Che himself recalled that on the banks of the La Plata river, three miles from Las Cuevas:
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