Suddenly Normando’s mood changed and he spoke frankly as an unorthodox but committed son of the Revolution. To him the fateful spring of 2003 marked a turning point at which the government lost its compass. Jailing the dissidents, he believed, was a mistake, because their collaboration with a foreign power didn’t really matter. ‘They’re a shoal of feeble no-goods, best ignored – rounding them up played the Yanqui game. Then we looked scared and they seemed influential. Which they weren’t and could never be for one obvious reason. However we resent the way things are, we do not – repeat not – want to become again a US colony!’
I asked, ‘Why d’you think they lost the compass?’
‘Cason rattled them – de facto US ambassador but not keeping the diplomatic rules. He arrived in September ’02 and personally, publicly, tried to organise dissidents. Didn’t Rene and Luis show you their shots of him delivering books to Pinar’s “independent library”? Everyone could see him in action, in his own residence he ran workshops for “independent journalists”. When Perez Roque sent warnings about “breaches of diplomatic status” he ignored them, went on taunting Cuba. He even invited foreign journalists to meet him at sedition-stirring sessions in dissidents’ homes. I guess our guys thought they’d look weak, at home and in Washington, if they let him get away with insulting his host government.’
‘Then why not send him home? Wouldn’t that have been wiser than jailing seventy-five who could be used as “prisoners of conscience”?’
Normando’s gesture expressed impatience and some anger. ‘Sure we should’ve packed him off and shown the media the evidence against the traitors shown in court. Governments like diplomats to keep the rules in public. We could’ve got international sympathy instead of being kicked up the backside. I don’t know why our guys couldn’t see that. I’ve heard rumours Fidel favoured the persona non grata route. If so, there’s another example of him accepting collective decisions – something Cubans know about and outsiders refuse to believe! Since ’59 it’s been a war of nerves with the US. But keeping us twitchy is two-edged. Having to think so much about defence weakens us, having to be united against aggression strengthens us. Being always on guard against saboteurs, we’ve never had space for political-ideological open debate – the enemy could turn it into a weapon.’
After a lunch of cold roast pork and tomato salad Felix escorted me down to the ferry. On the way we paused to drink rum with a Santería friend of his who was also a librarian and had much to say about US-funded ‘independent libraries’. These became a focus of controversy in the US after the mass-jailings. Allegedly, ten of the seventy-five were ‘independent librarians’, highlighted by the media as cultured literary folk muzzled by communists. However, the prestigious sixty-four thousand-strong American Library Association, which has long-term links with Cuba, thought otherwise.
Back in 2001 Rhonda L. Neugebauer (Bibliographer, Latin American Studies, University of California) led a delegation of librarians to Cuba where, since 1989, she has been regularly meeting colleagues and touring libraries. Subsequently she wrote a long paper for the ‘Information for Social Change Journal’ (No.13, Summer 2001). It concludes:
I must say a few words about the ‘independent libraries’. I leave them for last because they are really a small group of people … who do not represent Cuban librarianship and do not deserve mention as part of its history. They are the brain-child of the US government, as is much of the anti-Castro opposition within Cuba. And this is admitted by State Dept officials as well as by the ‘independent librarians’ themselves. The supporters of these ‘libraries’ are using them to claim all sorts of things that go way beyond the scope of a book collection … If they are so ‘repressed’ why are their materials available for me to see? Why do they tell me what they are doing and from whom they receive funds? Why can an ‘independent librarian’ also be an ‘independent journalist’, phone and fax reports to Miami on a daily basis about ‘repression’ (that only they witnessed) and receive money from a foreign government for their ‘services’? We are able to give you first-hand reports on the activities of these groups because we visited them in their homes and saw their libraries … They told us themselves that they are using the front of an ‘independent library’ in order to call themselves opponents of Castro and receive monthly cheques from the US government! They are clear about what they are doing – although some claim to have actually circulated books – they know their purpose is merely to exist so that outsiders can claim there is opposition to Castro in Cuba … In Cuba I heard a lot of critical remarks about the government (from many sources) but the ‘independent librarians’ are not independent thinkers and we confirmed that they are not librarians … The real librarians in Cuba are aware of the misinformation that is being spread … and resent these attempts to put a human face on foreign intervention by using librarians and the rallying cry of ‘intellectual freedom’.
As this 2001 report makes plain, ‘dissidents’ (though always under surveillance) were not harassed until James Cason took over at the US Interests Section.
In December 2003, eight months after the round-up, Nat Hentoff wrote an article in the Village Voice (‘In Castro’s Gulag – Librarians’) deploring ‘Castro’s crackdown on Cuba’s dissenters for the crime of advocating freedom of thought’. He criticised the American Library Associations’ annual meeting in Toronto where ‘Cuban independent librarians were denied a speaking place on the program while Castro’s librarians were given the freedom to speak for nearly three hours’. A week later Nat Hentoff ’s contribution was entitled ‘Criminalizing Librarians’ with special reference to Victor Rolando Arroyo ‘who directed an independent, private library before being sentenced to twenty-six years in prison and also belongs to the Independent Cuban Journalists and Writers Union’. In Pinar del Rio, Arroyo led all the US-funded groups including the Centre for Trade Union Studies which every Saturday ran lectures (thinly attended) on how to be a successful subversive. In his mother’s home in the Jacinto district he met with Cason and his predecessor, Vicky Huddleston. He regularly misinformed the outside world that two million Cubans, out of eleven million, were dissidents. An extreme hard-liner, he urged Cason to suspend family remittances from the US and cancel all flights between Havana and Miami. The principal evidence against him was documentary, including receipts for funding that had come directly from CANF. Among Pinar’s other counter-revolutionaries he was unpopular but tolerated because of his exceptionally close links to the US Interest Section. Nat Hentoff asks, ‘Is Victor Arroyo a “Traitor to Cuba”?’ The answer is ‘Yes’.
Chapter 19
On 6 October I walked to the railway station between heavy showers, and got quite a shock; since my last journey to Santa Clara this service had been transformed. Punctually we departed in a conventionally comfortable train: open-plan, well-lit, unvandalised coaches, our tickets checked by a cheerful middle-aged conductress who dispensed complimentary salami rolls, bottles of Tukola and that morning’s Granma. I didn’t grumble, though I do prefer corridor trains; they allow more freedom of movement – and more bonding, in face-to-face carriages. My seat companion, a slim young woman clasping a large drum, slept all the way. Our conductress had suggested putting the drum in the luggage annex but evidently it was too precious to be deserted.
Granma’s front page commemorated this being the thirty-first anniversary of the fatal bombing of a Cubana Airways plane taking seventy-three passengers to Havana. Another article outlined the latest injury inflicted by the blockade. Inside pages reported the many events being organised throughout Latin America for the Che anniversary, Lula’s fuzzy comments on privatisation, the misdeeds of DynCorp in Puerto Rico, plans for the conservation of historic monuments in Cienfuegos and the killing by US forces of Iraqi women and children. One page was devoted to brief theatre, ballet and book reviews, another to baseball, boxing and fencing prospects. The back page extolled, with reams of statistics, a co-operative building project being undertaken i
n Granma province as a tribute to Che and Camilo Cienfuegos, his second-in-command during the Battle of Santa Clara. Granma does not strive to entertain.
It was good to be back in a city centre where human voices are the dominant sound and ‘traffic noise’ means hoof-beats. Surprisingly, no municipal contributions to the Che ‘event’ were visible; I had been expecting banners, bunting and scrolls. Santa Clara’s first commemoration was happening on 8 October, forty years after Ché’s wounding and capture. On the 9th, the date of his execution, Acting-President Raúl had to be M.C. in Havana. Five days later he would return to Santa Clara with President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela for the most solemn commemoration, to be attended by Ché’s family. This I had discovered belatedly, after arranging to meet an important friend of a friend in Camaguey – someone I couldn’t contact to try to change our appointment, and he would be travelling from elsewhere to meet me.
By 7.30 a.m. on 7 October the Plaza de la Revolucion was all action. Dozens of ebullient schoolchildren, directed by two adults, were neatly arranging thousands of dark blue plastic chairs on the concrete expanse overlooked by Ché’s statue. Pathways were being vigorously swept with twig brooms. Teams of sound technicians were erecting pylon-like amplifiers that arrived in bits on trucks, their reconstruction reminding me of childhood struggles with Meccano. (I pre-date Lego.) This whole area, quite dejected on my first visit, had been spruced up: weeds gone, fountains splashing, grass clipped, flower-beds glowing, broken concrete steps mended, faded billboards renewed, though Ché’s exhortations remained the same: Hasta la victoria siempre.
I turned towards the inconspicuous museum and mausoleum, closed for repainting during my last visit. At a nearby kiosk one exchanges one’s bag for a ticket; here the tourist industry defers to Ché’s principles and entry is free – as to a synagogue, church or mosque. The museum exhibits are standard: Ché’s weapons, pipe, camera, binoculars, field-radio, beret, combat jacket, the asthmatic’s inhaler he so desperately needed, the dental instruments he used in his camp clinics. Seeing his uniform, one realises he was a smaller man – less tall and broad – than one imagines him to have been. But what counts in this museum is the collection of enlarged family (and other) photographs illustrating Ché’s transformation from beloved, pampered baby to defiant, emaciated guerrilla warrior. One notices his mother’s large strong hands as she poses with her infant son in his long christening robe. The toddler, sucking two fingers, looks serious and determined. The schoolboy in short trousers sits on a car bonnet, the adolescent enjoys rugby, golf, basketball, the young man motorcycles the length of South America – by now a famous journey. A much-reproduced Sierra Maestra group photograph shows Celia smoking a cigarette, as do many other shots of Fidel’s most significant friend. (She died in her fifties, of lung cancer, whereupon Fidel ‘became convinced that the ultimate sacrifice I should make on behalf of public health in Cuba was to quit smoking. Teach by example.’) My favourite in this collection shows Che reclining on the ground in an African hut reading Goethe while cuddling a pup.
From the museum one enters the mausoleum, a shadowy cave-like chamber. Here Che and seventeen other guerrillas occupy ossuary niches in the cliff wall. An eternal flame, lit by Fidel on 17 October 1997, flickers amidst boulders and greenery suggesting the jungle in which these compañeros fought and died. The atmosphere is reverential – and powerful. Those rare places where emotions, positive or negative, are palpably concentrated have always intrigued me. I’ve come upon them in Nepal, Coorg, Eastern Turkey, Northern Ireland, Rwanda, the Russian Far East but in Santa Clara, a mere decade after the entombment, this concentration was wholly unexpected. We have wandered on to contentious territory, the way ahead obscured by a cloud of unknowing. Politics, propaganda, the packaging of Che as a ‘celebrity’ don’t adequately explain the atmosphere, generated by an accumulation of individuals’ responses to Ché’s message. I left with a lump in my throat.
On the other side of the city, at the site of Ché’s battle-winning train ambush, the wrecked wagons had recently been repainted – a bad idea, they looked much less authentic. The adjacent example of ‘public art’, a singularly ugly irregular conglomeration of long concrete slabs, was being dutifully photographed by Viazul tourists. Two Canadian matrons were registering outrage at the cost of the ‘museum’ wagon ticket. To feel a thrill at Blinidad one needs an intimate knowledge of Ché’s military exploits.
At 6.00 a.m. the old moon lay in the arms of the new and, nearby, Venus shone lustrously in a starless sky. Seeing children on their way to school took me aback; I had expected this to be a Special Day in Santa Clara. Between Parque Vidal and the Plaza large cheerful crowds were gathering at each street junction, apparently awaiting leaders, and as the first sun rays touched Ché’s bronze form I was approaching three skimpy barriers blocking the road – the sort a child could move. These were manned by a quartet of young toughs – evidently marshalls, though wearing no uniforms, badges or arm-bands. I walked ahead on the verge, ignoring the barriers, but was ordered to return and await their removal. Just then all those crowds I had passed earlier could be seen processing towards us, filling the long, wide street. I joined the vanguard, noticing that everyone carried a postcard-sized blue and green pass or ticket. When a marshall demanded mine I stared at him, nonplussed – then showed my passport. He shook his head: without a ticket I could not proceed. My first reaction was disbelief: there must be some misunderstanding. I stood silent, stunned and bewildered – then began to plead, expressing devotion to Che, explaining that I had come all the way from Ireland for this occasion. The marshall shouted at me, rudely, making a dismissive gesture. At that a mixture of rage and disappointment brought me close to tears and for a wild moment I considered walking on, testing the marshalls’ authority – which would have been stupid, inviting deportation. Instead I sloped off to try my luck elsewhere, with little hope of success though I knew the environs quite well and could think of three peripheral places where the Plaza merged into the surrounding fields. But of course each possibility was now being surveyed by a policeman – all three young, lightly armed, friendly and polite. They listened to me attentively, looked sympathetic, seemed genuinely to regret having to do their duty.
Back at the road-block, tension had gathered. For Cuba’s tourist industry, this was a PR mini-disaster; pass-less Che-worshippers, from four continents, were protesting against their exclusion from the Plaza. However, this wasn’t an anti-foreigner rule; we were surrounded by furious pass-less Cubans who expressed their fury between themselves, not directing it at the marshalls. One young Australian woman sobbed as she begged for mercy; she spoke fluent Spanish and a Cuban friend stood beside her, giving useless support. She was writing her thesis on Ché’s ‘New Man’ concept and had been saving up for two years to be in Santa Clara for ‘the fortieth’. My own rage was refuelled by the marshalls’ insolence as they glared contemptuously at us foreigners while yelling abuse at any argumentative Cuban.
Had we been allowed to remain at the original barrier site we could have seen a fraction of the ceremony (though not the ‘stage’, the enormous plinth on which Ché’s statue stands) and heard the speeches led by Raul’s panegyric. But now the bullies herded us far down the road and spitefully summoned three gigantic trucks from some nearby depot to block our view. Hatred flared then amidst the frustrated locals, reminding me of incidents during that long visa wait in Havana. Petty officials drunk on a little power bring out the worst in everybody. It was easy to imagine those marshalls harassing dissidents and greatly enjoying it. Later, Tania slyly observed that I perhaps needed this experience to blunt my scepticism about certain human rights violations.
With hindsight it was obvious that for this occasion I should have overcome my allergy to group-travel and joined fellow-members of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign in London. It’s an uncomfortable fact that official Cuba can’t cope with independent solo travellers – unlabelled individuals. As a member of a group that is expected, one
is shown everything: schools, hospitals, factories, farms, laboratories – even prisons. The group can be indiscriminately labelled: teachers, musicians, brick-layers, historians, doctors, chefs, cyclists, nurses, architects, artists, philosophers, organic farmers. All are welcome – if expected, their names filed and their movements pre-arranged. The individual traveller is of course also welcomed by the individual Cuban but excluded from all institutions. Several teachers and doctors wanted me to see their workplaces but my being unlabelled disqualified me from crossing those thresholds. This rigidity feels unCuban, a too durable residue of the Soviet phase. Tania saw it as ‘a sharp weapon for our enemies. Cuban institutions have nothing to hide. We’re not and have never been like the Soviet Union. But this stupid behaviour gives another impression’.
One of the high, wide billboards overlooking the Plaza de la Revolucion said, ‘Be more efficient every day, be better every day’ – a Che quote obviously heeded by Santa Clara’s municipal workers. At dawn on 9 October I had the Plaza to myself and, astoundingly, not even one Tukola tin or scrap of paper littered this space where 45,000 people had assembled twenty-four hours previously. An even greater gathering was to take place five days hence yet the chairs had vanished and the sound system had been dismantled.
I was on my way to Santa Clara’s recently renovated bus station where, in a cubby-hole partitioned off for tourists, a beautiful young woman laid down the law with a charming smile: I must use Viazul and I could book a seat now but I could buy my ticket only one hour before departure for Camaguey at 2.00 p.m. on the morrow.
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