by Tad Szulc
This period of preparation was rich in drama, danger, panache, adventure, and, invariably, classic acts of defiance that added to his public image as Cuba's "pure" leader of the new generation. His personal strategy was to operate on two parallel levels: the invisible level of conspiracy in which secrecy was never pierced, and the more visible level of street and courtroom protests against Batista at every imaginable opportunity. These two levels were complementary because, for one thing, Fidel's public performance facilitated recruitment for the conspiracy and the creation of his blindly loyal following.
Melba Hernández, a lawyer who is seven years older than Castro, and one of the two women who participated in the Moncada assault, says of his impact on people that "I think this happened to everybody: From the moment you shake hands with Fidel, you are impressed. His personality is too strong. When I gave my hand to this young man, I felt very secure, I felt I had found the way. When this young man began to talk, all I could do was to listen to him. . . . Fidel spoke in a very low voice, he paced back and forth, then came close to you as if to tell you a secret, and then you suddenly felt you shared the secret . . ."
And Castro did impress enough carefully selected men and women to accept his guidance at any cost to themselves to be able to organize his Movement so rapidly. Pedro Miret Prieto, then an engineering student from Santiago (he had attended the same La Salle boys' school as Fidel, though they had not met there) and the man who personally gave secret military training to each Moncada fighter, says he will "never forget" the day he encountered Castro, six months after the Batista coup. Now a member of the ruling Politburo and one of Castro's closest collaborators, Miret says that he decided to follow him when he realized that "all these other politicians will do nothing" against Batista, but Fidel would act. This story is repeated over and over again as the aging revolutionaries recall meeting Castro in their youth, an unforgettable emotional experience.
Still, it was necessary for Castro to gain enough exposure as the top leader against Batista that potential recruits would know his reputation and accept that first encounter. Certainly the publicity he gathered through the Bogotá adventure, his prominent university leadership, his congressional campaign, and his radio talks made him fairly well known to politically minded young Cubans, but Castro had his eye on an even wider audience. An example of how Castro's method worked for him is the account by Ramiro Valdés Menéndez, once one of Cuba's most powerful men and until 1986 the interior minister, on how he joined the Movement. The son of a poor family in Artemisa, a town in Havana province with unusually strong radical and anarchist traditions, Valdés was a twenty-one-year-old truck driver's helper with virtually no formal education when the Batista coup came. But he was interested in politics, and through a friend in the Ortodoxo party youth branch, Valdés arranged a meeting with Castro because he had listened to him on the radio in the past and now wanted to see whether this was a leader to be followed.
They met in Havana in the heat of July at the Ortodoxo party headquarters and as Valdés recalls it, "There was Fidel in his proverbial striped winter dark-blue suit, and there we talked . . . and there I enrolled in the Movement." Valdés was entrusted with organizing a secret ten-member cell in Artemisa—each of the ten was to recruit the next ten-member cell and so on, under Castro's compartmentalized conspiracy structure—and he was with Fidel at Moncada, in prison, in Mexico, in the Sierra, and in the revolutionary government. Valdés's experience of seeking out Castro was repeated by scores of others. In time, Fidel's rebels acquired the honor of being called the "Centennial Generation"—the generation launching a revolution in the year of the hundredth anniversary of Martí's birth. This, too, was a marvelous touch of Fidelista mythology.
Castro was able to move smoothly into a leadership position among the young Ortodoxo party members and sympathizers, chiefly because there was nobody else credible in Cuba to challenge Batista. There had not been the slightest effort to resist Batista's coup on March 10. President Prío fled the country (after refusing to supply arms to students ready to fight in defense of the constitutional government), and traditional political leaders also went into exile or proved to be pathetically ineffectual and scared. It is interesting to note that at first Castro was prepared to support with his tiny band of followers whatever anti-Batista move the very wealthy old-line leaders would launch after promising money, arms, and action from abroad. But Fidel and his friends were to be disenchanted and irritated by the constantly broken promises that arms would be delivered mañana and mañana. A few idealists in Cuba did attempt to conspire, only to be caught instantly by the secret police. Finally, Castro decided to proceed independently, sick of the "liberal bourgeoisie." As he said later, "When none of these leaders showed that they had either the ability or the realization of the seriousness of purpose or the way to overthrow Batista, it was then that I finally worked out a strategy of my own."
Cuban Communists, the only ones with a professional organizational structure, were just as ineffectual after the Batista coup as all the other traditional political parties. As in the 1940s, they were probably not above cutting a deal with Batista to maintain their key positions in the labor confederation, or at least remain neutral. In the 1950s Moscow-directed Communist parties were much less confrontational and adventurous than one might suspect. Moreover, Batista may have toyed too with the idea of some modus vivendi with the Communists, allowing the Communist daily Hoy to be published for a time even after the Popular Socialist Party was declared illegal.
In any event, the last thing Castro wanted at that juncture was an alliance with the Communists. In a 1981 conversation, Fidel put it very plainly: ". . . When I had already conceived a revolutionary plan and I already had a Marxist-Leninist formation, I didn't enroll in the Communist party, but we created our own organization and we acted within that organization." Yet, to organize a revolutionary movement single-handed, starting from zero, is an endeavor so ambitious that it verges on absurdity and arrogance. Fidel, moving from hideout to hideout in and around Havana in his creaking old dark-brown Chevrolet sedan (his latest car), succeeded by the end of the year in both creating the insurrectional nucleus and expanding it into an armed movement. It seems never to have crossed his mind that he might fail, or that, unlike Lenin, Mao Zedong, and Ho Chi Minh, the fact that he had no political party or organization to support him was not a drawback. "It was logical, no?" he says, wholly convinced of it. Lenin, whom Castro regards as his Communist ideological mentor, plotted from the safety of Zürich while the young Cuban lawyer barely kept ahead of the dictatorship's secret police at home.
Ironically, the United States' reaction to the Batista coup revolved around the entirely irrelevant Communist question. On March 24, two weeks after the deed, Secretary of State Dean Acheson wrote President Truman in a secret memorandum that "while Batista when President of Cuba in the early '40s tolerated communist domination of the Cuban Confederation of Workers, the world situation with regard to international communism has changed radically since that time, and we have no reason to believe that Batista will not be strongly anti-communist." This conclusion, plus the fact that most Latin American governments had recognized the Batista regime by April 1 (Dictator Trujillo in the Dominican Republic being the first), led the United States to do likewise. In those days, many Latin American governments were dictatorial, and democracy was not a hemisphere issue in any of the capitals, including Washington. Only the previous December, Truman had expressed his faith that Cubans had attained "maturity" and "affinity" with United States democratic arms. Further, the United States also did not wish to endanger its special economic relationship with Cuba at a time when the island's economy was in dire straits and huge American interests were beginning to suffer.
Finally, Ambassador Willard L. Beaulac, a highly competent career diplomat, informed the State Department that in the absence of any meaningful opposition to Batista, the United States might as well accept him. The conclusion that no opposition leadership ex
isted in Cuba was shared by both the American ambassador and the burgeoning revolutionary chief; this is probably the only time Castro and the State Department agreed on anything. But the State Department had forgotten the role of revolutionary students in triggering the overthrow of the Machado dictatorship two decades earlier, and there is nothing to indicate that the American embassy or the State Department were at all aware of the Generation of 1930 or of Fidel Castro. He may have been big in Artemisa, but not in Washington.
The hard core of Fidel Castro's Movement consisted of no more than eight or ten persons until the middle of 1952, when it began to gain recruits more rapidly. This nucleus was formed by members and sympathizers of the Ortodoxo party. Communists from the Popular Socialist Party were automatically excluded because of Castro's early decision not to join the party, creating his own organization instead, and the Communists' own reluctance to submit to his leadership.
Actually, the Communists did attempt to influence his tactics and behavior in their favor immediately after the Batista coup, but Fidel rebuffed them. Alfredo Guevara was the instrument for this approach. In an interview in Havana in 1985, Guevara maintained that on instructions from the Socialist Youth (the Communists' youth organization), he contacted Fidel as soon as he could—Castro had gone into hiding the morning of the coup—to urge him to return as a student "to become the great figure at the university." The Communists' idea was to build anti-Batista opposition on their terms, using Fidel and the university as the leading edge in their strategy. Guevara also acknowledged that the party had lost control of the University Students' Federation and was having a hard time regaining it.
According to Guevara, Castro accepted his proposal at first, "but then he didn't do it, and he disappeared." He said that the reason for Fidel's refusal to go along with the Communists was that while the Popular Socialist Party had in mind "a struggle of the masses," which meant political unity in opposing the dictatorship, "Fidel had the idea of direct action, that is of popular insurrection." Guevara added that the next time he saw him, Fidel had already acquired a clandestine radio station and was engaged in preparing for Moncada.
Fidel's refusal to subordinate himself to the Communists, whose political potential he held in low esteem, did not mean he had no contacts with them or avoided participating in public protests with them and other opposition groups. The only member of Fidel's Movement who was an active Communist was his younger brother, Raúl, who formally joined the Socialist Youth in June 1953. But he was excluded from all secret policy planning and decision-making, not being part of the Movement's "general staff." Fidel and Raúl claim that he learned that Moncada barracks would be the target of the Movement's assault only a few hours before it occurred, and that he was a "plain soldier" in the operation (Luciano González Camejo, a middle-aged worker, was the only other Communist to take part in Moncada, but he joined the Movement late and his ideological persuasion had apparently been overlooked). Raúl devoted most of his energies to university demonstrations organized by the Communist-controlled Tenth of January Committee, often carrying the Cuban flag in the front row of marchers, his short figure almost dwarfed by it.
Castro had resolved to stay away from the university even before Guevara made his proposal and, being informed of the coup around five o'clock in the morning, went into hiding for six days. Contrary to published reports, he was not among the mass of students gathered at the university in midmorning to demonstrate against Batista (Raúl, however, was there). Fidel thought that he might be arrested, and he also concluded that there were more important things to do politically than to shout "Death to Batista!"
Late the previous year, Castro and his family had moved from the tiny apartment on Third Street to a larger one on the second floor of a building at 1511 Twenty-third Street, also in the residential Vedado section but in a less elegant neighborhood. The rental price was about the same, and Fidel was as broke when the coup came as he had been before. One evening, when Fidel was in hiding (he would vanish when the Batista secret police put on the heat, reappear, hide again, and so on), he and Pedro Trigo, an Ortodoxo textile worker and one of the first Movement members, stopped at the Castro apartment building on Twenty-third Street. On the second floor, they encountered disaster. Electricity had been cut off because the utilities bill had not been paid; the apartment was in darkness. Three-year-old Fidelito had a throat infection and a high fever, and the best Castro could do was to arrange for the child to be taken to the Calixto García hospital to be operated on by a friendly physician. He also borrowed five pesos from Pedro Trigo, giving it to Mirta to buy supplies for Fidelito. Actually, Castro was carrying one hundred pesos in his pocket, but this was money he had collected that day for the purchase of weapons, and he felt he could not use it even for family sickness. Subsequently, Fidel's friends took it upon themselves to make sure that his rent and utilities and furniture installments were paid.
Another time Castro could not find his old car in front of the Ortodoxo party offices downtown where he had left it. It had been repossessed by the finance company from which Fidel had bought the used car, but failed to make payments. As a friend tells the story, that was the darkest day ever for Castro. Deprived of his car, he walked over to a café where he often stopped for coffee and a cigar. He told the owner that he was hungry because he had missed lunch, but had no money on him. Since he already owed the café five pesos, the owner refused him further credit. Fidel thereupon began walking home, a distance of three miles. Crossing Central Park, he stopped to look at newspaper headlines, but did not have the five cents to buy a newspaper; the vendor shouted at him, "Keep moving, keep moving . . . don't stand here . . ."
At his apartment he collapsed in bed in deep depression, falling asleep. Awakening late in the afternoon, Fidel, as his friend tells the story, had overcome the depression and was again full of fighting spirit. Later, Castro would laugh when recounting these incidents and the way his friends assumed the responsibility for paying his bills. "They even would give me something to take care of my food." He would say he was the "first paid professional member of the Movement."
Nothing is remembered, however, about his wife, Mirta. Until the divorce in 1955, she must have suffered in silence the daily hardships and Fidel's continual absences. And after the coup the situation became still more untenable when her brother, Rafael Díaz-Balart, was named vice-minister of the interior in the Batista government. This ministry was in charge of public order and the secret police, among other political responsibilities. Now the brothers-in-law were in hostile camps.
Fidel had slept at home the night of the coup, but he fled at dawn to the apartment of his sister Lidia, five blocks away. He left Mirta and Fidelito behind as well as his brother Raúl, who was staying with them. Fidel's instincts were correct; secret policemen did appear at the apartment in midmorning looking for the brothers (they also missed Raúl, who had gone to demonstrate at the university).
Normally, Castro appeared on the radio every day in the early afternoon for a fifteen-minute political chat (or harangue), but he knew he would be arrested if he turned up at the studio on the day of the military takeover when all constitutional guarantees were suspended. In any case, Fidel's immediate interest was to be fully informed about events, and several of his friends offered their services. One of them, René Rodríguez, had been told by Mirta that Fidel was at his sister's house, and he reached them there. Castro asked Rodríguez to visit the university numerous times that day to keep him posted on student movements.
From the university, Rodríguez brought the FEU president, Alvaro Barba, to confer with Fidel at Lidia's house. Then, Rodríguez went to the residence of Roberto Agramonte, the Ortodoxo party presidential candidate, to check on the mood among the leaders. When Rodríguez reported that Agramonte and his colleagues were thinking of nothing more drastic than passive resistance to Batista—and that they had no message or marching orders for him or the party youth, Fidel exploded in rage, shouting that the Ortodoxo le
aders were cowards and worse. At night, Castro decided he was no longer safe at Lidia's apartment and moved to the Hotel Andino, a boardinghouse downtown where he had once lived. On the morning of March 11, Rodríguez, who was making the arrangements, went with Castro to the home of Eva Jiménez, an Ortodoxo party youth militant, in the middle-class section of Almendares. Eva had bought enough food for several days and given her maid the week off. Castro was wearing dark glasses, which normally he never used (because he was near-sighted, he needed clear prescription spectacles), and the two men took a bus to Eva's place. Fidel had a five-peso bill Lidia had given him, but the driver had no change, and in the end a stranger on the bus paid the sixteen cents for their fare.
Unbeknownst to Fidel that day, another safe house had been provided for him. This was the luxury apartment where Natalia "Naty" Revuelta lived in Vedado with her husband, a leading Havana heart specialist. Naty, an attractive blond woman from a wealthy background, educated in the United States and France, had revolutionary sympathies, friendships in the Ortodoxo party, and had heard a lot about Fidel Castro. The day of the Batista coup, she delivered keys to her apartment to several prominent Ortodoxo leaders in case they needed a haven from the secret police, with the specific request that one of the keys be given to Castro. But in the confusion of the March events, the key did not reach Fidel until much later. Later, Naty Revuelta became a very important person in Fidel's life, one of an extraordinary contingent of beautiful and/or highly intelligent women who, in effect, dedicated their lives to him and his cause—and without whom he might not have succeeded.