by Tad Szulc
Castro's reading was so all-embracing—from Kant and Einstein to Franklin Roosevelt's legislation to Lenin's The State and the Revolution—that it would be imprudent to draw from it firm ideological conclusions concerning his convictions at the time. In 1975, Castro told Lionel Martin that after Moncada "I knew what was the final objective. My program was the antechamber of a socialist revolution. To reach the third floor, one has to start from the first floor." Then he quoted to Martín the phrase of José Martí that "to achieve certain things, they must be kept concealed [because] to proclaim what they are would raise difficulties too great to attain them in the end." But again, these are hindsight pronouncements, fitting an existing political state of affairs, and there is no way of establishing what Castro was thinking in his prison cell.
Two major revolutionary events occurred in the world during the spring of 1954, leaving varying impressions on Fidel. In May France's colonial rule in Indochina crumbled with the victory of the Vietminh Communists and nationalists at Dienbienphu. There is nothing in Castro's writings at the time to suggest an exaggerated interest in this Communist guerrilla triumph, militarily or ideologically.
On June 17 a right-wing military force, organized and financed by the Central Intelligence Agency and the United Fruit Company, invaded Guatemala to overthrow the leftist regime of President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán. Arbenz had begun nationalizing American-owned agricultural land, imposing advanced social legislation, and giving free vent to anti-American sentiment. The CIA intervention in Guatemala, the first such act in Latin America since the 1930s, had an enormous impact on Castro, confirming all the Martí warnings and corroborating the "historical fatalism" theory that proclaims that nothing may happen in the region without the permission of the United States. In the long run, the Guatemalan intervention may have marked Castro more deeply than Marxist and Leninist theories. Later, Fidel would have firsthand accounts of the Guatemala affair: one from Ñico López, his early Movement companion and Bayamo fighter who had exiled himself to Central America, and the other from the Argentine physician Ernesto Guevara, who had been working under Arbenz. Castro and Guevara were to meet before long. In his prison cell, Fidel was photographed reading a magazine report on Guatemala.
On the evening of Saturday, July 17, 1954, Fidel Castro suffered a devastating emotional blow. Listening to the radio newscast, he heard an announcement that the Interior Ministry had terminated the employment of Mirta Díaz-Balart, his wife. He never knew that she was employed by the ministry, or received sinecure payments from it, even though her brother Rafael (once Fidel's university friend) was vice-minister of the interior in the Batista regime. Publicly as well as clandestinely supportive of her imprisoned husband and his causes, Mirta was believed to be totally loyal to Fidel, notwithstanding her family ties with the government. In fact, Castro at first refused to believe that she had indeed accepted ministry money. The very evening of the broadcast, he wrote her that she should immediately enter a libel and defamation suit against the interior minister, suggesting that perhaps someone else was forging her signature to collect such payments.
Mirta's parents were dead, but she and Fidelito were apparently being supported by the Castro family and by several wealthy friends of Fidel's. It made no sense to him that his wife would, in effect, betray him politically, and in a letter he wrote that same night to Luis Conte Agüero he said that this was "a machination against me, the worst, the most cowardly, the most indecent, the vilest and intolerable." He wrote Conte Agüero that Mirta was too intelligent to allow herself to "be seduced by her family, consenting to be on the government payroll, no matter how hard was her economic situation . . . she has been miserably calumnied." Castro asked Conte Agüero to find out the truth from her brother Rafael, but centered his wrath on Interior Minister Hermida, saying that "only someone as effeminate as Hermida, in the last stages of sexual degeneration," could turn to such behavior of "inconceivable indecency and lack of manhood." This reference, correct or not, was the first recorded expression of his anti-homosexual obsession. Fidel also accused Hermida of having "put in my mouth" declarations about the improvement in his treatment in prison. He told Conte Agüero that "now wrath blinds me and I almost cannot think," but that the radio commentator should take whatever measures he considered convenient, and that he was ready to challenge his brother-in-law to a duel. "The prestige of my wife and my honor as a revolutionary are at stake," he wrote. "Let them see me dead a thousand times rather than having me suffer impotently such an offense!"
But Fidel was wrong. His sister Lidia informed him four days later that Mirta had been on the Interior Ministry's payroll, and that now she demanded a divorce. There is no known explanation for this episode. Mirta, who the following year married an Ortodoxo politician named Emilio Nuñez Blanco, has never publicly discussed her personal life, and Fidel himself to this day ignores what happened. Mirta left for the United States with Fidelito immediately after the break with her husband, and presumably they never saw each other again (she has lived in Spain since the revolution, and now she visits Fidelito and his children quietly in Cuba about once a year). Castro, too, insisted on a divorce when he learned the truth. He answered Lidia with a brief note: "Do not be concerned with me; you know I have a steel heart and I shall be dignified until the last day of my life."
On July 26, the first anniversary of Moncada, Interior Minister Hermida and two other cabinet ministers suddenly visited Castro in prison in a display of courtesy and cordiality that bewildered him. But that same day in Havana, the police violently dispersed a university commemoration, organized (on Fidel's orders) by Melba and Haydée. Castro's account of the meeting with Hermida stressed that they both agreed there was nothing personal in their political differences, and that when Fidel protested the incident involving Mirta, the minister blamed her brother Rafael, whom he called "an irresponsible child." The central fact, however, was that Castro was now regarded by the government to be important enough politically to receive personal apologies from three cabinet ministers; Hermida flattered him by saying that no man in Cuba had a clearer political reputation than Castro, and told him, "Don't be impatient: I, too, was a political prisoner in 1931 and 1932."
Nevertheless, Fidel remained personally shattered. Rafael Díaz-Balart publicly denounced Hermida for the prison visit, and the two had to resign, but this was no consolation for Castro. He wrote Conte Agüero that "I live because I have duties to fulfill. . . . In many terrible moments I had to suffer in one year, I thought how much more pleasant would it be to be dead. I consider the 26th of July [Movement] to be very much above my person, and the moment I know that I can no longer be useful to the cause for which I have suffered so much, I will deprive myself of life without hesitation, especially now that I no longer have a personal cause to serve."
In the divorce battle between their lawyers, Fidel demanded that the first condition be the return of Fidelito to Cuba and his enrollment in a school he would choose for his son, now five years old. He wrote Lidia that "I refuse even to think that my son may sleep a single night under the same roof sheltering my most repulsive enemies and receive on his innocent cheeks the kisses of those miserable Judases. . . . To take this child away from me, they'll have to kill me. . . . I lose my head when I think about these things." Castro continued to insist on having Fidelito's custody when he left prison, telling his lawyers that if a court ruled against him, "it would reaffirm my principles and my determination to fight until death to live in a more decent republic." In April 1955 he issued an ultimatum: Fidelito had to be a boarder in a Havana school by April 1 or he would block the divorce. Fidel and Mirta's divorce decree was granted the next year, when he had already left Cuba, but the struggle over Fidelito would continue for years—until Castro was in a position to win it.
Meanwhile, Castro had become Cuba's most famous political prisoner and, increasingly, a factor in national politics, proving that an isolation cell can be the steppingstone to respectability and leadership. Early i
n June, Bohemia published a lengthy interview with Fidel, illustrated with seven photographs showing him in his cell and in the prison library. This was the first time he had received such massive national exposure, and he minced no words about the crimes of Batista in the interview and his own revolutionary plans. The Hermida visit to him on the Isle of Pines resulted in a major crisis over Castro in the Batista cabinet, and the government now handled him with kid gloves.
In August Raúl was allowed to join Fidel in the cell, ending his total isolation (he was still kept apart from the other inmates) and providing him with a permanent audience. Fidel reported that their cell was considerably enlarged, that they were given a large patio, that prison personnel took over cleaning chores, and that "we don't have to get up until we want to . . . we have plenty of water, electric light, food, and clean clothes—all free . . . we don't even pay rent." This was his political assessment:
"Our moment is coming. Before, there were a handful of us; now, we must join with the people. Our tactics will be different. Those who view us a group will be sadly mistaken. We will never have a group mentality or group tactics. Now, moreover, I can dedicate myself body and soul to my cause. I will put all my energy and time into it. I will begin a new life. I am determined to overcome all obstacles and fight as many battles as may be necessary. Above all, I see our path and our goal more clearly than ever I haven't wasted my time in prison, for I've been studying, observing, analyzing, planning, and training the men. I know where the best of Cuba is and how to look for it. When I began, I was alone; now, there are many of us."
Castro was thinking about creating a national movement to replace the pre-Moncada clandestine activities, and he was intrigued by the proposal Conte Agüero sent him in August for establishing "a civic movement that is becoming a pressing need." He replied quickly that he agreed "on the need," but, most pointedly, he warned against a situation in which multiple opinions and interests would have to be accommodated. He believed as always in revolutionary unity under his command, and he told Conte Agüero that the first step would have to be the release of the 26th of July prisoners. "A perfectly disciplined nucleus . . . will be tremendously valuable in terms of training cadres for insurrection or civic organization," he wrote. "It is evident that a great civic and political movement must have the necessary strength to win power, by peaceful or revolutionary means; otherwise it will run the risk of having that power snatched away . . ."
Students of the Cuban revolution have questioned whether at that stage Castro was applying Leninist or "caudillist" principles to the organization of a vertical revolutionary movement; a simpler answer is that he was holding out for absolute leadership, without which he correctly believed nothing could be accomplished in Cuba. He repeated that the "propaganda and organization apparatus must . . . unmercifully destroy all those who try to create trends . . . or rise up against the movement. . . . We must have our feet solidly on the ground, without ever sacrificing the greatest reality of principles."
Fidel Castro had just turned twenty-eight years old, and even while still in prison, he loomed as a major national political leader. When former President Grau, again a candidate for office against Batista, spoke at a rally in Santiago in October, the crowd began chanting Fidel's name; Grau's response was that as soon as he was elected, he would declare a full amnesty, including for the "boys of Moncada." Grau soon realized he could never defeat Batista's machine and he pulled out of the race. But amnesty for the Isle of Pines prisoners was turning into a nationwide campaign, and Batista knew he could not ignore it forever.
Running unopposed, Batista was elected as "constitutional" president on November 1, 1954, an event that plunged Cuba into considerable depression. But the United States, which could not—or would not—appreciate the pitfalls of Cuban politics and the rising revolutionary potential, rushed to embrace the dictator again. After all, he had fully supported the Guatemalan operation. Accordingly, Vice-President Richard Nixon came to Havana in February 1955 to toast Batista at a black-tie palace reception. He was followed soon after by CIA Director Allen W. Dulles, the author of the intervention in Guatemala. Neither of them had ever heard of Fidel, but before too long the young Cuban would cost Dulles his career.
The proamnesty campaign was launched early in 1955 by a committee of the prisoners' mothers who issued a manifesto "to all Cuban mothers" entitled "Cuba, Freedom for Your Sons." It soon became transformed into the Relatives' Amnesty Committee for Political Prisoners; Fidel's sister Lidia was a militant leader; a young architecture student from Santiago, Vilma Espín, became involved in the effort; and Celia Sánchez, the daughter of a revolution-minded doctor at an Oriente sugar mill, organized the deliveries of canned meat, chocolate bars, and other delicacies to the men on the Isle of Pines. All these women would be crucial both to the revolution and to Fidel's life.
Castro inevitably had dramatic ideas to enhance the amnesty effort. On January 1, 1955, he instructed Ñico López and Calixto García, who had escaped from Bayamo and exiled themselves first in Central America and then in Mexico, to present themselves to Cuban emergency courts as "Moncada fighters." This, he wrote, would force the reopening of the basic Moncada trial, "and we would arouse the nation against Batista when he is about to assume power on February 24." Fidel's concept was to make López and García the subject of a huge propaganda campaign, and he sent them for their signature, public statements to be given to the principal radio stations and newspapers on the eve of their return to Cuba. Then, the two men would be met by journalists for interviews, although "you will doubtless be arrested immediately." Castro urged López and García to talk other rebel exiles into surrendering to Cuban courts for trial as well, "but make sure it appears as your own idea; I don't want to put any moral pressure on them. . . . If anybody else decides to follow in your footsteps and return before February 24, the government will go crazy, just when it wants to make a show of political normalcy at all costs, and this might become a decisive factor in forcing it to sign the amnesty." As an afterthought, Fidel added that "if by any chance, they don't want to arrest you when you arrive. . . present yourselves . . . before the Provisional Court in Santiago, stating that you 'want to suffer together with [your] imprisoned comrades,' and they will be forced to act." The two men, however, failed to return before the amnesty.
Batista was obviously feeling the growing pressure to grant amnesty to Castro's contingent, but he was sufficiently concerned about leftist activities in the country to accept United States' advice and create a special intelligence agency (BRAC) to combat communism. On the day of Batista's inauguration as constitutional president, an impressive group of traditional political leaders, editors, and intellectuals signed a "Public Appeal," demanding "liberty for the political prisoners and guarantees for the return of all those in exile." On March 10, the third anniversary of the Batista coup, amnesty bills were presented to both chambers of the Cuban congress, and the regime made it known it would give them its blessings if the Fidelistas promised not to attempt fresh insurrections.
Castro replied with a statement, signed by all his fellow prisoners, rejecting the conditions. He wrote: "The Pharisees once asked Christ whether or not they should pay tribute to Caesar. Any reply he made would be bound to offend either Caesar or the people. The Pharisees of all times have used that trick. Today, they are trying to discredit us in the eyes of the people or find a pretext for keeping us in prison. I'm not at all interested in convincing the regime to grant the amnesty. . . . The regime commits a crime against our people and then holds us hostages. . . . For, today, we are more than political prisoners; we are hostages of the dictatorship. . . Our personal freedom is an inalienable right as citizens. . . . We can be deprived of these and all other rights by force, but no one can ever make us agree to regain them by unworthy compromise. We won't give up one iota of our honor in return for our freedom."
Fidel had learned the hard way that he must never compromise with any person or government, and now he knew h
e had a winning hand and that he could wait for an amnesty on his terms—which meant no terms at all. He had also learned José Martí's counsel that a revolutionary must always be patient. In April proamnesty demonstrations occurred in Havana and other cities, and the Cuban press, now free of censorship, was openly in favor of an amnesty, denouncing the regime for keeping the Moncada men in prison. Angered by Castro's defiance, the regime had the penitentiary's administrative council sentence Fidel to thirty days in solitary for illegally sending out his statement, published in Bohemia magazine, against a conditional amnesty; the press now seized on this act to attack the government. Batista had to accept Castro's terms to prevent a major crisis.