by Tad Szulc
Castro patiently explained to Flavio Bravo that he had no alternative but to move soon. Not only had he a promise to keep, but the Mexican police were on the offensive again. A cache of arms was confiscated, and both Pedro Miret and Teresa Casuso had been arrested. If he did not sail as soon as possible, Castro said, he could lose all his men and all his arms. He hoped that his arrival would be met by uprisings, and though there was very little time left, he was asking the Communist party for its cooperation. Then Castro advised Flavio Bravo to fly directly to Havana instead of traveling circuitously, so that the Communist party at home would be apprised immediately why the Movement's tactics could not be altered. Subsequent official accounts make this exchange appear as a friendly review of the situation, but for Fidel it was a tough political fight; the Communists still had no faith in him, and still intended to take over his revolution.
On that same day, Fidel Castro learned that his father, Don Ángel, had died in Birán on October 21. Nothing is known of Fidel's reaction; there are no known letters about it.
On November 19 General Francisco Tabernilla, the Army Chief of Staff, told the press in Havana that "there is no possibility of a landing as announced by Fidel Castro" because "from a technical viewpoint, a landing by a group of exalted and undisciplined persons without military experience and without means for combat must result in a failure." At the same time, however, Cuban warships and aircraft were patroling the coasts from Pinar del Río in the west to Oriente in the east, and army and Rural Guard garrisons were on the alert.
Fidel Castro realized that the decision to sail had to be taken immediately, but he was delaying it mainly because Granma was not quite ready; much of the work on the engines and the general seaworthiness was being done too quickly and carelessly because of time pressures. Then, on November 21, when two rebels defected from the Abasolo training camp near the United States border south of Matamoros, Castro knew that he could not wait any longer. On the night of November 23 he traveled from Mexico City to the house on the river in Tuxpán to supervise the loading of arms, ammunition, and supplies aboard the Granma; simultaneously, rebel commanders at all the training camps from Abasolo and Veracruz to Mexico City were ordered to move their men to Tuxpán. They began arriving by bus and car under torrential rain.
Before departing Mexico City, Castro sent coded messages to Frank País that he would land on November 30, and that the chosen spot would be Playa las Coloradas below the town of Bélic, south of Niquero on the west coast of Oriente. Then on November 24, while driving to Tuxpán, he wrote his will, to be sent to the friends with whom Fidelito had been staying for more than a year. He wrote: "I leave my son in the custody of Engineer Alfonso Gutiérrez and his wife, Orquídea Pino. I am making this decision because I do not want, in my absence, to see my son Fidelito in the hands of those who have been my most ferocious enemies and detractors, those who, in a base act without limits, and using my family ties, attacked my home and sacrificed it to the interest of a bloody tyranny that they continue to serve. Because my wife has demonstrated herself to be incapable of breaking away from the influence of her family, my son could be educated with the detestable ideas that I now fight. I am adopting this measure not out of resentment, but thinking solely of my son's future. I leave him to those who can educate him best, a good and generous family, my best friends in exile, in whose house the Cuban revolutionaries found a true home. I leave my son to them and to Mexico, so that he can grow and learn in this friendly and free country where children have turned into heroes. He should not return to Cuba until it is free or he can fight for its freedom. I hope that this just and natural desire on my part with regard to my son, the only one I have, will be fulfilled."
(On December 15, days after the landing of the Granma, Fidel's sister Emma reported to the Mexican Federal Police that "three unknown persons, armed with pistols, intercepted the automobile in which we were traveling at the corner of Revolución and Martí avenues, seizing my nephew, Fidel Castro Díaz, seven years old . . ." In Havana Foreign Minister Gonzálo Güell announced that "the child is with his mother, which excludes the possibility that it could be considered a kidnapping . . .")
Wearing a black cape over his dark wool suit, Castro stood in the rain on the dock, watching his eighty-one men going aboard the small white yacht. Tuxpán Harbor was closed because of stormy weather, but El Cuate convinced his friend the harbormaster to let him sail "because I was planning a little party aboard." Universo Sánchez asked, "When do we get to the real ship? Where is the mother ship?" At 1:30 A.M. on November 25, Granma started her engines, slid out of her slip, and sailed without lights along the river, west toward the sea and Cuba. El Cuate followed the yacht in his car along the river road until she reached the open sea and vanished in the darkness.
CHAPTER
9
The crossing of the Granma from Tuxpán on the Mexican coast of the Gulf to the coast of Oriente province in Cuba was pure nightmare, lasting seven days and four hours instead of the five days and nights that Fidel Castro had planned. Terrifying weather whipped up by a powerful El Norte wind, mechanical breakdowns, the yacht's staggering burden of eighty-two heavily armed men in lieu of the twenty-five passengers she was built to transport (Castro had left an additional fifty rebels behind simply because there was not even a square inch of space to spare aboard), and the presence of only three professional sailors contributed to the misery and the delay. The delay, in turn, provoked an unnecessary tragedy ashore.
Castro's plan was risky because of the number of men aboard the Granma, but it was not unreasonable. In relatively good weather, it should have worked to the extent that they would arrive at the landing point roughly on time, and the chosen route—adding up to 1,235 miles—made strategic sense. The yacht was to sail a virtually straight west-east track: from Tuxpán to the exit from the Gulf of Mexico at the tip of the Yucatán peninsula; then crossing the passage between the peninsula's tip and the westernmost point of Cuba (potentially the most dangerous area because Cuban Navy and Air Force patrols could spot the Granma the most easily there); dipping south at a safe distance from Cuba's southern coasts; and hitting the western shores of Oriente province below Niquero. The risk of being caught in the Gulf of Mexico was minimal because operationally it was too far for Batista's air and sea forces, and once the vessel had entered the Caribbean, Castro capitalized on the deception factor of sailing east far from the Cuban coast until Oriente coast was sighted, then making a run for it. Batista's ships and planes were not patroling that far south; Castro was practically in British waters off the Cayman Islands.
The extremely foul weather rendered the crossing exceedingly difficult, with the Granma riding the waves, much too heavy, mechanically unfit, and poorly steered. Castro could not delay the departure because he feared the Mexican authorities would pounce on the expedition at any moment, liquidating the whole enterprise. His decision was to sail immediately, betting that luck would stay with him. He dispatched a telegram from Mexico City to Frank País in Santiago on November 27 reading: ORDERED BOOK IS OUT-OF-PRINT, signed by Divulgación publishers, which was the code for announcing the departure and the anticipated landing early on November 30. Two other coded wires went to Havana for the Students' Revolutionary Directorate and to Santa Clara for the local underground.
Bad weather, however, worked against Batista, too. The regime began to believe privately that Castro was mad enough to make the dash to Cuba, and its intelligence services came up with a list of vessels in Mexican ports that the rebels might be planning to use in an invasion; the list included the name of Granma. Starting on November 5, and in total secrecy, the air force began flying constant patrols along the north and south coasts of Oriente province using one or more B-25 light bombers or C-47 transports (Cuban history had persuaded Batista, as it had Castro, that the landing had to be in Oriente). But along the southern coast, the aircraft patroled only 20 miles south of the coastline, which was what Castro had figured they would do, while he sa
iled 170 miles south of it. The generally bad weather in the last days of November also seriously curtailed all the Batista air and sea operations. The regime did begin deploying ground forces to Oriente. Artillery units were flown from Havana to Holguín the day after the Granma sailed, and the Santiago garrison was reinforced and placed on alert.
For the expeditionaries the horror began the instant they entered the Gulf of Mexico, just before daybreak on November 25. They hailed the open water by singing the Cuban national anthem and the 26th of July March, and shouting, "Viva la Revolución!" and "Down with Batista dictatorship!"—then the sea attacked them. Immediately, most of the men became violently seasick (and as Universo Sánchez recalled, "shitting in their pants"). They were not a fighting force, just a band of very sick men. Che Guevara wrote that "the entire boat had a ridiculously tragic aspect: men with anguish reflected in their faces, grabbing their stomachs; some with their heads inside buckets, and others fallen in the strangest positions, motionless, their clothes filthy from vomit . . . except for the two or three sailors and four or five others, the rest of the contingent were seasick." Che, Fidel, and Faustino Pérez were among those who did not succumb to illness; Guevara frantically searched the ship for antihistamines for the men, but there were none. Then, the Granma began to take on water, the pump turned out to be broken, and they had to bail water with two buckets until the leak was located and fixed.
On the third day the weather improved, and Castro ordered rifles calibrated again and some firing exercises began. But it also developed that the yacht was running at 7.2 knots instead of the 10 knots Captain Onelio Pino and Castro had calculated. Zigzagging to cope with the weather forced further delays, and one of the engines began to fail. The expedition fell badly behind schedule. When the men began feeling better, they became hungry, and Castro had to order rationing as he realized that the Granma would never reach land within the planned five days. In the rush of departure from Tuxpán, they could take aboard only 2,000 oranges, 48 condensed milk tins, 4 baked hams, 2 sliced hams, a box of eggs, 100 chocolate bars, and 10 pounds of bread; this could not keep 82 men adequately in food for over a week. During the last two days, there simply was neither food nor potable water. On November 29 the Granma came within sight of two fishing boats, but as Castro readied their two antitank guns for possible combat, the fishermen disappeared.
At dawn on Friday, November 30, the expedition was cruising toward Great Cayman Island, only three fourths of the way to the landing zone. But that was the moment when Frank País and the 26th of July armed groups in Santiago thought Castro would be coming ashore as planned, and País ordered an uprising to coincide with the landing, according to the battle plan he had elaborated with Castro. There was no way he could know that the Granma was running forty-eight hours late, and therefore at 7:00 A.M. his pathetically small detachment of twenty-eight men attacked the National Police and Maritime Police headquarters as scheduled, hoping to be able to follow this action up with an assault on Moncada. Wearing olive-green uniforms with 26th of July red-and-black armbands, the rebels set fire to the National Police barracks, but lost Pepito Tey, one of the top Santiago leaders, to an enemy machine-gun barrage. At the Maritime Police they captured weapons, but were unable to move on Moncada; the army had four hundred highly trained antiguerrilla troops in the city. Though some street fighting went on for another day, the rebellion had collapsed. The Movement lost three key fighters (Frank País managed to escape), and nine others were killed by the police. Not only had the uprising failed, but now the regime knew that Castro was about to land—somewhere. In Havana and elsewhere on the island, the Movement and the Students' Revolutionary Directorate lacked sufficient means to undertake any kind of armed action. Fidel listened to the Cuban radio's reports of the Santiago tragedy, gritting his teeth in impotent rage. He said to Faustino Pérez: "I wish I could fly . . ."
On the beaches between Niquero and Pilón, 26th of July Movement members also awaited Castro in vain that dawn. Celia Sánchez Manduley, the Movement's coordinator in Manzanillo, had assembled five trucks, gasoline drums, and several dozen men near the town of Bélic and the Colorada beach. The plan was to transport the Granma expeditionaries from the beach to Niquero and Media Luna, to capture arms from the local Rural Guard garrisons, then move with 26th of July adherents to the Sierra Maestra, where Castro was to launch his guerrilla war. Inland, the Movement's peasant supporters had prepared their mountain homes to receive and feed the Fidelistas. But when Castro did not land and word of the Santiago fiasco reached Celia, she ordered the reception parties pulled back in the evening of December 1. The Granma force would be on its own—if and when it reached land.
Late at night on Saturday, December 1, the white yacht was wallowing in high seas as she approached the Oriente coast in total darkness: no moon and no visible coastal lights. Castro ordered the rebels to change into their olive-green uniforms and he distributed the weapons. Crewmen kept climbing to the roof of the cabin to spot the Cabo Cruz lighthouse for a navigational fix—Cabo Cruz was on the southwestern tip of the Oriente coast—when Roberto Roque, the navigator, slipped and fell overboard. Castro ordered the Granma to undertake a search for Roque despite the darkness. After sailing in circles for an hour, the rebels heard a weak voice respond to their calls, and incredibly they found him, using only a lantern shining over the waves. Che Guevara and Faustino Pérez, both physicians, revived the nearly drowned Roque, and Castro proclaimed that now they were on their way to victory.
Resuming its careful progress toward the coast, Granma entered the Niquero channel, but as he noted the buoys, Captain Pino realized that his charts were wrong, and he did not know his way. The dawn of Sunday, December 2, was just breaking when the yacht suddenly hit mud at low tide and came to a dead halt at 4:20 A.M. The spot was Los Cayuelos, more than a mile south of the beach where Castro had wanted to land (and just below the ironically named Purgatorio Point). The men were ordered to jump into the water, carrying only their personal weapons. All the heavy equipment and stores were left behind. René Rodríguez, slight of build, was the first to go, and the bottom held him; the much heavier Castro followed, sinking up to his hips in the mud. Che Guevara remarked later, "This wasn't a landing, it was a shipwreck." The yacht was stuck some hundred yards from what appeared to be the coast, and Fidel and his men managed to wade to it. Che Guevara and Raúl Castro were the last to leave the Granma, trying to salvage some equipment.
Reaching the shore, the rebels realized they were in a huge mangrove swamp with water up to their knees or even their necks. Gnarled tree roots rose like an awesome obstacle course, vines and razorlike leaves slashed and beat their faces, and vast clouds of mosquitoes tried to devour them alive. The men's brand-new heavy boots slowed their advance; some boots and uniforms were so soaked and cut they began coming apart; rifles and ammunition became wet; equipment was lost. The general staff, consisting of Fidel Castro, Juan Manuel Márquez, and Faustino Pérez (the former with the title of Commander in Chief, and the two others with the rank of captain), led the way, the men constantly tripping over submerged tree trunks, falling down, picking each other up, leaning on one another, and somehow succeeding in moving ahead. One must attempt to cross this mangrove swamp oneself even to begin to understand the lung-bursting effort it represented.
At one stage Castro developed the paralyzing fear that they had landed on a coastal key (there are close to two thousand such keys off the Cuban coasts) and not on the mainland, and that they were trapped without means of escape by water. But soon one of the men, Luis Crespo, was able to climb a tree and, in the first light of the winter morning, discern land, palm trees, huts, and mountains in the distance. It took Castro's guerrilla army over two hours to reach firm ground across the mangrove and a lagoon in the center of it, a distance of less than a mile in a straight line; it was a frightening and exhausting experience for them after a week at sea in the overcrowded little yacht. When they finally reached firm ground, they collapsed, panting,
to rest. But Juan Manuel Márquez and seven men were missing; they seemed to have been swallowed by the swamp, and their companions were immensely concerned about them.
Still, Fidel Castro had fulfilled his promise: He had returned to Cuba before the end of 1956, and now he was ready to open his war on Batista. Like José Martí, who had landed at Playitas in the dark with a handful of companions sixty years earlier, Fidel Castro stood on the coast of Oriente on this December 2, anxious to liberate Cuba from her domestic enemies.
It was the beginning of a twenty-five-month war, and it required astonishing optimism and faith on Fidel Castro's part at that moment to think that he and his expeditionary force could survive, let alone be ultimately victorious. On the afternoon of December 2, Castro's army had eighty-one men (Juan Manuel Márquez and the seven others emerged from the mangrove slightly to the north, rejoining the main group), minimal armament, no food, and no contact with the Movement ashore. The Batista regime had a standing army, navy, and air force of over forty thousand men—plus the militarized Rural Guard and the National Police. It had Sherman tanks and artillery, and in mid-November, just before Castro sailed from Tuxpán, the American ambassador in Havana, Arthur Gardner, had turned over a squadron of T-33 jet trainers (usable in combat) to the Cuban Army air force. The United States continued its support for the Batista government, oblivious that opposition to it within Cuba was rising daily, and obviously ignorant that a revolutionary band was on the verge of landing on the island.
Batista, however, was ready for Castro. A forty-five-day suspension of constitutional guarantees was decreed when Frank País rose in Santiago on November 30, and less than two hours after the landing, the military authorities knew that Castro was back in Cuba. The sand-carrying barge Jibarita and a coastal craft had observed the Granma stuck in the mud off Los Cayuelos, and immediately informed the navy. The news of the landing by unknown men on the southwestern coast reached the commander of the Rural Guard at Manzanillo after seven o'clock in the morning, just as the rebels were reaching firm ground. A patrol was sent out at once, but it returned late in the day without finding the Fidelistas. The commanding officer reported, however, that local peasants spoke of "some 200 men, well armed, and directed by Dr. Fidel Castro."