The Ramos Brothers Trust Castro and Kennedy

by Roger Deblanck

  Earlier in the afternoon, Emilia had affirmed her faith with Father Ballesteros at Jesus de Miramar. The ceremony at the church consisted of her sitting down for a one-on-one chat with the Father, and then afterwards a reception where she received gifts—a brightly polished wooden cross and a leather-bound Bible from her mother, a new rosary from her grandmother, and a medal with the image of Mary holding Jesus from her grandfather. After returning from the church, the guests began to arrive at the house of Emilia’s grandparents. Alberto waited nervously for Emilia at the front porch of the house. He wore a blue silk suit with a white-collared shirt and a green tie. His father helped him weave the tie through its knot and pull it tight, and his black hair was slicked back with pomade. He looked like a movie star. He stood with his hands in his pockets as her grandparents’ green Buick Century convertible pulled into the driveway. Emilia stepped out of the back seat and looked as happy as Christmas day, radiant in her white, what he imagined snow to look like if it ever fell in Havana.

  That evening, he was her chambelan, and he took her hand and led her through the backyard full of guests. Flashbulbs popped while hugs and kisses from family and friends smothered her for the first hour. Then, as everyone enjoyed their meals, Emilia’s grandparents took turns speaking from the microphone set up on the stage. They shared with the guests how their granddaughter brought them so much joy. The scent of hibiscus hung in the air, and a chain of butterflies swooped through the gathering crowd. After her grandparents spoke, Emilia’s mother took the microphone and then her aunt and uncle took turns telling funny stories about their niece.

  Then it was time for Alberto and Emilia to take the stage. Alberto went around to the back where he had placed his guitars before the evening started. He carried them both to the front of the stage and swung the strap of the acoustic over his shoulder. As he attuned his strings, Emilia took several deep breaths and calmly rubbed her hands against the sides of her white gown before tucking the loose strands of hair behind her ears. Then they were ready.

  “The Night We Met” was a slow and rhapsodic ballad. Alberto gently picked the guitar strings—A minor, C minor, D minor—letting each note linger, a speck of dew on a pine needle before falling like a raindrop. Emilia crooned the words that rolled through the evening air with a syrupy ease that made the audience hypnotic.

  The stars dot the sky with souls

  Give us nightlights to remember

  Our minds can hardly know forever

  Oh, love without you, my life is empty

  After they completed their first song, everyone cheered and clapped, a few whistles piercing through the crowd to the stage. Emilia bowed and Alberto nodded. Once the applause subsided, Alberto switched guitars to his electric, and then they started their livelier tune, “The Future We Have.” He stroked the chords—B major, C major—as Emilia’s voice lifted off.

  Don’t dwell about the past

  Just two-step with the present

  Have your spirit circle the day with me

  We’re living now and for the future

  Hear me, hear me, hear me, hear me

  We’re living now and for the future

  By the middle of the song, everyone stood and clapped, and the dancing began. When the song was over, a tremendous thunder of cheers erupted from the audience of friends, family, and relatives. Then a band hired for the remainder of the night took over, and a number of fast songs were followed by a slow one, whereby Emilia and Alberto had the dance floor to themselves for a slow waltz. Guests and relatives looked on and snapped more pictures while popping bottles of champagne. After Alberto had finished the honor of the night’s first slow dance with Emilia, her grandfather took the Quinciñera’s hand and waltzed her to another song. Then all the guests took their partners and joined in for several more hours of song, dance, games, and drink.

  Near midnight, guests began to trickle out. The caterers gathered plates and bagged up garbage. Tables had to be disassembled. As the backyard emptied, Alberto and Emilia held hands as they sat in folding chairs under a ceiba tree. They went from staring at each other to staring up into the vast sky, moonlit and glittering with the cosmic maze of stars. The night was a puzzle of shapes that connected so many people, so many fates, so many dreams, so many unknowns, and yet they were the only two left in the yard. Anything seen through that evening’s lens of calmness seemed possible. Everything was the way it should be. There was hardly anything to think about but the future. The future: unharmed as una mariposa, a clear-winged butterfly gently fluttering over a patch of poinsettias.

  But over the next six months, no one seemed to care about the gentility of butterflies, the vibrancy of flowers, or the sacredness of quinciñeras. The political situation was worsening by the day and consuming the attention of every Cubano. With more bloody incidents reported each day and more bombs going off each night, the island was stoked in combustibility. Still, Alberto and Emilia continued to write songs. They believed their music could push the locos away.

  By the winter, however, the revolution was about to write the next chapter in Cuba’s volatile history. Since the adventure of running off to the Sierra Maestra with Benito and his brother, Juan began to keep a notebook. He jotted down the rebels’ key hit-and-run guerilla attacks. He also recorded messages from Fidel’s speeches that sometimes slipped through the censors on Radio Rebelde. But securing accurate information was often difficult to come by. He had to rely on Benito’s updates, which became less frequent from his father as the year passed from fall into winter. Just as Caribbean temperatures barely changed, instability in the country remained unchanged, which gave way to constant worry in the lives of most Cubanos who could do nothing more than try and go about their daily routines. If not directly involved in the conflict, the day-to-day activities for citizens like Florencio and Lucretia didn’t alter much. He worked long hours; she managed her salon. But detection of change was evident. People were quieter. Partying in the city had lost its luster. The island seemed solemn and tired, just waiting in anticipation for the upheaval that would alter everything. Juan took note of these signs like the scholar he was becoming. It was only a matter of time, he told Alberto. Their father and mother said little. They sensed that the engines of history were at work. Would they, too, be compelled to trust in Fidel?

  * * *

  Chapter 19

  A fierce knocking reverberated throughout the house on New Year’s Day, 1959. Jolted out of their sleep, the Ramos brothers stumbled from their beds to the hallway. Their father, mother, and Cuca were already standing in their doorways, everyone peering towards the front doors, where screams demanded, “Abren las puertas! Open the doors!” Florencio’s slippers shuffled along the tiled hall as the knocking grew into pounding, louder and fiercer. When he got to the doors, he yelled as loud as he could over the ruckus from the other side: “Que quieres? What do you want?”

  “Abren, ricos! Abren arriba! Open this instant!” the demands persisted.

  As the brothers watched and listened from the hallway, still blinking and rubbing sleep out of their eyes, the pounding and yelling elevated to a level of unchecked force. The lock and deadbolt that kept the oaken double doors shut began to split through the wood, ready to give in. Suddenly, the doors burst open and a pack of men carrying bats and hatchets entered their house. What Juan and Alberto both noticed right off was that the men wore gloves and had their sleeves rolled up, as though ready to go to work. The intruders walked casually past Florencio, who slid back several feet into the hallway with his arms outspread in a futile attempt to block the hooligans. Fear and panic spread over Lucretia’s face as one man caught sight of the glass dining table in el comedor and went straight for it. He lifted his bat above his head and brought the barrel of the wooden instrument down squarely in the center. The table shattered. The man reared back to take another swing to dismantle the table’s iron framing. Another man joined him to smash away, as their dirty boots crunched over the thousands of shards now
littered across the carpet. They swung and smashed, beating the remains of the table into mangled rods. They next turned their attention to swinging at vases and lamps, exploding them with the sweet spots on their bats, practicing their hand-eye coordination as though they were little leaguers hitting baseballs off tees.

  “Ay, Dios mío, this is the end of the world!” wailed Lucretia, rooted to her spot in the hall.

  Two other men with hatchets began chopping up the furniture in la saleta. The couch, the recliner, the ottoman, the guest chairs, all were hacked up. The padding and stuffing from within spewed onto the floor along with splintered wood and broken springs. Another set of men moved down the hall, unhurriedly passing by Juan and Alberto, their wailing mother, and a silent Cuca. The men entered one of the bathrooms, flipped on the lights, took view of the mirror, and then swung away. The mirror cobwebbed, glass shards flying like shrapnel. They pounded off chunks of marble from the sink counter, the toilet tank, and the tub wall. They swung and hacked. They were butchers, indifferent and efficient.

  When they’d finished with the living room and bathroom, they proceeded to the kitchen and lastly the library. Lucretia put her hands to her ears and screamed again, “Lord, help us! Lord, where are You!”

  The thud and crack, the thwack and blast, went on. Cabinets, closet doors, and shelves were destroyed. The whole episode of violence took less than five minutes. Five minutes in which Lucretia did not stop crying, “Ay, Dios mío!” Strangely enough, the men did not touch the bedrooms of the house, nor did they set a hand on any occupant. They simply entered, ransacked what they came to ransack, pilfered nothing, and left without ever saying a word as they wreaked destruction from one house to another down the street in La Vibora.

  When the men had finally exited the Ramos’s house, the brothers realized they had not moved an inch from the doorways of their rooms. They simply bore witness in shock. Not even the wailing of their mother’s cries shook them from their trance. But as soon as Alberto gained his senses, he shot out the back door, sprinted across the backyard, and scaled the back wall. He raced to Emilia’s back door, knocking and calling her name over and over. There was no answer. The house was vacated. His heart was a wounded butterfly crashing to the grass under a hot sun, its wings unable to fly.

  Other well-off and wealthy neighborhoods throughout Havana suffered similar horrors of intrusion and ransacking at the hands of populist thugs—those who, in the name of change, roamed the city and took lawless advantage of the end of the Batista regime. His ouster and fleeing the country occurred suddenly and without warning only hours earlier on New Year’s Eve. But it would take Fidel’s barbudos several days to restore order throughout the city and begin apprehending the criminals, and it would take Fidel himself an entire week to travel across the island from his hideout in the Sierra Maestra to make his triumphant entry into Havana.

  So on that New Year’s morning, many Cubanos did not know what was going on. Florencio had everyone gather a suitcase full of any belongings they needed, and he told them to be ready to leave in half an hour. Juan thought about Benito. Where was he? Where was his father? And Alberto could think of no one else except Emilia. Where had she gone? Was she safe?

  While Juan stuffed his books and papers into his suitcase and Alberto crammed his lyrics into his, they could hear the voice of Señorita Silvia talking to their mother in the kitchen. She was saying she’d be fine, saying her novio, Rafael Nuñez, would take care of her. When Juan and Alberto walked into the kitchen, holding their suitcases, they saw Señorita Silvia standing next to Rafael. They had not seen the man for some time, a year or more. He was now fully bearded and carrying a rifle. He nodded to the boys. They knew immediately: he’s one of Fidel’s men. As for Alberto, he thought how his schoolboy crush on Señorita Silvia seemed a long time ago. He now loved Emilia, who was part of his heart. He bit at his nails hoping she was okay, wherever she was at.

  Juan and Alberto later learned that Señor Pablo had told Lucretia not to worry about him. He had family on the outskirts of Havana who would put him up until the city settled. With the mention of Pablo, Juan’s heart quickened with remembrance of his first infatuation, of his growing awareness of who he was.

  As the horror of what had happened to the Ramos house set in, Cuca called her brother, Rear Admiral Joaquin Rivera, and told him about their situation in La Vibora. He informed his sister and the Ramos family to come immediately and stay at his flat in the Vedado district until order was restored and the family made a decision about what they wanted to do.

  With Batista officially gone from power, Fidel used his Radio Rebelde broadcasts to preach calm and direct citizens to make arrests of any unlawful acts. Within twenty-four hours the city was on lockdown as hundreds of barbudos with long hair and bandanas slowly took control of the streets. Wearing rosaries and crosses, they walked with a saintly air of selflessness while wielding their rifles and handguns. As they patrolled the city, they plastered walls with posters and handed out cardboard fans, each with the face of Fidel illuminated in an image of repose, his Christ-like appeal aglow with a halo and a nimbus. Beneath the photo was written, “Fidel, this house is yours.”

  That New Year’s morning, the Ramos family loaded into their baby blue Oldsmobile and drove from La Vibora to the apartment of Cuca’s brother in Vedado. When they arrived, Joaquin was in full military regale as a Rear Admiral in the Cubano navy. With Batista’s command having officially ended, the armed forces were waiting for the generals to negotiate with Fidel and his closest associates in order to proceed in how the transfer of power on the island would go forward with governance.

  Over the next few days, Alberto called Emilia’s house several times, finally on the third day he got through. Now returned to their home in La Vibora after three days away, her family had fled the neighborhood before their house was ransacked. Alberto’s heart raced and his mind whirled as he heard Emilia’s voice. He hadn’t stopped thinking about her since the moment his family left La Vibora. They were both relieved to hear from one another.

  “They smashed up everything,” she said.

  “Thank God, you’re fine. That’s all that matters to me,” he said.

  “Me, too.”

  “I guess things are calming down.”

  “Castro is now in control. You should ask your parents if you can come back into el vecindad to see me.”

  It was hard for Alberto to explain. His mother was intent on securing exit for them on one of the ferries in the upcoming days and leaving the island for good to live in Miami, where Florencio’s parents, Huberto and Evelina, had moved back in 1952. They were now American citizens.

  “But my dad wants to stay here and take care of business for Don Emilio and Andurra Azúcar,” Alberto explained to Emilia. “My mom’s a different story. She’s going loca and thinks we’re all going to suffer if we don’t get out.”

  Since the moment of the thugs’ intrusion, Lucretia’s worries could not be calmed. She seemed to have completely forsaken everything she’d worked for and everything she had acquired. She simply wanted off the island. For her, the ransacking of her home ended any idea she would ever entertain of staying in Cuba. She didn’t care that she had a successful school to run. She didn’t care that she had one of the most respected beauty salons in the city. She was ready to give up everything at that moment to get out. With her paranoia taking over, she would not listen to Florencio tell her that they should wait for Fidel to settle the country. “Then we can make a decision,” he said. “We can fix the house or we can leave. Either way, we go on with our lives.”

  “No podemos. You may not see the writing on the wall,” stated Lucretia. “I do not trust Castro. We’ll lose everything anyway, so we may as well get out now.”

  But in the first days of 1959, Florencio didn’t see Fidel any differently than the masses did: as a liberator who had defeated a despised dictator in Batista. Fidel presented himself as the type of leader you could trust, a man with a plan
to restore Cuba’s integrity on the international stage. Just as Juan and Alberto saw Fidel as a hero, Florencio also developed adoration for the guerrilla prince’s fortitude and determination. And in the beginning, Fidel was a visionary with a cause just like his own hero, the patriarch of Cubano independencia, José Martí. So as Lucretia prepared to leave the island with her sons and Cuca, Florencio fell under the spell of the moment and took his sons to witness Fidel’s triumphant entry into Havana.

  Juan, Alberto, and their father stood among the thousands of elated Cubanos lining the parade route through the city all the way to Plaza Cívica. They crowded along the curb of the avenida in front of a small mercado, where fresh produce rested in crates outside the entrance. They stood and waited with their pulses sitting on edge as they heard the sounds of engines revving and thumping from down the avenue. Suddenly, a parade of jeeps, trucks, and tanks became visible. The crowd began to wave to the rebels who waved back. The majority of them were young men with straggly beards, long hair, and loaded rifles. Some of these young liberators offered salutes to the cheering crowds; others fired shots of celebration into the air. Then a tank roared into view, a Sherman with a bazooka cannon larger than a church column. Atop the hatch sat the glorified, charismatic hombre of miracles: Fidel Castro. He was thickly-bearded and adorned in his trademark olive-green military cap and fatigues. His eyes radiated with the pride and stateliness of victory. He waved to the multitudes and called out, “Patria libre!” Next to Fidel sat his closest comrade in arms, the enigmatic Che Guevara. Looking like a rock star, Che wore a black beret, and he left the first three butóns on his fatigues unbuttoned. A cigar bobbed in the corner of his mouth. Twisty strands of smoke laced the air before his squinty eyes.