“I shall return,” Castro called out over his shoulder at the moment of departure, the bearded giant who now held the U.S. in contempt ironically echoing a famous American general.
Once in Mexico, where the right-wing government wanted no part of Castro and his insurgent force, the fugitives created a secretive cell dedicated to waging warfare against all dictators everywhere. As a result of this broadening policy, Argentinean doctor Ernesto “Che” Guevera arrived in the mantis-green jungle, joining a burgeoning force that now included several Mexican revolutionaries and people from other Third World Countries. Plus several Americans, claiming to support The Cause.
Among these came a man known only as George. In actuality, this was Frank Sturgis, sent down to infiltrate the guerillas by the CIA. The U.S. had grown concerned as to whether these rangy troops might constitute a viable threat to U.S. interests in the area. Corporations had recently poured immense amounts of money into Latin America, perceiving these as potentially lucrative sites.
Trained in the art of duplicity, George quickly won Castro over. He not only had been accepted into Castro’s force but soon became an officer, always at The Beard's side in public, seated beside him at strategy meetings held in the leader's tent. Soon George made it a point to get to know as many other volunteers as possible, hoping to find some weak link in Castro's chain-of-command which he could then manipulate in favor of the U.S.'s crusade against communism. The moment that George first shared cigars with Buesa he knew that here was the man he'd been looking for, quickly cultivating a relationship. The soft-spoken Cuban shortly admitted his discomfort with the manner in which Castro had grown as authoritarian as Batista on the right.
At long last, Manuel grasped why Castro had distrusted the educated members of his group from day one. Any time one would suggest a democratic election of leaders, Castro tore into a fury, disappearing into his tent where his latest young mistress awaited. When Castro finally stepped out into the daylight, he sullenly stalked about camp, staring down whoever dared to speak such sacrilege. Now, it was Castro's way or the highway, not that there were many of those near their hidden enclave.
Buesa was, as George could clearly tell, wavering. Good!
Seven months later, Castro decided the time had come to strike. He secured a leaky leisure-craft, the Granma, capable of safely carrying twenty men at most. Castro crowded 82 followers into the timeworn hull, Manuel and George among them. Chugging along, the antiquated boat quietly passed along the river during the late-night hours of November 25, 1956, then slipped out into the gulf unseen by Mexican shore patrols.
During the next several days everyone complained of hunger and filth. One man fell overboard and nearly drowned. They were supposed to land at a designated beachfront in Oriente Province, where comrades would be waiting with provisions, weapons, and trucks. Together all would move in-land, the revolution about to ignite. But when a Cuban army surveillance helicopter spotted them below, plans had to be swiftly altered. The Granma, about ready to soon sink anyway, came ashore ten miles away from their mark, swiftly descending in a swamp near Los Colorados.
When the men tried to disembark, some drowned in the bog. Those able to crawl up onto land attempted to push inland only to come face to face with troops, ready and waiting; Batista had been informed of the coming invasion by some traitor in Castro’s midst. Castro turned to his trusted officer, George, swearing that when he found out who had done this terrible thing he’d personally strangle the man. George nodded, apparently in solemn agreement, though not making eye contact, offering no reply.
For the next several days, remnants of Castro’s ever diminishing guerilla force fought its way from one ambush to the next, trying to reach the Sierra Maestra mountain-range. There, Castro knew, like-minded supporters waited. When the two groups combined, this rag-tag army could disappear into the natural camouflage. Federal troops would be afraid to follow into what might turn out to be an ambush behind every tree. Castro counted noses; including his brother, the men numbered fourteen.
Even George was gone now, apparently killed in one of the fire-fights, though no one had actually witnessed the American going down. Likely, his body lay somewhere back there in the brush, among the dead and dying. The loss of so trusted a man only made Castro all the more determined to eventually win.
“I have not yet begun to fight,” he promised, echoing yet another war-hero from the America he ironically despised.
When Batista, sipping wine in his Havana mansion, heard reports of this boast, he laughed out loud, calling Castro a bearded clown. Did this scraggly buffoon actually still believe he could topple a military dictator? The fool!
*
In the epicenter of Havana, a huge building constructed in the manner of an ancient Spanish fort rises above the diverse buildings that compose this age-blighted metropolis. Cut from stone, the imposing city-within-the city can be seen for miles by any resident who glances upward at the high-stretching rock on which the prison was long ago painstakingly erected. Since the first day of its existence, this dark, ominous tower has cast an ever-shifting shadow over Ciudad de las Columnas, the city of columns, Cuba’s most formidable outpost of civilization.
Initially a humble village, Havana had been founded in 1515 by a loose confederacy of conquistadores and priests. For the better part of five centuries, the heart of Cuba’s social and political systems withstood tests against its permanence by natural calamities and man’s ongoing strife with his fellow man. Such people enjoyed victories and suffered defeat; won, lost, lived, loved and died; come and gone as if blown in and out by trade-winds. What remained was Havana itself, some days gay, at other times sad. Always lorded over by that black needle, the initial sign of the city any approaching visitor observes.
Adding to the medieval aura, two wide moats circle this edifice, one midway up the incline, the other closer to the top. Each remained crossable only by the wood-and-iron drawbridges that clank up and down following orders from the bastion’s current commander, whomever that might be. This position of power had for centuries remained subject to change, no matter how solid any reign appeared. El Castillo del Principe was its name, the one-foot-thick walls dating almost as far back as the first crude mission, located several blocks away. Those who over the ages were interred here, like others living in daily fear of at some point doing or saying something that might cause them to be condemned to this ghastly place, refer to it as El Principe.
Until January 1, 1959, the thousands of prisoners held inside during those middle years of the 20th century were suspected revolutionaries. All had been rounded up by strong-armed military envoys and rudely escorted from their homes—enclaves within the city, small farming villages spread across the 761 mile long island—to this dreaded place. Once inside its clammy structure, they were starved, beaten, interrogated and tortured. In some cases, innocent and guilty alike were dragged back out, forced into canvas-covered trucks, the weeping victims, who grasped their coming fate, carried off to stretches of open land ten miles south of the city, there to be executed.
On several occasions, victims of such mass killings were buried. More often, corpses were allowed to rot in the fields so passing farmers and humble tradesmen would bear witness to what might be their future if they were to join, or even offer tacit support, to the insurgents. See and fear. Fearing, continue to work the fields without question.
Conventional wisdom in Cuba prior to ‘59: Do not mention democracy, American style, much less the communism spreading across the post-WWII world. To be heard whispering about such things, even in casual mid-day street conversation or after imbibing too much at some crude cantina during evening hours, might well chart a one-way route to El Principe.
No man in his right mind wanted that!
Everyone in Cuba knew that their current leader maintained friendly relations with the U.S. They also understood Batista had no interest in altering his corrupt state by adapting such a constitutional government. The Americans wer
e to be tolerated as they feared those communists that posed a threat to Batista’s power. The U.S. government not only closed its collective eyes, allowing vicious tyrants to rule in global hot-spots, but supported them. In some cases, openly; in others, covertly.
Dictatorship, Hitler style, which America had not so long ago opposed, was upheld. That was then; this, now. Anything, according to foreign policy, John Foster Dulles style, was better than communism. In the end, it all came down to a simple philosophy: Any enemy of my enemy is my friend.
*
The situation in Cuba in general, El Principe in particular, altered on a New Year’s day that opened the final year of the 1950s. The tower of terror would remain filled with prisoners. What altered was the make-up of those held in the assortment of small, filthy cells, modeled on the interior of a bee-hive. In a period of 48 hours, the constituency in El Principe reversed itself. One American journalist who witnessed all that occurred, Lee Lockwood, immortalized the event in photographs and words.
Batista-friendly American political advisors and Mafia casino owners deserted by plane on December 31, 1958 when their New Year’s Eve celebration degenerated into a bloodbath. The dictator absconded in the darkness as his armed forces hastily threw down their weapons, running away to hide in the hills or reversing loyalties, joining the guerilla invasion. Though Castro remained in the Sierra Maestra range, hundreds of miles away, his 26 de Julio Movement swarmed into Havana's streets.
The rebels waved red banners, wielding rifles above their heads, shouting "Down With Batista!" In the early hours of the following day, droves of humble citizens threw open their doors to the motley crew, offering what little beer and wine they possessed to the guerillas now heralded as ‘liberators.’ Those few who owned cars drove around an open city, honking their horns in unison, eager to let the rebels know that, despite their ownership of such luxury items, they too supported the revolution. It was a great day in the morning, all agreed.
Almost everyone. Ninety-plus-percent of the people had been living in near-starvation under Batista. Less pleased were the one in ten who had achieved middle-class or higher still status, desiring nothing more than to live like their American friends, reveling in the superficial joys of consumer culture. Their first and all-pressing thought: How do I get the hell out of here? Next question: where in the name of God will I go?
“We arrived at El Principe,” Lockwood wrote, where “wives and mothers” of men long imprisoned “could already be seen struggling up the hill, hauling suitcases, shopping bags, and other containers stuffed with civilian clothing” to replace the filthy white cotton uniforms worn by prisoners. “A roar went up as someone found a key to the jail. A moment later, the prison’s massive iron gate was flung open, releasing a hoard of inmates, who surged (out) in a white river, tumbling down the hill.”
“Viva Fidel!” they shouted. “Viva Cuba Libre!” Others chimed in: “Viva la Revolucion!" The current Cuban revolution, also too the great worldwide revolution each present sensed must be right around the corner.
After all, considering what had happened here, who or what could possibly stand in their way?
By noon, those who’d served as prison guards found the tables turned, forced into recently vacated cells at gunpoint. In charge marched former prisoners, each with an ax to grind, in some cases literally. Shortly, the onetime oppressors would be joined in communal misery by wealthy citizens who had supported Batista. The wisest among them had already deserted by any means —planes, boats big or small—heading for Miami.
While all revolutionaries love to shout “Solidarity,” always they prove incapable of maintaining that state for more than one glorious moment. In several days time, those favoring communism gained the upper hand. Recent comrades who now argued in favor of democracy found themselves in El Principe. From the moment that Castro arrived, it was the revolution according to one man, and only one: Castro. Get with him or get out.
Democracy? No. Moderately applied socialism? No. Hardcore communism immediately became the rule, Castro on the far left as totalitarian as Batista had been on the far right.
Communism, Castro style. Love it or leave it!
The majority of Cubans did the former, or at least accepted this as the new order. A minority, the latter. Cubans of means, favoring democracy and capitalism, embarked on an exodus to America. Among them, Manuel Artime Buesa, crossing the waters in a leaky rowboat with two other men, knowing that if and when he arrived in Miami, he would present himself at the offices of the CIA, offering his services. On that day when Buesa announced himself he was led down a hall to an office door identified by the name ‘Frank Sturgis.’
Once inside, Manuel gasped at the sight of an old friend whom he believed had been killed somewhere in the jungle. Standing there with a welcoming smile stood ... George!
*
No one ever moved faster than Johnny Rosselli when he considered himself on a mission from God. It must be noted that the object of Rosselli’s worship was not the wrathful Yahweh of the Old Testament nor gentle Jesus of the New but Sam Giancana, considered by others of a different mind-set to be the anti-Christ. Ruthless, intelligent, confidant, vastly experienced in the ways of the world, supremely in control of organized crime in America, hair-trigger quick to judge though slow to fire any literal or figurative gun, employing this as a final solution to serious problems, Sam 'Gold' Giancana possessed many aspects of some worldly-wise mystic, a contemporary Merlin of the Mob. As such, he sized up every situation with the hard, cold, calculated intellect of a Genghis Khan.
That well described what Sam had been contemplating as to The Cuban Situation since New Year’s Eve, when Meyer Lansky called in a panic from the Riviera hotel to inform Giancana that Batista, along with his sycophants and all CIA personnel, were making hasty getaways. Concerned, Sam had instructed Lansky to get the hell out there fast. For once, Meyer steadfastly refused a direct order. He and his second wife Teddy remained until the bitter end, earning Sam’s immediate gratitude for not doing as told and, afterwards, his lifelong admiration.
As rebels ran wild through the streets, firing guns in the air, shouting the slogans of revolution, drinking themselves into an alcoholic stupor, the hotel’s staff deserting, Meyer calmly stepped into the kitchen and did the cooking himself. Teddy, displaying a facade of calm, pranced from table to table, managing a frozen smile while serving the few American and Cuban customers who hadn’t yet fled. She and Lansky would shortly leave, with dignity intact. Another high-ranking mobster meanwhile slipped in to replace them.
The chaos continued. Giancana called Santo Trafficante in Tampa, since he was in charge of Cuba since Luciano, now living in Sicily, had decreed this in the 1946 Havana meeting. Clearly, the time had come for Santo to get on top of the Castro problem. As soon as he’d hung up the phone, Trafficante called Las Vegas and asked for Johnny Handsome. No one possessed Johnny's gift for pulling off the impossible.
Johnny? Get your ass to Havana and do so fast!
Three days later Johnny arrived, no one save Giancana and Trafficante aware that the man born Fillipo Sacco had even left Vegas. Johnny took up residence in the Hotel Nacional and held steady for orders. Johnny would wait, calm and quiet, until word arrived from Sam the Man, even now pondering what ought to be done. We’ll play it cool for the time being, Giancana decided; wait and see if Castro can be reasoned with. If not? In that case, the Beard must be whacked, and quickly.
*
Rosselli did not have long to wait. On January 7, after Castro had arrived, headquartering himself on the 23rd floor of the Havana Hilton, The Beard ordered all casinos closed, all gambling banned. The United States, in his estimation, had turned his once clean Cuba into a decadent brothel. Shortly after this announcement aired on Radio Havana, picked up by the networks, a call came through from Santo, who had received one from Sam. Trafficante now reiterated Gold’s orders to Johnny.
Minutes later, fully prepared, Rosselli set off on his errand. The st
reets seemed different than even a day or two earlier, the vivid sense of rich, colorful life that had filled them diminished. People were casting off their bright garb for drab fatigues. Instead of an ecstatic celebration of life Johnny had witnessed, most wandered about in a dull, serious manner. The good ol’ days he had so loved to partake of were gone! Perhaps, though, this current assignment might bring them back.
Rosselli arrived at the Hilton, briefed by Trafficante as to what had already become Castro’s ritualistic daily habits. Johnny took up a position adjacent to the main doorway. Panic overcame him when he felt one of his irregular asthma attacks coming on. As the mid-afternoon heat abated now that sweet breezes wafted in from nearby waters, Johnny spotted a sudden movement at the door. He reached under his coat for the weapon hidden there, a WWII-era German Luger, Johnny’s pistol of choice since becoming one of the Mob's crack shots decades earlier.
Half a dozen figures drifted out of the building, Castro central to the group. Rosselli noted that in front of The Beard a large, rugged man with a Zapata mustache pushed forward. He obviously must have been the chief bodyguard. If only that important call from the states had come two days earlier!
Then Castro, believing himself to have the unanimous support of Havana's citizenry, dared strut about unprotected. That ended when a friend from college days, architect Enrique Avarez, hid in a high/wide modern building across the street from Castro’s favorite dining place, the Casalta over on the east edge of town. Avarez planned to shoot his leader with a high-powered rifle, augmented by a telescopic lens, while The Beard gulped down shrimps, drenched in lemon and butter, roasted over coals, the house specialty. At the moment when he must squeeze the trigger, Avarez experienced a sudden failure of nerve and fled.
Patsy! : The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald Page 11
