One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution

by Nancy Stout

  She had not yet met Fidel Castro, so her thoughts about him would not have been firsthand or personal. She must have had thoughts, too, about other men she had backed, starting with Eduardo Chibás: how her father had been a founder of Chibás’s Orthodox Party, Chibás’s visit to Pilón in 1948 on the campaign circuit, when she had sat on the podium, the only woman in a line of men. After Chibás, she had supported another politician who had turned out to be a flop, Emilio Ochoa—he had flown into the country unprepared, ignoring so much of the help waiting for him, and failed. What had come out of it? She had met and worked with various militant groups in nearly every city, and in every small town in all the coastal areas for years now, and for this reason the local people trusted her. Would Fidel Castro be just another letdown? The stakes were higher this time around, which would have made her feel even more desperate, and cooped up, after 48 hours, very little sleep, hundreds of cigarettes, and a million tiny cups of coffee, all leading to disappointment.

  She may have put Fidel out of her mind, her heart with her people, and with Frank.

  IN SANTIAGO, FRANK’S BATTLE was well under way, and he was outnumbered and vulnerable. Some of the assaults he’d planned were successful, some fizzled, but they were widespread enough to dilute the military’s response. The most dramatic conflicts took place in the oldest part of town, where 26th of July soldiers led by Jorge Sotus threw grenades and incendiary bombs (Molotov cocktails, in fact) through open windows and doorways and against the façade of the Customs Police Maritime Headquarters. This operation was a particular success: they were able to enter, acquire guns, and leave.

  The Cuban army, ensconced in the Moncada Garrison, moved cautiously that day. The biggest attack was against the National Police Garrison, led by Pepito Tey, who with his 26th of July soldiers was able to enter the building. Otto Parellada’s group came down Padre Pico, entered the School of Visual Arts, crossed the courtyard, and got onto a roof overlooking the police station. They shot at the police running into the station’s courtyard. From there, they engaged the police in battle, with the advantage of firing from above, and were able to maintain that stronghold for most of the day. When the besieged police surrendered, the 26th of July soldiers freed prisoners from their cells and set fire to the building. This was a relatively successful operation, since they had held the police garrison until the afternoon and damaged the iconic building. Beyond that, they could go no further. Tey had been gunned down outside, and his body lay there, and was photographed, his blood splashed against the side of the building and running into the gutter.

  Several of the 26th of July attackers arrived at Frank’s headquarters to tell him the news about Tey, as others told him news of the deaths of his friends Antonio Aloma and Otto Parellada. Frank and Jorge Sotus argued about what to do next. Lots of ad hoc attack plans were being put forth, and Frank vetoed them all. He was against taking off into the mountains, even though it had been one of the plans; he thought the trucks weren’t up to the trip. Somebody telephoned with news that the army had left the Moncada and was heading northeast on the Central Highway, to El Cobre, as well as to other points nearby. Frank decided that he would unilaterally declare a truce. They had accomplished their goals: any more action would cause a useless loss of lives and weapons. And it would no doubt surprise and confound the government forces to have the successful uprising suddenly go quiet. He told everyone to leave the headquarters, a few at a time; to leave all weapons behind; to hide in houses throughout Santiago, and stay there until further notice.

  “Since there was no other alternative, I thought of various places to hide out,” Oscar remembers, but he settled on the home of an old guitarist, Emilio Carbonella, and his wife, Targila Planas. A friend of Oscar’s, a young woman at the Institute, often visited the couple at 57 Reloj. “So there I went, sure they would not fail me,” although he could still hear gunshots and machine-gun fire in the streets as the old musician opened his door and took him in.

  The army retook the city around 3:00 p.m., although details as to the hour conflict. After that, Santiago would descend more deeply than ever into corruption and sadistic and ruthless police tactics. When you consider the magnitude of the insult that the 26th of July Movement delivered, it is amazing there were so few casualties that day. Historians often call the uprising a bloodbath, but it was not. The greater number of losses was taken by the batistianos (eight), but the 26th of July’s three deaths were of enormous significance to the movement: Tey, Aloma, and Parellada were leaders, Frank’s partners from the beginning.

  Frank had set out to distract the army, if only for a few hours, and he dumbfounded it. The army was holed up in the Moncada for eight hours. In over fifty years since the event, very little new information has surfaced, but it seems that Taras Domitro (and therefore Frank) actually did have inside information: some of Batista’s soldiers had refused to fight against the revolutionaries. This is corroborated by the fact that soon after as many as 67 soldiers were arrested and court-martialed. More cracks were appearing in Batista’s army. In Cuba, nobody has forgotten that Frank’s new army emerged that day, disciplined and real. Middle-class parents understood that their children had been the soldiers on an urban battlefield. And nobody was foolish enough to think that things would be the same afterward.

  In reaction, many in Santiago with money left Cuba, moving away to Spain, Puerto Rico, Mexico, the United States. A few went to France. Citizens without that kind of income sent their children to stay with relatives in places they thought were less violent, like Cienfuegos or Camaguey. But these cities soon became hotbeds, too, since the Battle of Santiago marked the beginning of an all-out war against the government.

  CELIA, MEANWHILE, CONTINUED HER WAIT, as did Guillermo García and Mongo Pérez, also anxious, also trapped in houses. Lalo and Fajardo began their final shift in the icehouse, while the clandestine forces desperately improvised. The hours passed.

  Saturday, December 1, after 72 hours, it was all over for the clandestine network. Celia did not make a 9:00 a.m. appearance at the icehouse. As she had instructed, Lalo called off all activities in Niquero, then drove north, seeing the directors in the other towns, having them call in their teams. Also per her instructions, he found out what damage had already been done, and made sure it was known by everyone that she, personally, would guarantee their protection. He told the directors that she would be following him up the coast and would visit some of them, on her way back to Manzanillo.

  INFORMERS IN MEXICO HAD ALERTED the army to the Granma’s departure. army intelligence predicted that Fidel would head for Oriente Province, knew the identities of some of his supporters, and concluded that one person in particular could lead them straight to Fidel. Saturday morning, orders were issued to capture Celia Sánchez Manduley, dead or alive.

  CELIA REMAINED AT HER HEADQUARTERS throughout the day, in keeping with her plan to extend protection, albeit reduced, for the Granma, and hoping to hear from Crescencio or Guillermo. She probably thought about the previous decade. It was as if she’d been training for this moment, maybe subconsciously, before Frank or Fidel. In 1948, she’d helped her father organize a rally for the Orthodox Party’s presidential candidate, Eduardo Chibás. He and his party became the center of her social and intellectual life. She’d gone to every party meeting in these coastal towns, had invited people—by tens and dozens and hundreds—to listen to Chibás’s hour-long radio show on Sunday evenings in her garden, the radio fastened to a corner post. Farmers and ranchers—some now waiting, like her, for Fidel to arrive—had planned their market day to include the broadcast. She’d liked “Eddy” Chibás and went to visit him in Havana at Party headquarters, across from the Capitol in the old boxing gym formerly used by Kid Chocolate. Chibás was then forty-two years old, with a wife and young child, but not exactly a family man or glamorous politician: short, balding, and myopic, recognized by his thick, hexagon-lensed, gold-rimmed glasses. He drove his Packard convertible through stop signs and traffi
c lights, and dreamed of cleaning up politics. Verguenza Contra Dinero—Honor before Money—had been the Orthodox slogan, and its logo a long-handled broom to sweep corrupt politicians out of office. When in 1949 a group of American sailors off a U.S. Navy ship docked at Havana, had climbed onto the beautiful statue of Martí in Parque Central expressly to urinate on Martí’s figure, he’d called them “beasts, neither American, nor men.”

  But everything fell apart less than a year from elections, when they knew they’d surely win. In July 1951, Chibás accused Minister of Education Sánchez Arango of using school funds to invest in a Guatemalan real estate development. They agreed to debate on July 21 and some say he canceled at the last minute because he didn’t like the conditions, but others say he showed up but was unable to enter the building while Sánchez Arango made a short, televised statement saying Chibás was a no-show. Next, Chibás promised proof of Sánchez Arango’s guilt on his August 5 broadcast. Celia and her father had decided to drive to Havana for the event so they could celebrate with Chibás. At eight o’clock, the nation had gathered in front of radios, but Eddy kept bringing up other issues, and when the hour was over, he hadn’t produced his proof. She felt sure that his colleagues, the congressmen who had the documents, the proof, refused to supply them and he’d been set up. Everyone listening had been bewildered, then found out that at the end of the show, Chibás had aimed a pistol at his abdomen and pulled the trigger. A sound engineer cut off the program because the show had run over its allotted time, and instead of hearing Chibás call out, “Forward! People of Cuba, goodbye! This is my last call! (el ultimo aldabonazo),” they heard instead: “Café Pilón, the coffee that is tasty to the last drop.”

  She stayed in Havana, couldn’t leave Chibás as he held on, painfully, for ten more days, and did not let herself believe that he’d meant to kill himself. He died on the operating table at 1:57 a.m., August 16, 1951, and she went to the funeral parlor and stayed with his body until the lid of the coffin was closed and carried out on the afternoon of the 17th. Exhausted, she joined over 300,000 mourners behind the casket as it was carried to Colon Cemetery.

  Even without Chibás, Celia did not drop her political activities. One of the founders of the Orthodox Party, Emilo, or “Millo,” Ochoa, challenged Chibás’s former running mate, Roberto Agramonte, for the party’s presidential nomination, and so had a twenty-five-year-old lawyer named Fidel Castro, just then starting to attract attention.

  This photograph was taken in Pilón in 1948, while Orthodox Party leader, Eduardo Chibás, was on the campaign trail for president. Celia and her father can be seen just behind the horse’s head. (Courtesy of Oficina de Asuntos Históricos)

  She was shocked when Batista returned on Monday, March 10, 1952, to assume power by a military coup d’état. Ochoa, a senator, had called President Carlos Prio Soccaros and offered to send a plane to Havana to bring him to Santiago; he’d begged Prioto to stay in the country and make a stand against Batista, but both he and Prio ended up in exile. What Cuba was going to be like under a military regime hit home after Batista cancelled the June elections. There would be no legal means of reform through the ballot box for the people. She had felt depressed and powerless, but put out feelers, and started to find like-minded people who were against Batista and his military government. For the rest of 1952, from May to December, she’d driven all along the coast visiting Orthodox Party members to find out how they felt, to see if they viewed the present state of affairs as she did, and find out what they planned to do next. She discovered that among her former Orthodox Party friends everybody was willing to oppose the military dictator: there were those who were interested in joining a group against him (activists), those who wanted to focus on overthrowing him (militants), and then there were a few who had been willing to do whatever it took to end the military government (willing conspirators). She had conducted another one of her censuses.

  During 1956, Celia would select militants from groups she’d worked with in the past. Attending an Orthodox Party meeting in Niquero, late 1948, she is seated in the center, with Israel Pela, Juan Sánchez Ramirez, Amparo de la Guardia, and others. (Courtesy of Oficina de Asuntos Históricos)

  After Chibás, she’d believed in Ochoa, who wanted to return to Cuba from exile. She’d believed him capable of liberating the country from Batista, and she worked in the final months of 1953 and most of 1954 building a network to support him among all those activists and militants and potential conspirators she knew along the coast, persuading them to help “Millo” when he returned. For at least twelve months, she’d made contacts in Pilón, Niquero, Media Luna, Campechuela, and Manzanillo, going to Havana and Santiago to report on her progress and to receive instructions from various directors in Ochoa’s camp. By the end of 1954, she had selected the people she needed and was ready for his arrival. Then, in the first days of November 1954, she learned that Ochoa had returned to Cuba by parachuting into Camaguey. No one in his organization even saw fit to inform her, so she’d gone to Camaguey to investigate for herself, taking a friend. They’d discovered that Ochoa had arrived by plane and gone straight to Havana. She realized that he had never meant to carry out an uprising, and at some point, without informing her, had given up his plan for using Pilón as his landing place. She was furious and humiliated. Changing plans is understandable, but not informing her showed complete lack of respect for the people taking risks for him, and questionable commitment on his part.

  On November 11, 1954, Batista extended his presidency through fraudulent elections, and Ochoa, in Havana, was his vocal opponent, but she hadn’t even considered forgetting about the months of work she’d put in, because, in her book, he was a traitor to her and everyone living around her. She contacted all the people on the coast, told them what had happened, and they began to regroup. She renewed old contacts with Orthodox Party members, and she founded her own secret movement, the Masó Revolutionary Movement, named after Manzanillo’s own rebel, Bartolomé Masó Márquez. His message had been as simple and obvious as Chibás’s broom: buy land, no matter how little, so the United States can’t buy it, with whatever money you can scrape together; buy land as an act of patriotism, because the United States did not want a Cuban to own any more land than could be seen in “the shadow of the flag.”

  By January 1955, Ochoa had gone back into exile, in Mexico. He’d been living on a legacy of his younger days, and she’d fallen for it. In the end, he was unable to take risks, was too old, had a family, and didn’t want to take chances.

  As she waited for Fidel on the first day of December, 1956, Celia knew she wasn’t the same woman who had volunteered so willingly to help Chibás in 1948 and Millo Ochoa in 1954. She hoped he was not the same kind of man either. Fidel seemed to be a different breed: he had been married and had a child, but he was a risk-taker, he thought like a young, single man and had proved it. He had risked his life at the Moncada.

  When she had gone to see Frank in Santiago eleven months earlier, he knew all about her preparations for Ochoa and expressed admiration for her. He knew that her knowledge of people on the coast was extensive and her greatest point of expertise. He put her in charge of her own operations. He had assured her that he’d never leave her out in the cold—as Millo had done. She had demanded that. She understood that Frank would never fail her. But now, sitting at Crescencio’s, could she say the same about Fidel?

  7. DECEMBER 2, 1956

  The Arrival of the Granma

  THE GRANMA WAS APPROACHING, slowly. The boat had lost nearly a day plowing through rough seas off the Yucatán peninsula, and only passed the western tip of Cuba, at the remote end of Pinar del Rio Province, at 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, November 29. It then made even slower headway as it traveled east the length of Cuba, following a safe route, far to the south of the island and well out of view of the Coast Guard. Friday, while they were still on this route, their radio had picked up news of the Santiago uprising, but there was no way to increase speed and make up for lost
time. Finally, they had seen their beacon, the light at Cabo Cruz, on the night of the 1st, and set course for it. As they approached their destination, at about three in the morning of Sunday, December 2, they hit rough seas and lost a man—a guerrilla named Roberto Roque fell overboard. The sky was dark, the water choppy, but with very little hope of finding Roque, Fidel decided they must try. Reversing then moving forward, and repeating this in a zigzag, they found Roque, but used up time and fuel and left their pilot, Onelio Pino, disoriented.

  They approached Cabo Cruz with only enough fuel to last a few minutes, and as they started up the coast toward Las Coloradas, Pino told Fidel they would have to land. Fidel asked him: “Is this Cuba? Are you absolutely sure it isn’t Jamaica or a key?” The pilot assured him that it was Cuba. They were very near their goal, having reached Los Cayuelos, less than three miles south of the port of Las Coloradas. This put them, as Celia would later dryly comment, at about the worst place imaginable on the entire Cuban coast.

  It was around 5:00 a.m. when the Granma hit a sandbar and simply came to a stop.

  THIS WAS PROBABLY THE SAME HOUR that Celia, Beto, and Cesar got into the jeep and drove away from Crescencio’s house, heading for Manzanillo. She had stayed on at her Ojo de Agua headquarters knowing that Lalo would have called off the landing operation. She had still expected someone to show up on the doorstep Saturday with Fidel. It had been a long 24 hours: without a telephone or radio, no couriers, but knowing full well that Frank’s uprising would have caused a wave of arrests in Santiago and across the nation. But she had risen on this morning resigned to the fact that she had closed down her end of the operation; now she was headed to Manzanillo to meet Lalo, learn the damage her clandestine operators—her militants—had suffered, and begin her next job of figuring out a way to protect them.