One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution

by Nancy Stout

  The next morning, the Saumells woke Celia at 6:00 a.m. demanding she leave immediately, and she replied that she wasn’t going anywhere without a cup of coffee. Celia had had a good night’s sleep and was refreshed, whereas Nicaragua hadn’t had a wink; he had spent the night sitting up with the owners, who were so unnerved he worried that they might call the police. Celia liked and respected the owners, but they were just a small detail in comparison with getting Fidel on American television. Downstairs, Mrs. Saumell refused to make Celia’s coffee, on principle. Celia went to the kitchen and put water on the stove and was in the process of looking for the strainer when there was a knock at the door. Haydée Santamaria urged them to get into her car, but Celia refused, still insisting that she needed to drink some coffee first. She returned to the kitchen, compromised by sipping a bit of liquid through the grounds, and left, to everyone’s relief. On the road, Haydée explained that she’d gotten away when Armando was arrested, had picked up Taber and his cameraman, and driven to Manzanillo. When she arrived, she’d looked for, but couldn’t locate, Felipe Guerra Matos, then heard that he was in jail. Not knowing what else to do, she’d driven the Americans on to Bayamo, and left them at the home of a dentist she knew.

  On the previous evening, when the police found Felipe, they jailed him for being in possession of political pamphlets. Someone notified Rafael Sierra of Guerra Matos’s arrest, and Rafael quickly set out to find a replacement. He selected a 26th of July member from a landowning family like Guerra Matos’s, who owned property in the mountains—in this case a coffee plantation—and had every reason to be driving around the countryside doing business with North Americans. Lalo Sardinas drove into Manzanillo as soon as he got Sierra’s call. He saw all the police activity, had trouble locating Rafael, but eventually they got together and drove to Bayamo.

  Now assembled in Bayamo, but without Felipe’s roomy station wagon, they needed to take two cars to accommodate Celia, Nicaragua, Haydée, Sierra, Lalo, Taber, and Hoffman, plus all the television equipment. They all had to reduce their luggage; even the journalists left pieces of equipment behind at the dentist’s house. They got to the sugar mill in Estrada Palma that night. From there, they left on foot, walking along the only road from the mill toward Providencia, the next small town. They thought they’d be able to pass through the town unnoticed at night, but on the Saturday night before Easter, lots of people were out and about. By Celia’s account, “People were dancing in all the houses, and each time a dog barked, Lalo worried we’d be discovered.” Lalo had decided that six strangers (Sierra must have driven one car back) would be fatal and they’d have to change their route. Lalo had them walk in the fields to avoid passing through Dos Gruas and Naguas, although these towns contained very few houses. Walking in fields would have been hard going at any time, but it was especially grueling in springtime: the ground was soft and muddy, and they were carrying a weighty camera, a heavy tripod, large cans of film, luggage, and were traveling in the dead of night. The journalists and Haydée hadn’t slept in 24 hours and were exhausted. Haydée was wearing a new pair of boots, and blisters soon formed on her heels. But Celia was fine. She had had a good night’s sleep, liked being out at night, and was wearing a pair of flat-heeled cowboy boots embroidered with little stars (as documented by Taber and Hoffman, in a film now in the Museum of Radio and Television in New York City). In the morning, Lalo located a businessman (Chiche Lastre) he knew well enough to suggest he hide six people in his house.

  IN HAVANA, ON THE SAME SATURDAY before Easter, the police stormed an apartment near the university where the few surviving leaders from Echeverria’s failed assassination attempt were hiding. From this group, Frank (in jail) had arranged to purchase the Revolutionary Directorate’s leftover arsenal. They’d been in the apartment at 7 Humboldt (now a museum) for over a month, since the Directorate’s failed assassination attempt against Batista. The police killed all the people inside the apartment.

  IN FIDEL’S CAMP UP IN THE MOUNTAINS, they heard that the army was searching for a group with two women, two gringos, and two others. Fidel was alarmed and ordered Camilo Cienfuegos, by then considered to be his most reliable platoon leader, to select “any man” (or so the story goes) but save the group, “no matter what.” Later they heard, again through the grapevine, that the six had been discovered in a house near Santo Domingo, where they’d been hiding, and the house was under siege. Actually, Lalo’s group slept all day and left Chiche Lastre’s house after dark, following the Yara River, walking in the riverbed—a route that was both rocky and slippery, but much easier going then the night before, when each step they took had caused them to sink into the soft ground. They made good time, covering twenty miles on those two nights, and reached the property line of Lalo’s farm early in the morning. Lalo hid Celia and Haydée in one of his coffee groves, warning them to stay out of sight because the Rural Guard patrolled nearby roads. Later, while Celia and Haydée were sitting under coffee trees, they thought they saw one of Batista’s soldiers coming toward them. According to Haydée, Celia had been worrying about her father, wondering whether his instruments were being cleaned properly, as she watched the soldier approach. At first, only his helmet was visible, and they had to deal with their fear until they could see Camilo’s big smile.

  Interestingly, once Celia learned from Camilo that the guerrillas were broke, she sent money ahead to Fidel’s camp, didn’t even wait to carry it herself. She wrote to Arturo Duque de Estrada, covering for Frank in Santiago, before leaving Lalo’s place: “These people need everything.”

  Tuesday, April 23, Camilo escorted them to the rebel camp. That day, Celia received her just reward: she was inducted into the rebel army.

  I know nothing of this event, except that she was the first woman to be given that honor. It obviously was not freely or casually given, not a token gesture. It had nothing to do with impressing the journalists, otherwise Haydée, who had been with Fidel’s original military group at Moncada, would have been inducted as well. The men had taken the serious step of including Celia as a member of their fighting force, and a month later she went into battle. Several members of the guerrilla force may have recommended her, but only one person could fully approve and carry out the commission. The celebration may have been quiet, or even unspoken, but Fidel tipped his hat to her by deciding to take the television newsmen to the top of Cuba’s highest mountain, Pico Turquino. Fidel chose to be interviewed in front of the statue of Martí erected there by her father in 1953. It is the project she’d helped him realize. This gesture, on Fidel’s part, was respectful, admiring, and generous.

  On April 23, 1957, Celia was inducted into the rebel army. Here she is in the Sierra Maestra, in early May 1957. Left to right: Abelardo Colomé Ibarra (from Santiago, he had just joined the rebels), Enrique Escalona (the young 26th of July Movement banker from Celia’s organization in Manzanillo), Camilo Cienfuegos (who had come with Fidel on the Granma and became one of his most-valued commanders), Celia (planner of the landing, architect of the Farmers’ Militia), Raúl Castro (Fidel’s brother, then a platoon leader, later the commander of a column), Juan Almeida (with Fidel at the 1953 attack on the Moncada and on the Granma), Guillermo García (recruited by Celia to canvass the coast for farmers who would protect the landing guerrillas, who joined Fidel on December 25, 1956, and went into the Sierra Maestra), Jorge Sotus (a member of the Santiago underground, a veteran of the Battle of Santiago), Universo Sánchez (also on the Granma, a guerrilla who often acted as Fidel’s bodyguard); crouched in the middle is Luis Crespo (who climbed a tree in the early morning hours of December 2nd, after the landing of the Granma, to lead Fidel safely to the house of a farmer). (Courtesy of Oficina de Asuntos Históricos)

  They stayed in the upper reaches of the mountains for a week, all the time hosting the television newsmen. Celia never rested for a minute, writing to Arturo Duque de Estrada to order him to buy “two pairs of espadrilles, size 36, for Maria” (Haydée Santamaria); “neo asthma
pills” (sounds to me like medicine for Che); all the plastic tarp he can find since “it rains every day and there is nothing to cover with. . . . If it is 100 yards all the better”; three cartons of American cigarettes for the two journalists, “but not Camels”; a pair of glasses for Fidel “at the doctor’s house where I left my suitcase” in Bayamo; a toothbrush “for yours truly”; and “A [Alejando/a.k.a. Fidel] says to send news.”

  Taber wanted her to retrieve his personal still camera for the trip down the mountain. Celia asks Duque to get the camera in Bayamo—but she also sends him to Hector Llópiz, in Manzanillo, to find out if Hector had received a large sum—“la plata gorda.” If so, he was to get it to her, because “money is scarce.” In her next letter couriered to Duque, she assures him that they are all having a good trip but wants to extract his promise to send everything she wants: “I want you to confirm, with this person who is taking this letter, that all the packages have been sent,” ordering him around in a way she never would with Frank. She also asks him to send 1,000 cans of evaporated milk and tells him that, though she doesn’t know when the journalists are going to leave the mountain, she wants him to have a car waiting for them with all their equipment (left in Bayamo) loaded in it when they do. She ends with: “Now look! Get together with this messenger and pick up all, all [repeated] packages,” and sends everybody in Santiago “a hug.” To use Felipe Guerra Matos’s description of Celia: she was both imperious and impatient.

  In her third letter to Duque, dated April 27, 1957, Celia complains that he’s sent the wrong camera, a movie camera when “the one we asked for is for photographs.” She then issues another set of instructions, and in the next sentence implies that if you can’t do this, somebody else can. She encloses a message for Elsa Castro’s brother (although the note is actually written to Elsa): “Have him [your brother] find a camera and film right away because Alejandro says that if they don’t find it or screw up again, the work won’t get done. This thing with the camera makes him feel embarrassed with the Americans. He’s in some temper. We’ve sent the message with two different people so that the darn camera will get here, so, even if you find it, still go and pick up the one that Elsa is sending.” (It’s 1957. A lady does not swear outright, trusts her female friends, and has no problem giving orders.) “Elsa, I want you to lend me the best camera you have there. It’s needed to make ‘some perfect photographs.’ Whatever you suggest will be paid, but it is very urgent,” she wrote, expecting Elsa to take the camera from her father’s store.

  Last, but definitely not least, she remarks that Fidel’s glasses had not yet arrived. This, too, is a threat, for Duque, as Frank’s second in command, surely knows what this means, also. Although it must have come as a shock for Celia to discover that “Alejandro,” when he was in a temper, would break his glasses. But she is going to deal with it, in her own way, of course. Since they can’t win a war with a commander who can’t see, Celia (probably at Frank’s urging) has taken it upon herself to keep a constant supply of replacements on hand. She closes her letter to Duque with a list (in reality, a command): “Send now with Lalo: 1) The American’s camera. 2) Elsa’s camera. 3) Alejandro’s glasses. 4) Cigarettes for the journalists. 5) Raúl’s plastic [tarp] that I already sent for. 6) A toothbrush for yours truly. And nothing else.”

  In Taber’s documentary film, the guerrillas present themselves well: a bunch of good-looking young men camped on a steep hillside, stylish in new uniforms—in other words, the opposite of what Eloy Rodríguez had encountered a month earlier. Taber interviewed three young Americans who wanted to join the guerrillas: Victor Buehlman, Chuck Ryan, and Michael Garvey. When Taber and Hoffman left Fidel’s guerrillas, they took two of these boys to Santiago, leaving the oldest (Ryan) behind because Fidel thought they were too young and didn’t want them to get killed. From Santiago, the two boys went home via the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo.

  AFTER THE JOURNALISTS LEFT, the column marched eastward in the first week of May, getting in position to pick up the weapons. Frank had surmised there would be arms left over from the failed assault on the Presidential Palace, and that the Revolutionary Directorate would need to get those weapons out of Havana. He’d sent Nicaragua to inform “Fidel and make arrangements for the weapon delivery.” Nicaragua had accomplished his mission soon after they reached Turquino and left them, going down the southern face of the mountain. From there, he took the coastal road to Santiago.

  THE COLUMN, AT THIS STAGE in the Revolution, was divided into squadrons. The advance guard was led by Camilo Cienfuegos, and had a total of four men. Raúl’s platoon came next. It was followed by Fidel’s command squadron. In it were Manuel Fajardo, Luis Crespo, Ciro Redondo, Che Guevara, Universo Sánchez—Fidel’s tall, handsome bodyguard—and Celia Sánchez. Behind them marched Juan Almeida’s group, followed by a rear guard composed of four soldiers. Each group camped separately; each had a soldier who was designated as the cook. They descended the southern side of the mountain exchanging Sierra pines, palms, and hardwoods for feathery, subtropical vegetation that grows at the mountain’s base. There they posted guards along white-sand beaches and camped under a clear blue sky with huge cumulus clouds overhead. This was documented by a Magnum photographer who joined the column. His photographs of Fidel and his men, armed and wearing uniforms, look like war played out in Paradise. On May 7, while camped on the beach, they got word that Nicaragua had been arrested shortly after he’d left them.

  Much to their surprise, José “Gallego” Moran showed up, after leaving Turquino. He walked with a limp, although his wound had healed; his spirits were good; and he had a plan: Moran wanted to recruit men in Mexico and the United States. Fidel agreed, according to Che’s original diary, closely analyzed by biographer Jon Lee Anderson. Perhaps Fidel actually thought sending him out of the country was a viable alternative. More likely, he was stalling. But Che was horrified by Fidel’s decision; to Che, Moran was a deserter, but apparently he confined these thoughts to his diary.

  In Santiago, on May 8, or the day before Frank was to go on trial, Taras Domitro implemented a plan to break him out of prison. At first, everything went according to plan: in the morning, Frank feigned illness and was taken in the jail’s van to the hospital while his bodyguard, the big-boned Taras, waited on the street corner along with another July 26th activist. They would hijack the van and kidnap Frank en route to the hospital. As the van approached, something in the scene didn’t look right to Taras. His instinct told him the situation wasn’t safe, and he let the van pass by.

  On the following day, Celia celebrated her thirty-seventh birthday camped at the edge of the Caribbean. It was May 9, and her gift was Frank’s acquittal. This decision was something of a miracle, particularly if the authorities thought Frank had killed a policeman (although it was never proven). How could this have happened? Maria Antonia Figueroa explains that the police thought they’d caught just another student. “He’d been arrested because they were arresting anyone they thought might have taken part in the Battle of Santiago.” The army’s attention, several others claim, was elsewhere. It was focused on a small group of guerrillas who’d escaped from the Granma and been rounded up and were being held for trial. Since the trial focused on those guerrillas, as Figueroa points out, rather than students, Frank had been acquitted for lack of evidence of being a guerrilla.

  Nicaragua has another version altogether. He explains that the two policemen who arrested Frank (as he drove from Celia’s marabu barracks to Santiago) and confiscated the glamorous gold and silver pistol Frank was carrying, had kept the gun. They failed to turn it over. Without the gun, the prosecution couldn’t produce evidence that Frank had been armed. But they knew that Frank was a student leader? Yes, Nicaragua nodded. They thought he’d probably killed the policeman in Caney, I asked, but Nicaragua didn’t answer. He simply looked away. The police, he assures, were aware that Frank was a student leader, but they were unaware that Frank had been the architect of the Battle of Santiago.
He had been charged with inciting the uprising, but there was no evidence to support the allegation. Frank had also been accused of carrying a weapon when he was arrested driving the truck, but was absolved because proof—the gun itself—“had evaporated.” In short, Frank had been acquitted because the lawyers and the judge struck an agreement.

  FOR CELIA, GUERRILLA LIFE meant camping on remote sandy beaches for a couple of weeks. I imagine she caught and ate fresh fish, while resting and toasting in the sun. The shipment of weapons arrived on May 18, and unloading the crate was a joyous affair. They had acquired three tripod machine guns, three Madzen automatic rifles, nine M-1 carbines, ten Johnson automatic rifles, and six thousand rounds of ammunition.

  Also on May 18 Robert Taber’s documentary aired. In it, other than Fidel, few individuals among the rebels were singled out, although Taber mentions an Argentinean among them. But he speaks of the two women with the guerrillas, “Celia Sánchez and Maria” (Haydée Santamaria), and of Celia, in particular, quite lyrically. He focuses on a bouquet of flowers pinned to her uniform. He calls it a corsage of woodland’s flowers with the most beautiful odor, and gives them a name: “wild gardenias.” At the time, all Cuban households with TV sets received the three American networks (ABC, CBS, NBC). Cuban viewers most certainly knew Taber was talking about mariposa, a wildflower that flourishes near water; Celia must have gathered near a mountain stream, or close to a waterfall, as they climbed Turquino. The blossoms grow on a stock and have a sweet, pungent smell, and look like small, white butterflies (mariposas) hovering upon a bright-green, hollow, slightly wooden stem. In the old days of the Mambisa army, Cuba’s first guerrilla forces in their two Wars of Independence that started in the 1860s and ended in the 1890s, the Mambisa rebels hid tightly rolled messages inside these stems. Cuban botanist Alberto Areces explains that the flower is so famous, with such a historic reputation, that it was given the status of an “honorary combatant of the Independence Wars” for having played such an important part in the country’s liberation. He says that women sympathizers, usually Afro-Cuban women, carried these surreptitious bouquets, filled with messages, behind enemy lines.