Fidel: A Critical Portrait

by Tad Szulc

  At the city jail, however, Colonel Chaviano was already awaiting Fidel Castro, and Sarría had no choice but to surrender his prisoner. However, the lieutenant had saved Castro's life, first by preventing his soldiers from shooting him, then by refusing to deliver him to Pérez Chaumont. Once at the jail, very much in public view, Fidel was protected. As to Sarría, he remained in the army, but was tried by a court martial in 1957 for refusing to fight the Rebel Army in the Sierra Maestra, and was kept under house arrest until the revolution triumphed. Sarría was promoted to captain in the new Fidelista army, and regarded as a Hero of the Revolution. When Sarría died in Havana in 1972 at the age of seventy-two, Castro attended the solemn funeral, and Pedro Miret delivered the oration to recall that "we owe Captain Sarría deserved gratitude for having saved the life of Fidel and his companions."

  From the moment he arrived there at 8:45 A.M., Fidel Castro was an instant celebrity at the Santiago jail, an ancient two-story structure downtown. Keeping his aplomb, he behaved with humor and defiance, and when Colonel Chaviano, immaculate in a fresh uniform, his waxed moustache bristling, met him in the jail office, the commander had a group photograph taken. Standing under a portrait of José Martí, Fidel, unshaven in dark slacks and a white short-sleeved sport shirt, towered over Chaviano, Pérez Chaumont, and Major Rafael Morales Alvárez. He seemed like the guest of honor.

  Sitting on a bench with his fellow rebels as he awaited a meeting with Chaviano later that morning, Castro glanced at the local newspaper, Ataja, with a huge front-page headline: DEAD! FIDEL CASTRO! In Chaviano's office in the jail, Fidel was invited to sit across the desk from him, his hands untied, for what became a Castro speech rather than an interrogation. The official army communiqué said that Castro "affirmed that he was responsible for the entire subversive movement . . . revealed all the subversive plans as well as those he expected to unfold later."

  Rather than simply "confessing" his deeds, Fidel made a point of narrating in detail how and why he had organized the Movement, emphasizing his certainty that if the Moncada attack had worked, the people of Oriente would have risen in his support. Chaviano allowed a summary of his declarations to be given to the press and let newsmen interview his prisoner.. He even held a news conference to discuss his "interrogation" of Fidel. Newspapers and magazines throughout Cuba reported Castro's words widely and amply; the Moncada defeat began to turn into the seeds of a future victory.

  Incredibly, Chaviano proposed that Castro repeat his story over the radio so that the whole nation could learn, the colonel reasoned, how dangerous the subversive movement smashed by the army was. Fidel was delighted, and as he told the French historian Robert Merle ten years later, "Imagine the imbecility of these people! They ask me to take the microphone and to defend my viewpoint before them . . . who as a result of their crimes are morally disarmed before me! Obviously, I took the microphone . . ." Castro then said to Merle, laughing: "And at that minute, the second phase of the revolution began." In that broadcast over station CMKR, Fidel proclaimed, "We came to regenerate Cuba."

  To be sure, the Movement suffered very serious losses. Three out of six members of the military committee, including Abel Santamaría, were killed. Over one hundred rebels were killed, murdered or arrested. But many key persons had survived, and Fidel found most of them at the Santiago jail: Raúl Castro, Jesús Montané, and Haydée and Melba, looking dejected, with scarves tied around their heads. Up to then, Fidel did not even know whether they were alive. At the same time, he discovered that Raúl had become the chief of the rebels at the jailhouse; a photograph shows him standing at attention in front of some thirty men in an unmistakable leader stance. Now Castro assumed his leadership position, greeting each rebel with words of praise for having attempted with him to "take the sky by surprise."

  In the meantime, Archbishop Pérez Serantes telephoned Mirta in Havana to assure her that her husband was well. This was probably the first time in nearly five years of marriage that Mirta was told anything about her husband's activities, and she appeared to be grateful for the call. She had been very worried about Fidel since she heard about the abortive Moncada attack, and she wanted to be in touch with him. Her brother, Rafael Díaz-Balart, now acting interior minister in the Batista cabinet, had gone to Santiago immediately after the events of July 26, but it is unlikely that he would serve as a link between Fidel and Mirta, particularly because Castro would not have it. The Castros in Birán were informed that their sons were safe and well treated. And the word reached Naty Revuelta in Havana, too.

  The day after Castro's capture, on Sunday, August 2, President Batista flew to Santiago to tour Moncada, receive reports from Chaviano and other officers, award the Honor Cross to the flag of the Maceo Regiment, and salute the troops as they marched past him inside the fortress. The people of Santiago, however, were in greater attendance at the solemn mass for the dead at which Archbishop Pérez Serantes officiated at the cathedral. Starting at seven o'clock in the morning, thousands of them filled the cathedral to hear the requiem and, on their way out, to kiss the archbishop's ring. He was the other hero of Santiago.

  Also that day, Fidel Castro and all the other Moncada prisoners were transferred to Boniato Provincial Prison, some five miles north of Santiago, to await their trial. Melba Hernández and Haydée Santamaría were placed in the backseat of a green Buick; in the front seat, a civilian sat between two officers; all the other prisoners went in police vans. Melba recalls that when she and Haydée entered the car, Fidel was already in the front seat, "and he recognized us without turning his head, talked to us, and asked us how we felt . . . the military let us converse, so we answered Fidel, and asked how he was . . ."

  Fidel Castro celebrated his twenty-seventh birthday in the Boniato prison twelve days later, but he was too busy planning his next move in the war against Batista to reflect much on it. Not only had he to prepare his trial defense, but he had decided to issue as rapidly as possible a complete account of the Moncada events, including insisting that the Movement was independent of Cuban political groups. The regime had alleged that the uprising had been directed by the Ortodoxo party and the Communists, and that key leaders of both parties had been arrested all over Cuba. By coincidence, top Communist leaders were in Santiago the weekend of Moncada for a birthday celebration, but to Batista this was proof of their involvement in the conspiracy.

  New names, soon to be famous, began to be associated with Castro's Movement. Manuel Urrutia Lleó, the chief judge of the Santiago "summer court" and the future president of revolutionary Cuba, on July 27 had undertaken an inquest designed to identify Moncada victims. Humberto Sori-Marín, representing the National Lawyers' Association, visited Castro in prison to discuss his defense; later Sori-Marín would be the Rebel Army's judge-advocate, the author of the agrarian reform law, and minister of agriculture under Castro before being executed in 1960 for conspiring against the revolution.

  Working around the clock (and letting his moustache grow again), Fidel wasted no time organizing the rebel prisoners politically and educationally, demanding books and other materials from the outside. Raúl and Pedro Miret, the latter recovered from his battle wounds, became his principal collaborators in all his endeavors. Letters came to the Boniato cell from all over Cuba, including from Naty Revuelta in Havana. Lina Castro, Fidel and Raúl's mother, and their older sister, Lidia, came to visit them in prison as did Fidel's wife, Mirta.

  Fidel Castro was in high spirits: He was fighting again, his head was brimming with plans, conspiracies, and denunciations. The disaster of Moncada already lay behind, if not forgotten; certainly it was not perceived by him as a monumental defeat. It was on that defeat that Castro was now building his next great offensive.

  CHAPTER

  5

  At Boniato Provincial Prison, Fidel Castro was Prisoner No. 4914, Case 37-053, awaiting trial before the Provisional Tribunal of Santiago for his participation in the assault on the Moncada army barracks on July 26, 1953. After the sentenc
e, he would become National Men's Reformatory Prisoner 3859. But he certainly was not an anonymous prisoner without a name, hidden behind a mug-shot number. In fact, this was when Fidel Castro became famous in Cuba for the first time, when he became the center of nationwide sympathy (and focus of General Batista's wrath), and the recognized leader of the antidictator opposition.

  Still, the Batista regime failed to comprehend what it had on its hands in Boniato Prison. This prisoner was much more dangerous politically behind bars in the glare of public attention than as the obscure and penniless revolutionary plotter he had been just weeks earlier. And Batista could not even suspect how Fidel Castro was preparing to take advantage of the new situation, his supercharged mind spewing tactics, maneuvers, and strategies to expand his struggle.

  In the hilltop prison, Castro was held in solitary confinement in a small cell on the first floor of the building while the other Moncada prisoners shared cells in the adjoining block. The two blocks were separated by a corridor, and Fidel and his companions could not see or talk to each other. Melba Hernández and Haydée Santamaría were in a cell on the same floor. Theoretically, Castro was isolated from his group, but ways for communication among them were rapidly devised in the fifty-one days between his arrest and his trial.

  The rebels were charged under Article 148 of the Social Defense Code, which provides for a prison sentence of between five and twenty years for "the leader of an attempt aimed at organizing an uprising of armed persons against Constitutional Powers of the State." Castro's strategy had two main objectives: first, to obtain acquittal for the majority of the Moncada and Bayamo assailants on the grounds that they were not "leaders" in the uprising; and second, to use the trial as a forum to accuse Batista and the military of having implanted a dictatorship in Cuba in the first place, and of having massacred unarmed rebel prisoners after the abortive attack.

  Realizing that he would be found guilty and sentenced, Castro concluded that the trial could and should be turned into the most profitable affair possible for the Movement and himself. The initial step was to establish exactly and in the greatest detail what had happened with each of the rebel detainees in Boniato before, during, and immediately after the assaults on the army barracks. Actually, some seventy-five defendants belonged to the Movement; the balance were political leaders, including Communists who had been arrested after the attack. Castro had lost contact with most of his troops when the combat began in Santiago, and he had not seen any of the survivors (except his own companions on Gran Piedra) until entering the prison. To lay the groundwork for his courtroom battle, he had to have maximum available information.

  As Pedro Miret recalls, he and Raúl Castro took it upon themselves to interview every single Moncada prisoner in their group, "hearing the version of each one of what he did, and this way we learned a great deal about these events." In this fashion, Miret says, "we were able to collect a mass of information that we passed on to Fidel, and therefore when he delivered his statement [to the court] he had the totality of the most fresh information." During the seven weeks the defendants spent in Boniato, Castro was fed the information piecemeal through oral messages given in quick whispers by fellow prisoners passing past the iron bars of his cell, or even by friendly guards, and through tiny scribbled messages thrown inside the cell by someone passing. With his formidable memory, Fidel built in his mind detailed files on at least seventy-five Movement members. Having become the hero of common criminals serving time in Boniato, he had their support, help, and protection, too. Thieves and murderers were turned into secret revolutionary messengers.

  With this data in hand, Castro was in a position to determine how many of the prisoners were the most likely to be acquitted. With Pedro Miret and Raúl acting as his delegates, he prepared all the companions for the trial. As Miret explained it, "We had nothing to gain with everybody remaining imprisoned, and with the information we had gathered, we could tell who in our group simply had to face prison, whether they liked it or not." Fidel's concept was that the hard-core leadership, including himself, had to confess its participation in the attacks, but the majority could safely deny it because they were completely unknown men, and the authorities could probably not prove their guilt. Many of them, for example, were arrested far from Santiago, often simply on suspicion (several persons were murdered by the military on suspicion, although they had not actually been involved in the conspiracy).

  It was Castro who decided which of the prisoners should confess, and which of them should not. Miret says the criterion was that "of courtroom probability," and each prisoner was given Castro's recommendation. However, this "was not an obligation, certainly not an order." The prisoners were free to do what they deemed correct, but all of them followed his advice. Castro, who wanted as many men as possible acquitted so as to help rebuild the Movement, provided the final touch to this strategy. In the courtroom he made a point to identify himself who did and did not participate in the uprising. As a practical matter, neither the prosecution nor the judges could challenge Castro's careful selection of the candidates for acquittal, and they went along with him. It was an extraordinary judicial situation in which the chief defendant, in effect, instructed the court who should be sentenced with him.

  Miret and Raúl Castro used the rest of their time in Boniato to organize a small library for their fellow prison mates out of books they requested from friends and relatives on the outside. And they also held daily classes for the group in subjects they knew best: history, language, physics, and mathematics. The idea was to keep the men cohesive and disciplined, not to let them lapse into depression or self-pity, and to whip them into the best psychological shape for the trial. Fidel always believed in physical and intellectual fitness and discipline, and in improving the education of the rebels at every opportunity. Because the Fidelistas already were a highly disciplined military organization, they gladly participated in this prison "school." Miret and Raúl Castro were the logical leaders in the endeavor as the only university students in this group of Moncada survivors.

  And Fidel, too, discovered that prison offered a magnificent chance to engage in his favorite occupation of reading on a massive scale. Until Boniato, he had never had enough time to read as much as he wanted. In his first letter to his wife Mirta, three weeks after his imprisonment, he asked for Julián María's Philosophy in Its Texts, the works of Shakespeare, García Morente's Preliminary Lessons of Philosophy, as well as "some novels that you would think would interest me." In September, while awaiting trial, he wrote his older brother, Ramón, that he was "taking advantage" of the time in prison: "I read a lot and I study a lot." And Castro added: "It seems incredible; hours fly by as if they were minutes, and I, with my restless temperament, spend the day reading, barely moving for anything."

  Castro also showed family concern, perhaps greater than at any time in his adult past. He exchanged letters with Mirta until he broke with her a year later, expressing preoccupation over Fidelito's welfare and future. But they were not love letters, not even emotional letters; Fidel simply signed them "Kisses for the niño and for you." On August 18 he wrote her from Boniato: "I don't know whether you are in Oriente or in Havana. . . . I have heard very little about you; only that you were in Santiago after my detention, and also that you came to the prison to bring me clothes that were delivered to me. . . . I am well; you know that prison bars cannot break my spirit, my determination, or my conscience. . . . I suffer only for those who are outside, and for those who have felt in their flesh in this struggle the pain of sacrifice. . . . Be calm and courageous. Before all else, we must think about Fidelito. I want him to go to the school you have chosen. . . . When you come, bring him along; surely, they will let me see him."

  On September 5 Castro wrote Ramón that he had learned from Mirta's letter that Fidelito had spent a week at the family finca, remarking that "he likes very much the countryside and animals . . . on the first of the month, he became four years old. . . . Mirta wants to send him to scho
ol, I mean a private school; we shall see whether this is possible." Two weeks later, he informed Ramón that Mirta had placed Fidelito "in a kindergarten in English . . . and in a public kindergarten almost across the street from the house . . . she also sent me some photographs, and I can see that he has grown a lot in recent months."

  But Fidel wanted his parents to understand his situation as well. "It is necessary for you to make my parents see that prison is not the horrible and shameful thing they taught us it is," he wrote to Ramón. "This is true only when a man goes there for acts that dishonor him. . . . When the motive is high and great, then prison is a very honorable place." In another letter to Ramón, he mentioned that his father had sent him a telegram inquiring whether Fidel and Raúl needed clothes, and that he replied at once that they had all they needed from Mirta. He said he planned to write his parents later that day, adding, "Do they understand that I am imprisoned for doing my duty?" Then he thanked Ramón for the cigars his brother had sent him at his request in an earlier letter, asking for more boxes, "because the last one is almost finished, and it is always necessary to give a cigar to persons who help us . . ."

  The trial of Fidel Castro and his companions opened on Monday, September 21, 1953, at the Santiago Palace of Justice, the building the detachment commanded by Raúl Castro had stormed on the day of the uprising, overlooking the Moncada barracks. It was being held before the three-judge Provisional Tribunal of Santiago, one of a network of special political courts whose sentences could not be appealed. The chief judge was Adolfo Nieto Piñeito-Osorio, and the prosecutor was Francisco Mendieta Hechavarría, and both were respected jurists.