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Now
The sound of a helicopter engine woke
me. At 6 am, I watched a large Soviet made whirly bird descend
into a clearing near the camp site. A man in olive drab with
a large briefcase jumped from the craft and ran toward the tents
where some of Fidel's body guards greeted him and took the brief
case. The man retreated and climbed aboard and the helicopter
ascended into the early morning sky.
I nodded a good morning to
the small group of body guards and other military personnel who
were checking jeep motors and kicking tires. The crew slept,
so I put my shoes on and walked to a nearby creek and watched
some campesinos putting a halter on a yoke of oven. They gave
a polite nod.
As I returned to the campsite
a guard handed me a paper cup full of café con leche.
The comandantes had begun to gather in small groups. They greeted
me politely. I chatted briefly with Vallejo, who inquired about
how we slept. "The chopper," he told me in English,
"bring the news and other papers Fidel needs to see."
Vallejo had served in the US Army during World War II and managed
the American idiom as a result. I had first met him in July 1960,
on my first trip to Cuba. He came along in a jeep on a back road
in Oriente, where I was hitchhiking. After picking me up and
talking to me in my poor Spanish, he broke out into English and
invited me to his office for coffee. He was head of INRA (The
Agrarian Reform Institute) and he told me how he had delivered
papers to the King Ranch, an off shoot of the famous Texas property,
ordering their expropriation. "I knew the manager and his
wife because I had delivered their babies. I told him I had bad
news and handed him the papers. He laughed and told me I was
a great joker. He called his wife, a very attractive woman from
Texas and they offered me coffee as I explained to them that
the expropriation order was real. They couldn't believe it and
assured me that this meant the US marines would come to Cuba
and that they felt so sad because they liked owed me so much
for delivering their babies. It was kind of sad. But that's the
drama of revolution."
Fidel emerged from his tent,
buttoning his trousers. Irving had begun to film and I explained
to Fidel that we would not include any scenes in bad taste. He
laughed and we entered the breakfast tent for Cuban tamales,
served runny, in bowls. When Fidel finished eating, he lit a
cohiba.
"I read chapters of an
entertaining biography of Bolivar by Waldo Frank."
The other comandantes lit up.
Irving filmed Fidel's blackened fingernails, his elegant fingers
clutching the cigar. "This one scene this is how Frank
tells it because everyone has a different version has a
priest whipping up the crowd after a tremendous earthquake has
devastated Caracas. Imagine,1 million people died in that disaster."
The cigar smoke filled the
tent. "Bolivar, standing in the crowd, got an ingenious
idea. He strode up to the altar from which the priest was agitating
the crowd saying that the earthquake showed God's wrath against
the Republicans, the heretics and godless. In those days you
had to make the revolution against God." Fidel paused and
puffed. The audience waited on his next words. "Bolivar
whips out his sword and belts the priest three times, knocking
him off the altar." The comandantes laughed.
"Three blows with the sword destroyed the priest's spell
over the crowd. Bolivar took the offensive. I don't know what
happened next because I fell asleep."
Shortly afterwards, the caravan
moved up the rocky dirt roads of the Sierra. Fidel waved to villagers.
They waved back. Those who actually saw who it was experienced
a mild ecstasy. I tried to imagine these sparely populated mountains
as the scenario for a two-year guerrilla war.
Fidel told Guillermo Garcia
where to go. Guillermo pushed the jeep into the proper gears
and maneuvered past coffee trees and skinny pines set against
blue tinted mountains. Tropical July sun beat its heat into the
jeep. Dust kicked up from the road. Fidel smoked and talked.
"Cross breed Zebus with
Holsteins we get the first generation of what geneticists call
F1s. These cows have already increased milk production. They
inherit the milk producing genes of the Holsteins and the tropical
resistance of the Zebus, African cows the Spaniards brought here."
He admitted he had studied his animal genetics text before picking
up the Bolivar book. "At the F4 stage in the breeding process
we should the offspring should produce 40 liters a day."
Fidel asked Guillermo to stop
in a town with a few stores and houses needing paint. A crowd
quickly gathered. Within minutes what looked like the whole village
had gathered around Fidel's jeep.
Fidel asked if they had enough
milk. Yes, a woman replied in machinegun staccato: "But
no transportation. We had a bus and then they took it away. Imagine!"
Fidel winced.
"We have no ambulance
either," said a man perched on a tree branch overlooking
the caravan.
"They gave us a bus and
then took it away," the woman continued. "They said
the road was too bad so the bus couldn't pass. But you ordered
that we have a bus, right?"
"I didn't know they had
withdrawn it," Fidel replied. "At least they should
have consulted me."
"But no ambulance is serious,"
continued the tree-based man. "In an emergency how will
people get to a hospital, pregnant women for example?"
Fidel nodded. Where do you
take sick people, to Mayari or Marcane?"
They said yes to both. Fidel
asked if the town still had midwives. "No, all gone,"
said another man. Doctors now deliver babies."
Fidel distributed candy to
the kids.
"How's the school? He
asked everyone.
The fast talking woman fired
back. "The school is fine, but we have no uniforms for the
kids. How can they go to school without uniforms?"
"In this heat, why do
they need a uniform? asked Fidel.
"Ah," said an older
man, as if Fidel had imparted startling wisdom. The caravan returned
to the bumpy road.
A bouncy hour later, the jeeps
stopped in another village. An old man pulled on Fidel's sleeve.
"I'm 98," he said, "and I need your help."
They chatted as villagers gathered.
"I don't get it," said Fidel, who at 6'3" towered
over the others. "Do you want the pension or the house?"
"The house, the house,"
the old man repeated. "No big thing. I'll make it from guano
(palm leaves). But these days who knows what's happening? The
trucks go back and forth making all that noise and creating problems."
Fidel interrupted. "Problems? We're building the highway.
You think it's problem to have a paved highway?"
"They could just throw
down some bitulai (tar)." building," Fidel explained.
"I never voted for those
corrupt ones," the ancient one said. "For Batista that
skunk, never"
"Did you ever vote for
any good ones? Tell the truth," Fidel implored.
"I voted for Alfredo Zayas
(President 1921-25). He was good."
"What did he do?"
Fidel laughed. "He built a statue in front of the presidential
palace. That's all."
The villagers laughed, even
the old man.
"Let's go, quickly,"
Fidel ordered. The jeeps sped away alongp the kidney jolting
road, higher into the Sierra where Fidel looked out from one
mountain onto another.
"This was our theater
of operations." He played with a long blade of grass he
had plucked. "We fought them here. We won some small battles
and a few big ones. At one point, we were dangerously close to
being annihilated. This peasant, our guide, defected. They offered
him money, rank, who knows what and he sat in a plane and three
times led bombers to the exact site of our camp. They bombed,
and the last time almost got us. But after those failures to
kill us off, they could no loner beat us."
The comandantes lounged in
the mountain grass in the late afternoon and very welcome shadows.
Guillermo Garcia seemed introspective. I asked him if he was
thinking of those "good old days."
He smiled. Fidel laughed.
"It took extraordinary
character to make it as a guerrilla. Men who risked their lives
and showed incredible courage in the urban underground found
it impossible to endure the life of the guerrilla. Not just the
biological deprivation and the need to be constantly mobile,
but the sense of being out of one's place, one's environment."
Garcia nodded. So did Vallejo, who spent a few months in 1958
with Fidel after leaving his gynecology practice in Manzanillo.
We remounted the jeeps and
headed for the evening campsite, somewhere I was lost
in Cuba's eastern mountains.
***
As the jeeps descended into
a valley somewhere in the Sierra Maestra that evening, we saw
in a clearing a row of tents. Fidel exploded. He told Guillermo
Garcia that he had ordered Chucho to erect the campsite on the
hill. "They've put me in a hole," he spat.
Fidel jumped out of the jeep
and upbraided the smaller and leaner Chucho. His anger vibrated
through the night air. "How could you bury me in this indefensible
pit? You of all people know that you never make camp in a hole."
Fidel cursed. Chucho shuddered. Fidel paced back and forth in
front of him, repeating in different words the accusation of
unpardonable stupidity.
In our tent, we shook our heads.
Fidel's outburst had frightened us as well. The dinner was subdued
and ended quickly. I saw Fidel's tent lantern burning, indicating
he had begun reading.
In the morning, Fidel stood
in front of Chucho again, with his arm around him and loudly
apologized for last night's verbal explosion. He hugged Chucho
and told him how much he valued him, while repeating that he
had been out of line, albeit "the idea of camping in a hole
made him uneasy."
Chucho looked deeply relieved,
as did all other members of the entourage.
Fidel explained that we would
have a chicken stew for breakfast, pointing to the serving bowl
filled with steaming pieces of chicken in gravy. Next to it,
sat a bowl of freshly cooked rice.
Irving turned on the camera
and Fidel pretended to be offended.
"Imagine, getting filmed
eating breakfast! What an abuse! Well, I better remember the
French etiquette lessons I learned in school." He played
with his utensils as if uncertain of the proper one to use for
the chicken and rice. Everyone chuckled.
I asked him if he had kept
a diary during the guerrilla years. He shook his head negatively
until he almost finished chewing and answered.
"No, I never kept one.
Che kept one. Raul (his brother) and Almeida (one of the 1953
attackers of Moncada and head of the army in 1968). I head a
very good memory and kept all the key details in my head. But
a diary can have strategically negative implications. You can
lose it if you're beating a hasty retreat and drop your backpack.
Then the enemy can learn important details."
Fidel served himself a second
helping of chicken and rice and continued. "A diary is important
if you're thinking of history, like Napoleon, for example."
Fidel turned to the other comandantes.
"I think it was in Elba where he was exiled, wasn't it?"
Several said, "Yes, Elba."
"No," Fidel retorted.
"It was Santa Helena. He was exiled first in Elba, then
in Santa Helena." He referred to the 1815 British imprisonment
of the former French Emperor on the island of Saint Helena. During
his six years there, preceding his death, he dictated his memoirs.
He died on May 5, 1821.
"He was concerned with
his place in history. My concern was deeds, action. I was making
history." He stood, lit a cigar and said: "Well, gentleman,
we have a long day. Let's get moving."
As day's heat and the road's
dust poured into the jeep and Faustino's pistol butt and Leyte's
ammunition clip alternately japed me in the sides as the vehicle
lurched helter skelter over and in the ruts, Fidel smoked and
appeared to be lost in thought. I had yet to see a pygmy owls,
miniature sized frogs, or wingless butterflies (their wings are
invisible) which I read existed in these mountains. The jeeps
climbed and I asked Faustino if we were near Pico Turquino, the
highest point in Cuba, about 6,580 feet high. He nodded and point.
I looked and saw nothing but mountains and trees.
Fidel had reason to look nostalgic.
Not only had he lived in this region from December 1956 to January
1959, but he had shared it with other revolutionaries. Supposedly,
in 1511, one of Columbus' men, Diego Velásquez, conquered
Cuba. Chief Hatuey (of the Tainos) led guerrilla attacks against
the better armed (with firearms) Spaniards. Like Fidel, he hid
in the mountains, and waged deadly assaults. But just as Batista
found a peasant to reveal Fidel's location, so his air force
could bomb it, Velásquez also discovered a traitor who
showed him where Hatuey had hidden.
In October 1868, in the town
of Yara, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes issued his Grito to
launch the first independence war, and in 1895, in the second
war of independence, at Dos Rios in the same area, Jose Martí
began his fatal horseback charge against the Spanish machine
guns. Fidel had much to reflect on. He descended directly from
them.
Below, I saw picture post card
scenes of palm trees and meadow, with large buzzards making lazy
circles overhead. Fidel returned to his theme of revolution.
"Look at the revolutions that succeeded," he began.
"Russia, China, Cuba, Algeria, Vietnam all came about
through armed struggle. Every time a revolutionary wins power
through elections, or any non violent means, he is quickly overthrown
by his own army, in the service of the local ruling class and
the imperialists. You would think that the Soviet leaders would
grasp this elementary concept and support genuine revolutionary
movements. What Che and the other companeros were doing in the
Congo and in Bolivia constituted a model that we had successfully
employed in Cuba. A guerrilla foco (mobile force of armed revolutionaries)
needs the support of an active urban movement. It needs intelligence,
logistical help, food, weapons and a refurbishing of the guerrilla
band. It also needs an active and urban front that carries out
effective measures against the government. As we learned, our
comrades in the cities carried out armed actions against Batista
police and repressive forces. They did propaganda and sapped
the legitimacy of the government with their continual assault
on its authority."
He paused to puff on his ubiquitous
cohiba and continued, as the jeep bounced upward into the Sierra.
"When the Soviets removed
Che's support in Bolivia, it as much as doomed the mission."
He looked bitter, as if still grieving over Che and the other
companeros and also deeply disappointed in the behavior of the
Soviets.
We entered a village where
a baseball game was underway. Within minutes, Fidel had a bat
and was swinging unsuccessfully at the local pitcher's offerings.
He removed his cigar. No luck. He made a few jokes as the villagers
offered to change pitchers.
"No," Fidel insisted,
"as long as he's willing to pitch, I'll be trying to hit
one."
He took off his hat, then his
glasses. Still no contact. He tried throwing the ball in the
air and swinging. No result. Annoyed at his apparent loss of
coordination and complaining to Vallejo about how he had "lost
my eye," he changed from his olive drab shirt into a jersey,
put on cleats and took the mound.
He gave me permission to stand
behind him with a camera as he threw, semi side arm, but hard.
His unorthodox delivery came with a natural curve. After a shaky
start, he retired the side. One of the comandantes whispered
to another. "We could be here for three days if he doesn't
belt one."
On his first at bat,
clad in the white and red jersey, Fidel smacked a pitch between
the center and right fielders and raced around the bases. The
villagers applauded. The members of the entourage breathed a
deep sigh of relief. Fidel gave a brief nod of satisfaction to
Vallejo, changed back into his shirt and army boots and the caravan
proceeded into other reaches of the Sierra.
The baseball stop showed Fidel's
determination, a man who will not accept defeat, even at play.
Lee Lockwood wrote in his book Castro's Cuba; Cuba's Fidel
about Fidel playing dominoes until he had literally exhausted
his competitors. Unfortunately, none of the 10 US presidents
who tried to undo him understood this.
In the jeep, Fidel began to
talk about how he had played baseball intermittently all his
life, about one game he played with Camilo Cienfuegos. Guillermo
Garcia said he remembered the game. "Camilo was catching
and you were pitching." Fidel nodded as the jeeps continued
their climb up the mountain.
Saul Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies
fellow. His FIDEL film is available on DVD. His new book, A BUSH
AND BOTOX WORLD, with an introduction by Gore Vidal, will be
published by CounterPunch Press.
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